So moving beyond the basics of Canada, what are some of the common perceptions that people have about what Canada is, right? What do people within Canada, what do people outside of Canada... think of when they think about this country. And so some of the common things that people think about when they think about Canada, they think about particular symbols. They think about the maple leaf.
They think about... and maple syrup, for instance. They think about hockey or lacrosse, or they think about Tim Hortons, which is a very, is a chain, a coffee and donut chain across Canada. Or they think about sort of the physical geography of Canada as another common symbol that people, that comes into people's minds, that they conjure in their minds when they think about Canada. So one of our, one set of famous artists of Canada, Joe Arcana.
called The Group of Seven. These were seven Canadian male and female painters who drew many landscapes of Canada's lands, like its mountains, its rivers, its physical geography. And these paintings of Canada's physical geography sort of captured the essence of Canada.
It captured the essence of the beauty of Canada, the solitary, the rugged. rugged nature of Canada. You know, Canada was this rugged wilderness that we as Canadians tamed and brought under our control, is sort of some of the images.
It speaks of the purity of Canada and our links to the land. And so you saw this photo that, or this picture of Mount Thule is an example of one of the paintings of the Group of Seven, one of these famous images. that were painted by the Group of Seven.
And even today, artists continue to paint sort of the animals and geography of Canada. Many Indigenous artists have added to these sort of European-style images by crafting unique Indigenous interpretations and depictions of very similar images, but using very powerful techniques that are different from what we're used to. were used by the group of seven. So that's what people think about Canada. You know, these are some of the symbols, the popular cultural symbols that people think about when they think about Canada.
But if we move beyond these sort of images, other conceptions of Canada focus sort of on this advanced democratic country. You know, we're one of the best democratic countries in the world. We're a tolerant society. You know, we welcome everybody.
We're a diverse society. You know, we're not just... one ethnicity or race, but we welcome people from all over the world of multiple race, ethnicities, genders. It's a safe country. We don't have the sort of conflict and wars that have occurred in other places.
Like, you know, even the United States, we never had a revolution or a civil war, and we're a free place. We have a lot of freedoms. They think, people also, when they think about Canada, they think about how we're a sort of a nicer, a gentler version than the United States. of America. You know we share this very long border with the United States almost 9,000 kilometers if you saw on the last map.
It's a generally undefended border. There are 120 border crossings by land but you know we don't have lots of soldiers at our borders compared to some other countries and you know the United States is our biggest trade partner. It's got you know we own almost 2.6 billion dollars in goods and services a day crosses the border.
the border 2.6 billion dollars okay so people you know people lots of people sort of think of us as americans except we're nicer and gentler and that's because again we share this border with the united states and we engage in all this trade Now, when people talk about the United States, they describe it as this melting pot. It's a place where, you know, everyone's diversity or identity are melted down in a pot. They're reforged into sort of a single... homogenous American identity.
You know, everyone can come, come to America, you're welcome to come to America, but you're all going to be turned into Americans. You're not, you know, you're the idea, the sort of common description about the United States is that, you know, come here, live the American dream, you know, you're going to adopt the ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Come here because the United States is the land of opportunity.
If you just work Hard enough you can succeed like any other American. But again the idea is you know it doesn't matter if you're Italian or Chinese or any other ethnicity you're gonna cut once you come here and become an American you're an American first. You're melt it's a melting pot you're all melted into one. into one sort of pot to become the same. Canada in comparison is not described as a melting pot.
Rather, the kinds of phrases that are used is that Canada is a cultural mosaic or it's it's a community of communities. So rather than melting people into one identity, rather than assimilating them, Canada is thought to be more tolerant. We're nicer.
We're more diverse. We welcome diversity. We protect diversity.
