1 Ayana Black (ed.), Fiery Spirits & Voices: Canadian writers of African descent (Toronto, Harper Collins, 2000). (Fiery Spirits had been published separately in 1994.)
2.
2 David Bennett (ed.), Multicultural States: rethinking difference and identity (London, Routledge, 1998).
3.
3 In contrast to this boast, there is an emerging body of research that shows the glaring inequalities between visible racial minorities and white Canadians. See, for example, 'Poverty linked to skin colour: visible minority immigrants make less, study says' in the Toronto Star (24 March 2000). 'Visible minority immigrants have a higher unemployment rate, lower average income and are more likely to live in poverty than their white counterparts, according to Canadian census data from 1991 to 1996. "After five years of economic recovery, we are still looking at a higher representation of visual minorities below the poverty lines," said University of Toronto sociologist Edward Harvey.' Even more pointed is the study that shows that, of all the minority groups, blacks-whether immigrant or Canadian bornare the worst affected. See Derek Hum and Wayne Simpson, 'Wage opportunities for visible minorities in Canada', Statistics Canada, catalogue no. 98-17. 'Blacks receive 19% less than Canadians who are not a member of a visible minority, members of the Indo-Pakistani group receive about 13% less, Chinese receive about 12% less, and members of the non-Chinese Oriental group receive about 16% less.' (p.13) As this report shows, the situation is even worse for black men. 'There are significant wage disadvantages for Black men (about 21%). Among Canadian born men, Blacks have a statistically significant wage disadvantage of about 24%, which is comparable with the results for foreign-born black men.' (p. 28)
4.
4 Fiery Spirits & Voices, op. cit., p. 59.
5.
5 This point was emphasised by the different paths that Empire Loyalists took from the American Revolution of 1776. The loyalists went to Canada to continue a European tradition and history that the American revolutionaries had rejected. See Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1992) and Lawrence H. Leder, The Colonial Legacy: volume 1 - loyalist historians (New York, Harper & Row, 1971).
6.
6 See P. E. Trudeau, The Essential Trudeau (Toronto, McClelland, 1998), p. 4. These sentiments are captured in official government documents, such as 'Immigrants and civic participation: contemporary policy and research issues', issued by the Canadian government department of Heritage and Multiculturalism in 1997. It noted that, since 1971, the Canadian government has been interested in ensuring that its policies address the challenges of ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious diversity. The fundamentals goals of this approach are: a) Identity - fostering a society that recognises, respects and reflects a diversity of cultures such that people of all backgrounds feel a sense of belonging and attachment to Canada; b) Civic Participation - developing, among Canada's diverse people, active citizens with both the opportunity and capacity to participate in shaping the future of their communities and their country; c) Social Justice - building a society that ensures fair and equitable treatment and that respects the dignity of and accommodates people of all origins.
7.
7 Paul Litt, The Muses, the Masses and the Massey Commission (Toronto, Toronto University Press), p. 4-4.
8.
8 As Kenneth McRoberts shows, these attacks on bilingualism and biculturalism caught the Commission off guard, so that eventually the commissioners felt obliged to produce a full volume called The Cultural Contribution of Other Groups which proposed a 'series of initiatives such as anti-discrimination measures, equal access of all immigrants to citizenship, teaching of non-official languages in schools, elimination of restrictions on non-official languages in private and public broadcasting, and support for organizations fostering "the arts and letters of cultural groups other than French".' (K. McRoberts, Misconceiving Canada: the struggle for national unity (Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 123.)
9.
9 Jean-Marie Makang, 'African diaspora's perspective of multiculturalism and individual identity: a response to Jorn Braman', Philosophical Forum (26 October 1999), http://www.frostburg.edu/dept/phil/forum/Multicult2.htm
10.
10 See Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: a history (Montreal & Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1971) and James W. St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: the search for a promised land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783- 1870 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1992).
11.
11 One of the clearest signs of the remapping of the Canadian identity was the country's hosting (Quebec City, April 2001) of a summit by thirty-four leaders of the Americas which was intended to produce a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas by 2005. Opening this meeting, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien spoke of the American family of nations.
12.
12 Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism (New York, Monthly Review, 1972), p. 69-69.
13.
