Rethinking the Canadian Archipelago:
Research Trajectories in Region, Identity, and Diversity in
Canada
Dr. Andrew Nurse
Department of History and Canadian Studies
63D York St.
Mount Allison University
Sackville, NB
E4L 1G9
anurse@mta.ca
1
Regionalism occupies a prominent position in both scholarship about and public discourse on
Canadian diversity. It is a perennial Canadian concern, the focus of extensive political, historical,
and political-economic analysis. Scholarship on regionalism in Canada has also changed
markedly over the last generation. The historical focus on regions as relatively homogenous
entities has been in part replaced by a more nuanced scholarship focusing on diversity within
regions. The result is a dualistic approach to regionalist scholarship.1 A deep and rich
scholarship on diversity and difference within regions has been created along side a similarly
rich scholarship on diversity between regions within Canada. Intersections of identity within
regions, their meanings, and implications, however, remain unclear and frequently unspecified.
How have Canadian studies of regionalism addressed issues of diversity within regions? Do
different identity “markers”2 intersect differently in different regions of Canada? Does region
constitute an identity unto itself, sufficient for political or policy mobilization? How do regional
cultures develop and change over time? What affect does immigration have on regionalism? The
objective of this paper is to examine these questions with specific reference to current
scholarship on regionalism in Canada.
This paper examines the ways in which Canadian scholars have examined the intersections of
identity on a regional level in Canada. It begins by first examining current analytic frameworks
used to understand identities, including regionalism, in Canada. Next, it examines general
frameworks of regional analysis in Canadian scholarship, paying particular attention to how
Canadian scholars have conceptualized it. Following this, this paper examines current
scholarship on Canadian regionalism, focusing on the key interpretive frameworks that have
been used to study regional identity and its development. Here, this paper will work with the
specific foci as they emerge from existing scholarship rather than imposing its own heuristic
framework on existing studies. The goal of this review will be to look at the ways in which
region as an identity within Canada intersects -- or, equally importantly, does not intersect -with other identity markers. Finally, this paper will conclude by exploring the implications of
current scholarship from both the perspectives of potential further research and its particular
policy implications. The primary argument that this paper seeks to make is that regional identity
in Canada must be seen as part of an on-going historical process that fashions and refashions
identities through a diverse series of means. This paper will contend that the representation of
regional identities is neither a politically, nor culturally neutral process. Instead of mirroring
established identities constructed around an already existing social basis, the representation of
regional identities emerges out of distinct but specific political economic and cultural processes
that both implicitly and explicitly code the meaning of region.
The implicit and explicit coding of regional identities is an important, but often neglected
consideration. As Ian McKay has noted in his studies of regional identity in Atlantic Canada, 3
the character and organization of regional identities can work to include or exclude different
1
In this essay, I will use the term “regionalist” as an adjective to indicate scholarship focused on different
regions of Canada.
2 Jack Jebwab, “Action and Inaction: A Preliminary Stock Taking of Recommendations in the Fight
Against Racism, Racial Discrimination and all Related Intolerance in Canada” World Conference Against
Racism, Civil Society Consultations (Canadian Heritage/Multiculturalism: 2000).
3 Ian McKay, The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova
Scotia (Montreal and Kingston: 1994).
2
social groups because of the way these identities are structured. Said differently, a regional
identity can be represented in ways that make it open or closed, inclusive or exclusive, to
different groups of people. At times, this coding might be explicit. For example, the inclusion of
Scottish ethnic heritages in Atlantic Canadian culture is a matter of what might be called overt
coding.4 Implicit codlings can be harder to detect. A regional identity, for example, that does not
explicitly exclude non-white people may still do so because of the way in which this identity is
publicly represented and structured. Considerations of the intersections of identity relating to
Canadian regionalism need to assess the implications of both these levels of coding because they
affect the ways in which regionalism, regional identity, and regional belonging occur. Because of
the importance of this matter, this paper will examine both implicit and explicit coding of
regional identity to explore the ways in which they intersected with a range of other identity
markers.5
I. Questions of Identity
Identity, Michael Beheils has recently remarked, is a “hot” academic issue, infusing discourse in
a wide range of disciplines over a broad array of public policy matters.6 In part, current concerns
about identity reflect a more long-standing concern related to defining the unique national
characteristics that supposedly underscore and legitimize Canada’s separate national existence in
North America.7 In part, current Canadian scholarly literature on identity is also animated by
international theoretical trends -- particularly the development of post structural theory -- which
have reconceptualized the character and nature of identity,8 and deeply problematized older
conceptions of identity as a relatively stable, structured, or embedded element of human
experience.9 And, in part, Canadian concerns with identity are rooted in the changing
demographic and socio-economic dimensions of late-modern Canada. In particular, identity has
emerged as a key policy concern in Canada as Canadians grapple with the meanings, political
implications, and public policy implications of diversity within the polity.10
4
Ian McKay, “Tartanism Triumphant: The Construction of Scottishness in Nova Scotia, 1933-1954”
Acadiensis 21,2 (1992): 5-47.
5 Salient among these in current scholarship are ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, gender, and social
class, as well as region. See Joanna Rummens, “Canadian Identities: An Interdisciplinary Overview of
Canadian Research on Identity” Department of Canadian Heritage, Ethnocultural, Racial, Religious, and
Linguistic Diversity and Identity Seminar (2000).