We want immigrants and refugees to come to Canada and we want them to maintain their identities, right? That's the idea of this cultural mosaic, you know, mosaic are these little pieces, very different colored pieces that when they're put together, they form a cohesive picture. And that's the idea.
the cultural mosaic that we're all individual you know we're filipino canadian and we're we're filipino or chinese or we're you know we're from somalia or we're from india and we all have our our identities and but when you put them together they form this picture of what it means to be a canadian that's sort of the cultural mosaic idea so and so that's the idea like we're a welcoming country we welcome immigrants we welcome refugees to come here, be who they are, but also to be part of the Canadian experience. So if you think about Canada, if you think about our reputation for immigration refugees, all you have to do is think about the Syrian refugee crisis, which is mentioned in the textbook. This crisis happened in 2015 and 2016. You know, Syrians were fleeing the country looking for places to go, and Canada welcomed and resettled 25,000.
in Syria and refugees across Canada, including a bunch in London. If you compare that to the United States, the melting pot, they only admitted 16,000 refugees during that same period, even though they're, you know, this great superpower. And if you look at in 2022, the Canadian government announced it would welcome somewhere between 55,000 and 79,500 refugees and protected persons, with a specific focus on on Afghan, Haitian, Venezuelan, and Uyghur refugees, given the instability in those countries. And that's just refugees.
That doesn't include the immigrants who are not refugees, right? So not only does Canada, in terms of common perceptions, not only is Canada thought to be a welcoming place for immigrants and refugees, but people think of Canada as being this place that is committed to protecting ethnic... and racial diversity.
It's committed to protecting our individual and collective identities related to our religious, religion, language, gender, and sexual orientation among other kinds of diversity. So again when people think about Canada they think about that cultural mosaic whereas in the United States they think about sort of this this melting pot. Another term that's been used to describe Canada that's related to the cultural mosaic idea is is this idea of community of communities. This was a phrase that one of our former Prime Ministers, Joe Clark, who was a conservative, progressive conservative leader and Prime Minister in the late 1970s, he used this term community of communities to describe Canada. You know, we're not just a community, but we have all these, we're community made up of all these different sorts of different communities, whether it's Quebec, you know, around language.
or race or region. And he saw that as a strength. He saw this as a thing.
You know, we celebrate difference, but we're also a community, a community that is cohesive and the like. You know, so this notion of diversity, people have tried to study it. And so Will Kimlicka, a very famous philosopher, he describes Canada and, you know, reflecting again Canada's diversity, he describes Canada as a multinational state, a multinational state.
We're a multi-nation state. That our national identity isn't just one nation like the American nation. We don't have an American dream, an American nation, or an Italian nation. The Canadian nation is a multi-nation.
It has multiple nations. And in particular, according to Kim Likol, we have three nations. We have English, the English-Canadian nation. We have a French-Canadian nation.
And we have a set of indigenous nations. So two linguistic, French and English, and then one sort of more based on identity, racial and ethnic identity, indigenous nation. And that these are the three founding nations of Canada. These are the three nations that were here in Canada and were...
We're part of the building of Canada. And so our identity is built around this multinational identity and this multination reality. speaks again to this safe, tolerant, diverse nation is what is assumed about Canada.
There's another scholar by the name of John Ralston Saul, who talks about Canada as having a Métis identity. And we'll talk about Métis identity in more detail in future lectures. But for now, he was speaking about the Métis identity as a term to capture the mixing of the three nations to produce a unique Canadian identity, but also a unique identity. economic set a set of canadian unique canadian political economic and cultural institutions so you know canada is diverse we don't just melt everyone in together we we we we mix and match and we we bring together different different ethnicities and different races and different genders different religions and out of that we form this unique set of institutions uh that that celebrate that that pluralist pluralism of of Canada. And so you get you get sort of unique institutions.
You get for instance if we think about Canada as we'll learn about in more detail the United States is seen as this very individualistic place right it's about every person has the chance to succeed but in Canada we have individualism and collectivism. We believe in individual opportunity that people should have the individual opportunity to succeed but we also believe in collective rights. We believe that groups individual groups have rights as well.
That, you know, it's not just about individuals, but Quebec French individuals and religious individuals all have potentially special sets of rights. So we're, you know, we're kind of weird in that way, perhaps. You know, we have a very strong welfare state here. We have a strong collectivism where we we say, yes, you all should have the opportunity to succeed.
But also we know that that you may not succeed, that there may be barriers to success. And so we, you know, we we offer what's called a strong welfare state, a string of social programs that are designed to help people overcome the sort of individual barriers that they might have. So we have universal health care and a subsidized education system, among other kinds of things. Yeah, and so, you know, when I travel to the United States, for instance, people are curious about our health care system.
They're curious about, they can't believe how little it costs us for, you know, in terms of the kind of health care that we're able to receive. You know, the cost of it, to have a baby in the United States versus having a baby in the United States. having a baby in Canada, it's night and day, for instance.