13 Ibid., p. 67-67.
14.
14 Fiery Spirits & Voices, op. cit., p. 58.
15.
15 Between 1965 and 1969, Carew was often depicted in Canadian literature and newspapers as an angry Black Power activist. The following example is taken from a review of Harlequin in Hogtown: George Luscombe & Toronto Workshop Productions. The book and the review recalled the early days of the alternative theatre in Toronto under a tyrant-like Luscombe. 'Jack Winter, Luscombe's dramaturge, resigned from Mr Bones, a minstrel show about black oppression, and was replaced by the Guyanese-born writer Jan Carew, who ended up storming into Luscombe's office and tearing up a phone book in rage and frustration.' Keith Garebian, 'Revolutionary Harlequin', Books in Canada (Vol. 25, no. 2, March, 1996).
16.
16 See Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship. liberal theory of minority rights (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995), for a discussion of the 'Anglo' and 'Franco' conformity models that were central to Canadian citizenship and the assimilation of immigrants up until the 1960s and the advent of multiculturalism.
17.
17 Jan Carew, 'The Third World in the Americas', Cotopaxi (Vol. 1, no. 1, Fall 1968).
18.
18 Frank Birbalsingh, 'Jan Carew interview', Journal of Caribbean Studies (1988).
19.
19 Ibid.
20.
20 Fiery Spirits & Voices, op. cit., p. 58.
21.
21 The Canadian Constitution states that there are two founding peoples, a clear signal of the exclusive nature of elites who drafted and implement this document. This designation became a major problem in the 1980s when there were two failed attempts at amending the Canadian Constitution. The Meech Lake Agreement and then the Charlottetown Agreement failed largely because the process was deemed undemocratic. The question of who is a Canadian was at the heart of this discourse. Another example of the power of the British and French is the interminable debate over national unity, whether Quebec can separate from Canada, a debate that usually excludes visible minorities and immigrants - except during the separation referendums when they always vote overwhelmingly for Canada. Demographics seem to suggest that if minorities maintain this voting practice, Quebec will never separate from Canada. Yet the debate continues between the old-stock Canadians, even though the new-stock Canadians have made their choice.
22.
22 There is a body of literature that deals with the assimilation of Canadian immigrants. This literature argues that first-generation immigrants are concerned primarily with survival and adaptability. They want a job and good schooling for their children. They have very little interest in the politics and culture of the new land. Therefore, it is from the second generation onwards at the earliest that members of the 'immigrant' community begin to get involved in politics and culture in any meaningful way. See Morton Weinfeld's research papers 'A preliminary stocktaking on immigration research in Canada', and 'Immigrant and visible minority associational movements in Toronto'.
23.
23 For a fuller discussion, see Will Kymlicka, Finding Our Way. rethinking ethnocultural relations in Canada (Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1998), and Misconceiving Canada, op. cit.
24.
24 That Canadians are, by definition, hewers of wood and drawers of water has reached folkloric proportions. This was supposedly an early reference to the fact that Canada was primarily a colonial outpost, rich in natural resources that were shipped to metropolitan centres, and that it had no authentic or national culture. The Canadian elites wanted to change this concept. They wanted to show that they had a culture - even if they had to manufacture it - but they still needed wood to be hewn and water to be drawn, so they imported other people to do the dirty work, while real Canadians made and enjoyed 'culture'.
25.
25 This claim was made before the Massey Commission (which essentially charted the road map for the creation of a national culture) by university professors, the clergy and 'leading pillars of society' from several volunteer and community organisations who appeared as expert witnesses.
26.
26 This was very noticeable in the reviews of Jamaican-Canadian Olive Senior's novel, Discerners of Hearts. Before coming to Canada, Senior had developed an international reputation, including the winning of the Commonwealth literature prize. However, in Canada, reviews and radio and television interviews concentrated more on her 'exotic' use of language - which, as she argued, was natural language in Jamaica - and spent very little time on the content or aesthetic values of her novel.
27.
27 Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism (London, Verso, 1994), p. 55-55.
28.
28 'The Third World in the Americas', op. cit.
29.
29 Sarah M. Corse, Nationalism and Literature: the politics of culture in Canada and the United States (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 7-7.