6 Michael Behiels, “Aboriginal Identities on the Cusp of the Millennium” Canadian Issues 21 (1999), 10.
7 Ian Angus, A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality, and Wilderness (Montreal and Kingston:
1997), 3 and 23-7.
8 The more common term used is subjectivity, which refers perhaps more closely to one’s understanding
of one’s sense of self.
9 The key work here is, perhaps, Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction trans Robert
Hurley (New York: 1978), but see also Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York:
1988) and Joy Parr, The Gender of Breadwinners: Men, Women and Change in Two Industrial Towns,
1880-1950 (Toronto: 1990. For a critical perspective Bryan D. Palmer, Descent Into Discourse: The
Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History (Philadelphia: 1990).
10 Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Intersections of Diversity Deck (2001). See also Will Kymlicka,
Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada (Toronto: 1998).
3
Of particular concern in this regard is the functioning of multiculturalism. As a policy,
multiculturalism aims to recognize and respect diversity at the same time that it works to aid the
integration of new Canadians into the matrix of Canadian life and culture.11 While the policy of
multiculturalism remains controversial in the Canadian context,12 its overall objectives -integration and social fairness -- are not. Considerations of identity are fundamental to the
attainment of these goals. Recent efforts to re-conceptualize Canadian political life, in fact,
focus extensively on what might be called the “politics of recognition”13 as a key to any
successful policy engagement with diversity.
Current studies of identity in Canada accept this premise, but exactly how identity is
conceptualized remains a matter of considerable debate. Critical discourse on multiculturalism,
for example, suggests that its mode of recognizing identity does a remarkable disservice to the
depth and complexity of human character.14 Recognition of identity under Canadian
multiculturalism, it has been argued, produces not recognition but constructed caricatures;
stereotypes of complex and evolving personal, ethnic, and national identities frozen in time for
popular display. Whether or not this is the case is debatable.15 What is clear is that identities are
more complex that the word “recognition” might at first indicate. Current research on identity16
indicates that identity is a fluid, dynamic, and dialogical phenomenon, constructed and
reconstructed through processes of interaction between self and other. Positive conceptions of
self are necessary for mental health.17 Negative conceptions of self -- created by institutional
discrimination, racism, sexism, unemployment, or a range of other factors -- can contribute to
social and political withdraw, isolation, anger, despair or a range of other responses.18 On a
social level, negative conceptions of identity can also serve to fracture the body politic and
prompt withdraw from public and political discourse.19
11Kymlicka,
Finding Our Way.
For critiques see Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto:
1994) and Richard Gwyn, Nationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian
(Toronto: 1995) and Stephane Levesque, “Rethinking Citizenship and Citizenship Education in Canada”
in Raymond Blake and Andrew Nurse, eds. The Politics of Nationality: Essays on Canadian Nationalism,
Citizenship, and National Identity (forthcoming).
13 Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution (Toronto: 2000). See also Amy Gutman, ed., Multiculturalism:
Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton NJ: 1994).
14 Bissoondath, Selling Illusions.
15 It is important to note, that Bissoondath’s critique deals not with the actual multicultural policy of
Canada -- to which he makes few references -- but what he sees as the logic of this policy and the way in
which the discourse of multiculturalism has been mobilized in popular culture. For a contrasting view see
Paul A. Bramadat, “Shows, Selves and Solidarity: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Spectacle in Canada”
Identity Policy Research Seminar Paper (Halifax: 2001).
16 And, increasingly public policies relating to identity, see Jadweb, “Action and Inaction” and Rummens,
“Canadian Identities”.
17 Cynthia Baker, Connie Tanaka, and Manju Varma, “Sticks and Stones: Racism as Experienced by
Adolescents in New Brunswick” (New Brunswick Cross Cultural Health Council, 2000), 2-3.
18 Ibid., passim.; Violet Kasper and Samuel Noh, “Discrimination and Identity” Identity Policy Research
Seminar Paper (Halifax: 2001).
19 Jane Jenson, “Mapping Social Cohesion: The State of Canadian Research” CPRN Study F|03 (Ottawa:
1998).
12
4
Identity is, then, an important but far from simple matter. Western research in psychology and
social science has long recognized that common sense conceptions of singular identities (i.e.,
singular conceptions of self) do not reflect the actual complexity and multiplicity of identity
formation. Research in developmental psychology, for example, posited stages of identity
formation through which individuals supposedly passed;20 while socialist analysis focused on the
ways in which material determinants structured conceptions of self, identity, and political praxis.
Current research on identity extends these earlier conceptions to look at the ways in which
different social processes interact and intersect to affect processes of identity formation, sense of
self, social treatment, social location, one’s relationship to state and civil society, and a range of
other dynamics.21 In other words, identity is not simply a developmental process; nor a matter
of social construction that can be reduced to a singular overarching dynamic. Instead, it must be
seen more as a matrix of different -- potentially intersecting; potentially interacting -- processes
that encompass a range of features, including: region, gender, ethnicity, social location, ability,
sexual orientation, age, and religious affiliation, among others.22 In discussing identity it is also
important to remain attuned to the agency of the individual or group involved. Identities are not
simply “made” by social processes (even intersecting ones)23 but are also self creations. In other
words, individuals or groups only very rarely lack all agency.24 Instead, they interact with social,
cultural, and political economic processes to shape identity (both individual and social) in a
dialectical fashion.