People are amazed at how generous our social programs are. Or during the COVID pandemic, the Canadian government was able to quickly distribute thousands of dollars in relief money to people who were... to Canadians who had suffered under the COVID-19 pandemic.
What are some other assumptions or perceptions about Canada? In addition to being known as a tolerant and diverse country, Canada has a reputation of being a very safe and peaceful country. So when people think of the United States, they think of the American Revolution, right?
We're going to overthrow Britain, and we're going to fight the Redcoats and use weapons and guns. and bombs and we're going to fight the fight the the British and we're going to declare independence by by military might or they think about in terms of the United States they think about the American Civil War think of all of them the movies and novels and and other cultural things that have been produced around the American Civil War where the north was fighting the south and they had a fought a bitter and costly war over slavery among other issues and you can think of other countries to not not just the United States, European countries, countries in Asia where they've had, you know, multiple coups or multiple constitutions, even Latin America, multiple constitutions, world wars or conflicts with their neighbors. You know, when people think of Canada, they don't think about that. They don't think about, they don't, they think Canada's boring.
They think, you know, Canada hasn't had any conflict. Canada hasn't had any real wars or revolutions like what's happening. what's occurred in other countries, or even just in the United States. They think about a country, when they think about Canada, Think about a country that peacefully came together in 1867. It was about negotiation and compromise. It wasn't about armed revolution against Britain.
It was about, hey, let's get together and negotiate a union, and let's negotiate with Britain what that union would look like and what its relationship would be to the Empire. It was, you know, instead of a civil war, they negotiated a federal system where, you know, the national government would ensure that national priorities are met. but you'd have a set of provincial governments under Canadian federalism where diversity and difference would be protected right so for instance you know the Catholic and Protestant traditions you know English Canada is Protestant, French Canada was Catholic, by having federalism, you allowed French Canadians in Quebec...
by having a provincial government, you allowed them to maintain their French traditions, their French systems of law, for instance, and their French systems of property, the seigneurial system, which was mentioned in the textbook, for instance, the seigneurial system of property. And so that's what you think about Canada. You think about a country that became independent from Britain, not through war, but through peaceful negotiation, peaceful compromise, and democratic processes. They think of even more... recently they think of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau you know going to England in the in the 1970s 1980s to ask for independence you know to they think of the Queen coming and to Canada to sign the documents that would allow Canada to have more independence and to reform its constitution.
And all of this happened without a single shot fired, without a single drop of blood being shed in contrast to the United States where there was a revolution. And so Canada has this reputation for peace, for order, and for good government. And these are three words that appear prominently in our constitution.
That Canada's principles are peace, order, and good government. And these principles are in contrast to the more active and aggressive American principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So as a result, you know, from this reputation, you know, Canada for many decades, Canada was known as the peaceable kingdom. The peaceable kingdom. This term, the peaceable kingdom, was meant to...
Capture and name our tranquil and our peaceful essence, not only as a country, but as a society. It's a term that sort of tried to capture how we are strongly committed to compromise. We're strongly committed to gradualism. We change slowly.
We don't engage in revolution. We change slowly, peacefully. The term peaceable kingdom captures our deference to authority.
You know, we listen. to authority. We don't just try and be the boss, like in the United States, the Americans saying, we know what's going on.
We don't need Britain to tell us what to do. Canadians are much more deferential to authority. It's sort of the assumption. And this was a reputation for much of our history, especially for the first half of our history.
In 1969, again, our then Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who, by the way, is the father or was the father of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who's been Prime Minister since 2015, up to the present in 2023 and onwards. Pierre Trudeau described Canada as being a product of understanding, not conflict. We are the trustees of reasonableness, not violence.
So again, Canada is a product of understanding, not conflict. Canada, or we, we are the trustees. of reasonableness, not violence. So actually this opinion, this assumption, this perception of Canada seems reasonable for lots of reasons.
If you think about, for instance, if you think about Canada and you think about UN peacekeeping forces, Canada invented the idea of UN peacekeeping forces. UN peacekeeping forces are multinational... armies, forces, made up of several battalions from multiple countries, that the nation sends to countries where war or unrest or civil war is likely to occur and they go there basically to try and maintain the peace and Canada invented that and that's where part of our reputation comes from especially internationally and we're the inventors of peacekeeping we're the peaceable kingdom so and we invented the peacekeeping force and this came out of World War two in 1947 Canada started to build this idea of a peacekeeping force when it sent troops to Korea as part of a United Nations effort to supervise the new elections in South Korea.