This process can be remarkably complicated because it involves more than one set of identities.
Current research in Canada, for example, focuses on social class, ethnicity, religion, sexual
orientation and a range of other identity “markers” and suggests that identity is both complexly
layered and situational.25 What this means is that identity can be shifting and different depending
20
An important sub-set of psychoanalytic scholarship focused on the ways in which identities (senses of
self) were systematically distorted or became dysfunction (and psychologically harmful) as a result of the
developmental process. Sigmund Freud is obviously the best-known historical figure in this scholarship,
but it is important to note that his conception of systematic identity dysfunctionality was widely shared for
much of the first half of the twentieth century and well-into the post-war era. The best-known example of
this, of course, is post-war conceptualizations of homosexuality as a “disease”. In contrast, socialist
conceptions of self understood the social dynamics of identity formation but viewed political practice as
the means to extend the “realm of freedom” for the self-creation of an autonomous subjectivity as part of
the historical process. For an effective discussion of this point see Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid
Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: 1982).
21 Jebwab, “Action and Inaction”. For an empirical case study, see: Pamela Sugiman, “Privilege and
Oppression: The Configuration of Race, Gender and Class in Souther Ontario Auto Plants, 1939-1949”
Labour/Le Travail 47 (2001): 83-113.
22 Karen Dubinsky, “Integrating Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality” in Bettina Bradbury, et al., eds.,
Teaching Women’s History: Challenges and Solutions (Athabaska: 1995).
23 There is not space to discuss this point but here I intend to distance myself from structuralist
conceptions of identity, society, and social formation in favour of a more dialectical approach to these
matters. I recognize that the ontological ground on which I am building this argument is contested. It
seems to me, however, to also be well defended.
24 Charles Taylor, Malaise of Modernity (Concord, ON: 1991). For fuller and much more detailed
discussions see Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge MA: 1989).
25 For an introductory discussion of the layering of identity with regard to conceptions of masculinity and
femininity see Kathryn McPherson, et al. “Introduction: Conceptualizing Canada’s Gendered Pasts” in
Kathryn McPherson, et al., eds., Gendered Pasts: Historical Essays on Femininity and Masculinity in
Canada (Toronto: 1999), 6. Of current research, the authors note: “Like studies that focus on femininity,
5
on the context in which a person finds themselves. Identities do not simply involve a singular
subject position, but potentially several. At certain “moments” these identities may intersection
with each other or a particular person’s identity may involve the integration of a variety of
factors. In other instances, one identity marker -- or, a particular aspect of a person’s identity -may (by virtue of necessity, circumstance, or desire) take precedence over others. The
complexity of identity, then, can be both real and abstract. As a matter of day-to-day life, a
particular identity may serve to structure lived experience in a way that elides or displaces others,
dislocating what might be a fascinating complexity and forcing individuals into a particular
situation in which a monological identity takes primacy.
In the Canadian context region is another important consideration that needs to be assessed in
considerations of identity. Indeed, for much of Canadian history, region and regional identity
were viewed as key identity markers.26 Today, regionalism is studied intensely in disciplines
ranging from political economy to political science to geography to history. It receives wide
media commentary as well.27 Like identity, “region” is a complicated and historically evolving
concept. It is an evolving framework of identity, self-conception, and understanding on both a
national and individual level. Exactly how region interacts and intersects with other identity
markers is not completely clear, but it seems evident that different conceptions of region and
regional identity can encompass diversity in different ways. What this may mean is that some
regional identities permit a greater degree of flexibility in incorporation of diversity than others.
This point needs to be born in mind because difference (regardless of the form it takes) is not
simply difference. As anti-racist theorists have pointed out,28 identity differences exist on two
levels. First, there is a range of differences that Himani Bannerji calls “cultural diversities”, by
which she means differences that are simply that: differences. They may constitute key elements
of any particular person’s sense of self, but they do not significantly affect the ways in which that
person lives. Second, there are differences that “encode” and are “structured through power
relations”. These forms of relations involve power and can create situations of manifest
oppression.29 What this means is that identity differences cannot be assessed within a single
overarching heuristic framework. It is important to explore the lived experience of identity
difference, how it is made, and its implications if one is to understand the ways in which
different identity markers “play out” in really existing situations.
Regionalism is clearly an important identity marker within Canada30 and there can be little doubt
that regional variations in employment, ethnic relations, access to state services, the organization
analyses of masculinity challenge researchers to interrogate the multiple identities of gender, sexuality,
class, ethnicity, and race, as well as those such as age, religion, and nation, that might well coalesce or
compete in any specific historical moment.”
26 But, by no means the only ones because Canadians have long viewed religion, ethnicity, gender, and
other matters as key determinants of identity. See Mariana Valverde, The Age of Light Soap and Water:
Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925 (Toronto: 1991).
27 For example, see Michael Enright et al., “Western Alienation: A This Morning Roundtable” Policy
Options (April: 2001); 6-13.
28 Himani Bannerji, The Dark Side of Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism and Gender (Toronto: 2000).
29 Ibid., 131-3.
30 Cf. Janine Brodie, “The Concept of Region in Canadian Politics” in David P. Shugarman and Reg
Whitaker, eds. Federalism and Political Community: Essays in Honour of Donald Smiley (Peterborough:
6
of the state, and demographic patterns constitute an important context of life in different parts of
Canada. Yet, following anti-racist theories, we need to see the operation of regional identities on
more than one level. In one way, regional identity may seem to correspond to anti-racist
conception of “cultural differences”. The fact that a person may be from Atlantic Canada may
be a matter of pride for that person,31 but if that Atlantic Canadian is a white, anglophone,
Christian, the degree to which they will suffer from discrimination if moving to another region of
Canada may not be appreciable at all. On the other hand, within the region, stereotypes and
ideals of what constitutes an “Atlantic Canadian” may appreciably affect the ways in which
visible minorities, say, are treated and the degree to which they are integrated into regional
culture.
What makes this point particularly salient for a consideration of regionalism and regional
identity in Canada is that exactly what constitutes a region (on which an identity is supposedly
based) is far from clear. The word “region” is often used loosely in Canadian public discourse to
refer to formal political divisions -- provinces or groups of provinces -- within the country.32 Yet,
it is also clear that regional identities involve a great deal more than simply matters of political
consideration.33 Geography and specific environmental images are often associated with
particular regions,34 but it is also clear that the commonly understood regions of Canada
correspond at best poorly to the parameters of Canadian physical geography.35 As an element of
common discourse, then, the word region is ambiguous. On the one hand, it is in common use;
on the other its exact meaning is difficult to specify. The lack of a precise geographical or
political definition of region is precisely why an investigation of different forms of coding
regional identity becomes important. Region, regional identities, and regional cultures are, in
other words, not simple self-evident “facts” and for this reason an understanding of the coding of
region is important because this coding animates what is overwise a vague, ill-defined
phenomenon.
II. Frameworks: Region, Identity, and Political Economy
1989) and William Westfall, “On the Concept of Region in Canadian History and Literature” Journal of
Canadian Studies 15,2 (1980): 3-15.
31 One could take this argument even further. In addition to feeling pride, this person’s regional residence
might affect the music of which they are fond, the food they prepare, the stories they tell their children,
their sense of place, and they may even feel that there is much of intrinsic merit in the Atlantic Canadian
“way of life” that deserves support through special federal development programmes or employment
insurance regulations. None of this, however, means that the Atlantic Canadian in question would
necessarily suffer, say, prejudice purely because she or he is Atlantic Canadian.
32 William Cross, “The Increasing Importance of Region to Canadian Election Campaigns” in Lisa Young
and Keith Archer, eds, Regionalism and Party Politics in Canada (Toronto: 2002): 116-28.
33 Harry Hiller, “Region as a Social Construct” in ibid., 24-40.
34 Cf. Carrie MacMillan, “Seaward Vision and Sense of Place: The Maritime Novel, 1880-1920” in Larry
McCann, ed. People and Place: Studies of Small Town Life in the Maritimes (Fredericton and Sackville,
1987): 79-97 and Larry McCann and Carrie MacMillan, eds., The Sea and Culture of Atlantic Canada: A
Multidisciplinary Sampler (Sackville: 1992).
35 Frank C. Innes and J. Richard Heron, “Physical and Social Geography” in K.G. Pryke and W.C.
Soderlund, eds., Profiles of Canada 1st ed. (Toronto: 1992): 13-35.
7
Significant scholarly work on regionalism began a generation ago.36 In the late-1960s and early1970s, scholars attuned to diversity began to question the “national” focus of research into the
dynamics of the Canadian experience. This was particularly true for historical scholarship that
had worked with a “national” narrative as its guiding framework and sought to explain the
origins, growth, and consolidation of an almost holistic Canadian “nation”.37 Considerations of
region were not absent from this narrative but they occupied a minor and problematic position.
Where regionalism was considered, it was presented in one of two ways: (i) as a problem that
needed to be overcome as part of the development of the Canadian nation or (ii) in a stereotyped
way suggesting homogenous regional cultures.38
The first significant effort to work beyond this national narrative emerged as what is now viewed
the “limited identities” approach in Canadian historiography. Initially developed by Ramsay
Cook and J.M.S. Careless, the limited identities framework shifted the focus of analysis from the
“nation” to the locality, region, or social group. Its guiding heuristic proposition was that Canada
was a nation-state that lacked a strong, singular cultural identity. In its place, Canadians attached
themselves to more “limited” identities or cultures, such as those of region, from which they took
their primary sense of self. The significance of the limited identities framework was that it
marked a first effort to understand regional identity as one of a series of subject positions
mobilized by the Canadian population. Regionalism represented one possible type of
identification within the nation and could be understood as an element of diversity, similar to
ethnicity or class. Both Careless and Cook suggested that future research needed to focus on
these limited identities, as opposed to the nation as a whole. In effect, they argued that an
exploration of limited identities constituted the next research agenda for Canadian historians and
other scholars.39
The exact political implications of a “limited identities” approach to Canadian society are not
completely clear. Both Cook are Careless were progressive individuals allied to some form of
welfare-state liberalism.40 Nor, however, did either reject the idea of a national narrative.41
Instead, they seemed to have viewed local situations -- organized around region, class, and
ethnicity -- as an important context within which the development of the nation as a political
economic force took place. In this sense, limited identities appear designed not to supplant the
national narrative, but instead to deeper and enrich understandings of the processes of its
development. Limited identities were, in some way, fundamentally tied to the broader
36
For a discussion of earlier treatments of region in historical scholarship see E.R. Forbes, “In Search of
a Post-Confederation Maritime Historiography, 1900-1967” Acadiensis 8,1 (1978): 3-21.