So they were holding, South Korea was holding new elections. You knew. emerging young democracy and so we sent forces as part of the un to help ensure the elections occurred peacefully and then in 1950 we sent troops to protect the newly elected government there from being toppled from instability but the big moment was in 1956 when britain and france worked in an alliance had an alliance with israel to seize control of the suez canal in africa this is in Egypt basically and these three countries seized the Suez Canal after Egypt the Egyptian government had nationalized had taken control of it now the rest of the world condemned this these actions by Britain France and Israel so the United States for instance condemned the actions of Britain and France and Israel to seize the Suez Canal and there was a there was a lot of the world the time was was really concerned about this they thought there was going to be a major if you can think about it a major war between the u.s. Britain France you know these were allies in the World War two even think about today right these are allies but at the time in 1956 there was worries that there was gonna to be armed confrontation in that region between these superpowers.
So as a way of diffusing the situation, our then foreign affairs minister, Lester B. Pearson, who later became prime minister, he suggested that the United Nations send an international force to Egypt and that it would position itself physically between the warring factions to prevent any kind of hostilities from occurring. So this was the idea he presented to the UN. The UN loved this idea.
and the Secretary General of the UN, after some initial hesitation, developed a plan to put this idea into action. And the result was the creation of the United Nations Emergency Force, which was the prototype for the kinds of peacekeeping operations that we see today in the world. So what made the UNEF different from previous peacekeeping operations was that it was a multi-nation force, and it was designed to separate fighting forces, not just to observe.
right so so you know the other other previous trips for instance in terms of canada to korea it was mainly mainly about observing but now with the unef the idea was to sort of separate the fighting forces so the way you do that is you create checkpoints across the country preventing you know conflicting groups from being able to cross across the country to fight and these these the unef and peacekeeping forces since then they weren't many to be these highly powerful forces, they were mainly armed with small and light weapons. And the job again was to set up physical barriers to impede movement and prevent conflict. And this idea helped defuse the Suez Crisis. And as a result, Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957. And he became known in Canada as the father of peacekeeping. Because this idea was so successful, Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize.
and became known as the father of peacekeeping. So if you think about this, if you think about the peaceable kingdom, it not only comes from our internal political history, which has been painted by our elites and by storytellers as being this bloodless, peaceful, boring, internal political history with no war or revolution, but this reputation for the peaceable kingdom also comes from our role in world politics and international... affairs, right? We're the brokers of peace. We send peacekeepers.
We invented peacekeeping. We are working to create peace, not war. So when violence does occur in Canada or by Canadians, you know, the natural response for most Canadians is that, well, that really isn't Canada. When violence happens or when violence is perpetrated by Canadians, it's like, that's not actually really Canada.
That's not who we are. Canadians are not violent. We are not violent. That's sort of the picture. And so what happens is we get some storytelling.
about what happens. You know, when Canadians perpetrate violence, when Canadians engage in violence, we describe them as miscreants or deviants, right? These are people who are not real Canadians.
They're miscreants or they're deviants. There's something wrong with them, right? Or they have ill intentions.
They're not the norm. The second way that we describe these perpetrators of violence are... that these were individuals that were directed to do violence by alien or foreign conspirators.
So alien, not the aliens in space, but aliens being non-Canadians, foreign, foreign powers, foreign actors. We're making our Canadians behave not like real Canadians. So indeed, in 2023, we see some of this language.
Canadians were starting to get worried about the potential of Chinese foreign interference in our federal elections, that there were Chinese agents that were causing all sorts of problems with our political system. There were reports about prominent government officials, politicians. public servants. They were being influenced by Chinese government, or they were foreign agents themselves that were trying to ensure that there was a minority government rather than a majority government.
We'll talk about that in the future, about the difference between those. So, you know, so in these instances, it's about, oh, well, Canadians aren't behaving badly. It's because they're being directed to behave badly by foreign actors. And then finally, sometimes Canadian, a Canadian misbehavior is is explained away as these are canadians who are extremely frustrated or are socio-economically deprived of something and so when violence happens it's because these canadians had no choice they were pushed to behave outside of the normal canadian experience by things that are out of their control you know they're way too poor or they've been shut out of decision making and they become extremely frustrated frustrated.