37 Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing Since
1900 2nd ed. (Toronto: 1986) and P.A. Buckner, “ ‘Limited Identities’ Revisited” Acadiensis 30,1 (2000):
4-5.
38 Forbes, “In Search of a Post-Confederation Maritime Historiography”.
39 J.M.S. Careless, “ ‘Limited Identities’ in Canada” Canadian Historical Review 50,1 (1969): 1-10 and
Ramsay Cook, “Canadian Centennial Celebrations” International Journal 22,1 (1967): 659-63.
40 Ramsay Cook, The Maple Leaf Forever: Essays on Nationalism and Politics in Canada (Toronto:
1971).
41 Cf. Ramsay Cook and R. Craig Brown, Canada, 1896-1921: A Nation Transformed Canadian
Centenary Series (Toronto 1984).
8
framework of the nation-state and appear as variations on the national experience; not
disjunctures in it.42
For several reasons, the limited identities conception of Canadian diversity found itself
challenged, even really before it had established itself as a dominant school of Canadian
scholarship.43 First, its key advocates appear to have drastically underestimated the scale of
identity differences unearthed by other scholars. As it pertained to an understanding of Canada,
the limited identities approach suggested only a limited number of salient identity differences -foremost of which were region, ethnicity, and social class -- that were, on some level, tied into a
master narrative of Canada. Research into identity difference very quickly suggested that this
was not the case. Identity differences magnified rapidly to the point where it became unclear as
to exactly how these fit within a limited identities framework that still worked to maintain some
tie to a national experience. For the initial proponents, and also later critics, of the limited
identities approach to understanding regionalism the actual implementation of this research
agenda seemed to suggest something more on the order of social fragmentation than a richer
understanding of the national experience.44
Second, the language of “limited identities” itself may have posed problems for scholars
interested in questions of identity. The discourse of limited identities raises questions about
hierarchies of identity, questions of primary versus secondary attachment, and the way in which
these are evaluated.45 Why should, for instance, a regional identity be more limited than a
national identity? The use of the adjective “limited” suggests that there is a more fundamental,
higher identity that has some unspecified intrinsic value superior to, say, regional conceptions of
self and culture. In this sense, the limited identities approach seemed to permit diversities of
identity but only within some overarching framework that mitigated against the salience of
identity difference as a constituent component of the national experience.
Finally, the limited identities framework was not designed to assess the affects of intersections or
multiplicities of identity difference. While breaking from an holistic conception of nation, the
limited identities framework still approached difference as a relatively uncomplicated matter.
Differences that had initially seemed a matter of region, class, or ethnicity began to appear
increasingly complicated. The boundaries of one identity and its relation to others, for example,
were not easily understood within this framework, pushing scholars interested in such matters to
move beyond it into other approaches to identity difference.46 In point of fact, the only
intersection of identity strongly suggested by this framework was the hierarchical relationship
between the national experience and regional, class, and ethnic identity. As current research
indicates, this connection drastically simplifies the complexity of identity and the ways in which
different identity markers intersect and interact with each other.
42
J.M.S. Careless, “Limited Identities -- Ten Years Later” Manitoba History 1,1 (1980).
For this reason it remains less well known that either the Innisian political economy that preceded it or
the variants of neo-Marxism and feminist scholarship that displaced it.
44 Doug Owram, “Narrow Circles” National History 1,1 (1997).
45 The danger of such categorizations is, of course, a fundamental tenet of Canadian liberal thought. For
a recent re-statement see Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism
(Toronto: 1993).
46 Buckner, “ ‘Limited Identities Revisited’ ”, 12.
43
9
In the 1970s, the limited identities approach to diversity was superseded by two different
competing trends in regionalist scholarship. First, an increasing number of studies focused on
the historical development of regional identities. In Atlantic Canada, studies in the historical
development of regional identity looked, in particular, at the factors prompting Atlantic
discontent within Canada. Here, the primary concern was with economic factors: out migration,
regional under-development,47 above average unemployment rates, sectorial economic
collapse,48 and uneven capital formation and economic development in general. Beginning from
the assumption that the economy of Atlantic Canada is weaker that that of other regions, the
primary focus of these studies is to explain this regional variation in the national economy. This
variation, it was argued, served as the fulcrum around which regional identities organized
themselves and served as the basis for regional protest movements.49
A similar understanding of western regionalism emerged even earlier. The extended history of
western regional protest, in particular, attracted the attention of scholars who sought to explain
the origins of western regional alienation and the “exceptional” character of western politics.
Key studies focused on the Social Credit phenomena in Alberta, the history of labour unrest, the
Progressive movement, and the development of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.50
Underlying all these different studies lay a materialist conception of regional protest in which
regionalism shaded into class-based protest movements. The agrarian economy of the west
combined with the fact that political economic power along with financial capital was located in
central Canada, led to regional protest because of the unequal distribution of material resources.
Because of the breadth of western agriculture, the class basis for this protest was remarkably
broad encompassing virtually the entire region. In more recent scholarship, a similar focus is
used but the analysis is extended to the process of state formation and the ideological roots of
populist protest in western Canada.51
47
The term “under-development” can be controversial because it suggests a normative developmental
standard that the Atlantic region should attain. The concept is, thus, an analytic fiction that has been
politically mobilized in the service of development programmes. Colin Howell, "Economism, Ideology,
and the Teaching of Maritime History” in P.A. Buckner, ed., Teaching Maritime Studies (Fredericton:
1986).
48 Cf. David Frank, “The Cape Breton Coal Industry and the Rise and Fall of the British Empire Steel
Corporation” Acadiensis 7 (1977); Raymond Blake, From Fishermen to Fish: The Evolution of Canadian
Fishery Policy (Toronto: 2000).
49 James Sacouman and Robert Brym, eds., Underdevelopment and Social Movements in Atlantic
Canada (Toronto: 1979); E.R. Forbes, The Maritime Rights Movement, 1919-1927: A Study in Canadian
Regionalism (Montreal: 1979); Margaret Conrad, “The Atlantic Revolution of the 1950s” in Berkeley
Fleming, ed., Beyond Anger and Longing: Community Development in Atlantic Canada (Fredericton:
1988): 55-96.
50 WL Morton, The Progressive Party in Canada (Toronto: 1950); Walter Young, Democracy and
Discontent: Progressivism, Socialism and Social Credit in the Canadian West (Toronto: 1969); C.B.
MacPherson, Democracy in Alberta: The Theory and Practice of a Quasi-Party System (Toronto: 1953);
S.M. Lipset, Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan, A Study
in Political Sociology (Berkeley: 1971).
51 David H. Laycock, Populism and Democratic Thought in the Canadian Prairies, 1910-1945 (Toronto:
1990).
10
Working within the same basic heuristic framework, Janine Brodie has offered an assessment of
national political economic development bearing strong similarities to this scholarship. Building
on earlier studies of Canadian political economy,52 Brodie argued that character of Canadian
capitalism produced a national political economy organized along a metropolitan-hinterland
dynamic. Using the original “national policy” of John A. Macdonald and then the later
“continentalist” ideas of Mackenzie King as examples, Brodie showed how state economic
development strategies worked to ensure the accumulation of capital located in central Canada.
When made into policy through such matters as tariffs, regional resettlement programmes, and
transportation systems, this relationship organized Canada around a centre-periphery dynamic in
which the regions were politically dependent upon, and to a large measure exploited by, central
Canadian capital.53
Studies into the political economy of Canadian regionalism are both diverse and rich. They
illustrate the dynamics and origins of regional protest, illustrate the rationale behind large-scale
population movements and immigration, and help to explain the continued prevalence of
regional discontent by virtue of the structural dimensions of the Canadian economy and state. In
addition to this, these studies illustrate the ways in which intersections of identity become
important as matters of national politics. In the case of western Canadian regionalism, it is
precisely the connection between region and class that animates manifestations of discontent.
Because western political economic grievances worked through the intersection of class and
region, western alienation gained a political force that discontent in Atlantic Canada was not able
to attain because of its more diverse class structure.54 In this fashion, a political economic
approach to regionalism highlights the ways in which intersections of identity work to both
reinforce each other and to stimulate political action. In this way, historical studies of the
development of regionalism suggest that political economic factors -- the material dynamics of
life -- are a matter of important consideration when assessing regional identities, their
development, and possible future trajectories. It suggests that expressions of regionalism are
contingent on matters of public policy and political economic development and that
manifestations of regional discontent also need to be understood from the perspective of class
dynamics.
The weaknesses of these studies are twofold. First, while the focus on political economy is
important, it can also be misconstrued. The focus on protest might suggest that regional identity
is purely a matter of political economic protest. Regional identity, in this sense, is something that
emerges out of political economy and discontent and becomes almost synonymous with it.55
52
Gary Teeple, ed., Capitalism and the National Question in Canada (Toronto: 1972).
Janine Brodie, The Political Economy of Canadian Regionalism (Toronto: 1990). See also David Jay
Bercuson, ed., Canada and the Burden of Unity (Toronto: 1977).
54 Other factors were, of course, involved in the relative weakness of Atlantic Canadian regional protest
on the national scene, including most importantly its smaller population. On class divisions in Atlantic
Canada see below and David Frank, “Class Conflict in the Coal Industry: Cape Breton, 1922” in Gregory
S. Kealey and Peter Warrian, eds., Essays in Canadian Working-Class History (Toronto: 1976) and Ian
McKay, “Strikes in the Maritimes, 1901-1914” Acadiensis 13 (1983): 3-46. On western Canadian class
structure and its political implications see Peter Sinclair, “Class Structure and Populist Protest: The Case
of Western Canada” in J.M. Bumsted, ed., Interpreting Canada’s Past: After Confederation (Toronto:
1986): 278-93.