They become overly emotional. But that's not Canadians. Canadians were safe and easygoing and tolerant. But sometimes, so these other people who are engaging in poor behavior, it's because it's not their fault. So when you think about these sort of narratives, and you think about the peaceable kingdom, similar narratives are told about our treatment of French Canadians and Indigenous peoples.
More recently, there's been a lot more, later on in our history, there's a lot more disagreement and discussion about how Canada may have poorly treated French Canadians and have engaged in awful practices towards Indigenous peoples. peoples but the prevailing story that the prevailing assumption and the prevailing story that was told by our elites for many many decades for most of our history is that you know we're the peaceable kingdom and we treated french canadians and indigenous peoples justly that's sort of the narrative that was being told so when people talk about um the multinational character of canada being english french and indigenous when they talk about french canadians they're talking mainly about quebec people living in in Quebec. And so look, Quebec was this French colony started by France, used to be known as New France. Quebec eventually becomes part of the British Empire due to wars in Europe where they lost.
And so Britain takes over New France, tries briefly to assimilate them, but eventually decides for most of its history to allow Quebec to remain its distinct identity. Okay, so this long-standing narrative told by English Canadians was that, look, Quebec... got conquered. French Canada was conquered, but we allowed them to remain, to keep their diversity through federalism. They were allowed to remain Roman Catholic instead of being converted to Protestantism.
They can keep their legal system, their civil law system, their codified laws, rather than adopting the British common law system. So indeed, and civil law continues to exist in Quebec, for instance. They had their own property rights system, like the seigneurial system, which is described in the...
textbook. The church was allowed to run Quebec society for many decades, and they had always had done that since the arrival of French settlers until about the 1960s. And even today, the sort of the narrative about the peaceable kingdom is that Quebec has allowed many special privileges. We call this asymmetrical federalism. Quebec is treated differently from the rest of the provinces.
They have the right to protect and promote the French language over any other. They have some control over... immigration these kinds of things this is sort of the dominant narrative it's the same thing with Indigenous people that for much of our history, the dominant narrative is that Canada is this great, tolerant, diverse country, and that Canada has treated its indigenous peoples with respect and benevolence.
That's sort of the narrative that was told. That the narrative for much of Canada is that Canada is a great, tolerant, diverse country. Canada's history was that Canada is this good and gentle colonizer. It tried to help indigenous peoples modernize and assimilate into contemporary society because that will allow them to grow and to...
To be just like the rest of other Canadians and enjoy the benefits of modernity. So Canada said, we're going to move them off their lands. We're going to settle them into what are called reserves, special tracts of land where they can learn farming.
They can learn European languages because this will allow them to escape poverty. They were sent to residential schools that indigenous children were taken from their families. and sent to live at these boarding schools that were run by different Christian churches, like the Catholics and the Anglicans, other Protestant groups, where they would be taught, these indigenous children would be taught Western education, Western language, Western religion. And again, this was seen as being benevolent by many Canadians.
It was framed as being benevolent. We're trying to help these people, was what Canadians were being told. And, you know, indeed, one historian has tried to argue, once argued, that residential schools were positive because it helped equip indigenous peoples with the necessary education to navigate our political and economic systems.
And that in turn allowed them to better advocate more effectively for their communities in the courts, in parliament and the like. But of course, as we'll talk about later, these supposed benefits, if they actually exist, are far outweighed by the... by the sort of the far outweighed by the genocidal the genocide the cultural genocide and the real genocide that was uh inflicted upon indigenous communities through residential schools we'll talk about that in a moment but in any event the peaceful and benevolent and tolerant reputation reputation this peaceful benevolent and tolerant reputation is the dominant or was the dominant one in canada it's the one that canada had for most of its history.
It's a reputation that continues to exist today in some parts of Canada, but also in many parts of the world. It's why many Canadians, and many Americans too, when they travel, they put a Canadian flag on their backpack or their shirt because they know that they'll be treated well by others. Due to Canada's reputation, in terms of things we've talked about, it's international reputation like peacekeeping or helping to liberate France or the Netherlands or Belgium during World War II.
But the reality, as we'll talk about in our final lecture for this week, is that the Canadian experience is much more complicated, much more or much less black and white, much messier and dirtier and less pristine than what this reputation I've discussed might suggest. So we'll turn to that next.