55 Forbes, The Maritime Rights Movement.
53
11
While virtually all studies of regional alienation begin with some assessment of the material
forces affecting the construction of regional identities, the full articulation this identity is also,
almost always, found in political protest.56 In seeing regionalism as a manifestation of discontent,
its important internal dynamics -- the gender and class dynamics of a particular region, for
example -- can be obscured. Thus, while a political economic analysis of regionalism is
important, assessments of regionalism cannot stop at this point.
Second, the focus on the political economic development of regional alienation also obscures the
cultural processes through which regional identities are constructed and their implicit and
explicit coding. While there is some evidence that identities premised on political economics are
becoming more important -- particularly in Ontario and among some western Canadian
intellectuals57 -- the same does not necessarily hold true for either northern Canada or the
Atlantic region.58 Nor, as more recent research makes clear, are regional identities and cultures
simply the result of separate historical processes of settlement and development.59 In other
words, an Atlantic Canadian regional identity, say, does not exist simply because Atlantic
Canada was resettled by a particular group of people who lived in a certain way that was
different from those people who resettled Ontario and lived in a different way. Nor does it exist
purely because of political-economic protest. It exists because of the way it has been made and
organized as part of a complex process of cultural formation.
III. Diversity, Conflict, Discrimination
Developing parallel to the emergence of political economic investigations into Canadian
regionalism were more localized studies of diversity within regions. Beginning in the 1970s, and
influenced by British neo-Marxian thought, a range of different scholars began to explore the
dimensions of class, gender, and ethnic /religious experiences within regions, a subject matter
more recently extended to sexual orientation.60 While often designed more as social or socialhistorical studies -- and not specifically studies of identity -- many of these local case studies
speak directly to the issue of identity and to the ways in which differing identities intersect and
interact. The scholarship here is vast,61 but two salient conclusions can be drawn from it.
First, identities are themselves structured by a dialectical interaction between human agents and
broader social structures and, second, regions were far from the homogenous entities described
by an earlier generation of scholars. Perhaps the most important conclusion that can be drawn
from the vast range of studies into ethnicity, gender, class, religion, and sexual orientation within
regions is that internally regions themselves were strewn with social conflict. For instance,
current studies indicate the high levels of religious conflict that has historically plagued many
56
Cf. Ibid., Morton, The Progressive Party; MacPherson, Democracy in Alberta.
Stephen Harper et al, “The Alberta Agenda” Policy Options (April: 2000): 16-7.
58 Nor, would I argue that it is completely true for either western Canada or Ontario.
59 As R. Cole Harris seems to suggest in “Regionalism and the Canadian Archipelago” in Bumsted, ed.,
Interpreting Canada’s Past.
60 Karen Dubinsky, The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls
(Toronto: 1999);
61 Rummens, “Canadian Identities”.
57
12
regions of Canada,62 the prevalence of class conflict and violence against women,63 patterns of
racism and other forms of discrimination,64 and systematic efforts to control the expression of
sexuality.65 In short, the localized social scholarship of the last generation makes it impossible
to realistically maintain the idea that regions are relatively homogenous or that the primary
source of social conflict in Canada is between regions.66
There is, today, some critical concern about social case studies, such as those that animated
scholarly inquiry from the 1970s to the 1990s. While there is little evidence that the Canadian
public actually shares this view, several prominent Canadian intellectuals have argued that the
increasing research focus on social groups detracts attention from a broader understanding of
Canada. Here, the concern is not simply a focus on regionalism -- although regionalist
scholarship is presented as a concern -- but on the increasing research attention devoted to
women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, First Nations, workers, and immigrants.67 The real
concern, however, may not be the specific subject under investigation, but the conclusions that
are drawn from current research. In particular, it is the prevalence of conflict in current studies of
social groups in Canada -- the evident racism and sexism, homophobia and bigotry -- that seems
to disturb a number of Canadian intellectuals. This focus on conflict, it has been argued,
presents only the “dark side” of the Canadian nation.
This focus on social conflict raises problems for regionalist scholarship as well. While regionalist
journals have been supportive of social scholarship,68 the exact relationship between localized
social conflict (in terms of gender, class, ethnicity, etc.) and regional identities is not clear. In
point of fact, much recent scholarship seems to subtly undermine claims to regional difference
within Canada. One further conclusion that can be drawn from many of these social studies is
that similar patterns of social conflict occurred in all regions of Canada. Class conflict, for
instance, was not, for instance, the special provenance of western Canada;69 nor was antiSemitism isolated in Quebec.70 Gender conflicts existed in all regions of the country71, as did
discrimination and the legalized regulation of First Nations. These broadly similar patterns of
social conflict suggest that matters of regional distinction may be less significant as an element
of lived experience than other identities. This scholarship suggests, in fact, that regional identity
62
Scott See, “The Orange Order and Social Violence in Mid-Nineteenth Century Saint John” in Norman
Knowles, ed., Age of Transition: Readings in Canadian Social History, 1800-1900 (Toronto: 1998).
63 Karen Dubinsky, Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929 (Chicago:
1993).
64 Howard Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice: A History of Nativism in Alberta (Toronto: 1982); Cole Harris,
Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia (Vancouver: 2002).
65 Gary Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire; Homo and Hetero Sexualities 2nd ed. (Montreal: 1996); Joan
Sangster, Regulating Girls and Women: Sexuality, Family, and the Law in Ontario, 1920-1960 (Don Mills:
2001).
66 For an effective collection detailing various matters of social conflict in one particular region, see Ian
McKay and Scott Milsom, eds., Towards a New Maritimes (Charlottetown: 1992).
67 Owram, “Narrow Circles”; J.L. Granatstein, Who Killed Canadian History? (Toronto: 1998).
68 In particular, Prairie Forum, and BC Studies for western Canada and Acadiensis for the Atlantic region.
69 Craig Heron, ed., The Workers’ Revolt in Canada, 1717-1925 (Toronto: 1998).
70 Irving M. Abella, None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948 (Toronto: 1982).
71 Franca Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde, eds., Gender Conflicts: New Essays in Women’s History
(Toronto: 1992).
13
can intersect only poorly with other identity markers or, at the least, that some perhaps broadly
held conception of regional identity cannot, by itself, promote social peace and maintain social
cohesion. In the case of social class, for example, workers in one region may feel that they have
more in common with workers in other regions than they do with middle or upper classes closer
to home. Likewise, studies of women’s political activism in Canada suggest that Canadian
women’s movements drew support from all regions of the country.72 And, recent studies of
minority religions in Canada suggest similar phenomena.73
Social studies of group identity and social conflict do not suggest that intersections of identity
are unimportant. In fact, they suggest precisely the opposite. These studies indicate that identities
work through a series of intersecting markers -- religious, ethnic, gender, class -- that affect lived
experiences. Studies of immigrant women, for example, indicate that class position, ethnicity,
language, and perhaps-other factors as well, affect these women’s lives.74 In other words, the
experience of an immigrant woman is conditioned not simply by the fact that she is an immigrant
but also by her class position, linguistic skills, gender, and sexuality, among other things. In this
regard, regional locations can have an important affect on people. The lack of access to, say,
important foods or a lack of facilities in which important spiritual and religious rites can be
performed has an effect on quality of life and these can be affected by regional residence in
Canada. The relatively small number of non-Christians in Atlantic Canada, for instance, affects
the recognition of other religions.75
One effort to categorize the ways in which intersecting identities affect different groups of
people is what might be called the multiple jeopardy approach to social analysis.76 This approach
uses the idea of multiple marginalizations in which the social position and, hence, quality of
material life, is determined by the number of intersecting marginalizations. For example, a
working-class, black, Atlantic Canadian women could be expected to have a lower quality of
material life than a working-class white Atlantic Canadian women who, in turn, would have a
lower quality of material life than a middle-class white Atlantic Canadian woman. This type of
analysis, while not often dealing directly with region, is easily amenable to a regionalist focus
because of the political-economic inequalities between different regions of Canada. Its key
merits are to illustrate how a series of intersecting identities affect the material circumstances of
a particular group and to provide quantitative support for its conclusions. This quantitative
support permits an understanding of the actual negative consequences that a series of intersecting
72
Naomi Black, “The Canadian Women’s Movement” in Loraine Code, et al., eds., Changing Patterns:
Women in Canada 2nd ed. (Toronto:1993):51-92.
73 Paul Bowlby, “Religious Diversity in Canada: Between Memory and Present Aspirations” (Identity
Policy Research Seminar Paper, 2001).
74 Roxana Ng, “Racism, Sexism, and Immigrant Women” in Code, et al., eds., Changing Patterns, 27930; Franca Iacovetta, “Recipes for Democracy? Gender, Family, an the Making of Female Citizens in
Cold War Canada” Canadian Woman Studies 20,2 (2000): 12-21.
75 Bowlby, “Religious Diversity in Canada”. See also Mustafo Koc and Jennifer Welsh, “Food, Foodways,
and Immigrant Experience” (Identity Policy Research Seminar Paper, 2001).
76 Wanda Thomas Bernard et al., “Triple Jeopardy: Assessing Life Experiences of Black Nova Scotian
Women from a Social Work and Historical Perspective” in Donald Avery and Roger Hall, eds., Coming of
Age: Readings in Canadian History Since World War II (Toronto: 1996): 186-203. For a statistical review
at the national level, see CRIAW, Women’s Experience of Racism: How Race and Gender Interact
CRIAW Fact Sheet (Ottawa: nd), 1.
14
marginalizations can have for any particular person. One potential weakness of this approach is
that it approaches identity as if it were static, determined by seemingly solid -- and almost
inalterable -- criteria, such as gender and skin colour.
From the perspective of regionalist scholarship, this potential weakness is a problem because it
obscures the processes by which regional identities are made.77 This process, it could be argued,
is important precisely because of the implicit identity coding it necessarily brings with it. These
coding are far from static but their impact may have an overall affect on social positions and may
serve to create or reinforce other forms of social marginalization.
IV. Constructing Regional Culture: The Case of Atlantic Canada
This is precisely the issue posed by Ian McKay’s Quest of the Folk, a critical study of the
development of regional identity and culture in Atlantic Canada. McKay’s study focuses on
twentieth-century Nova Scotia but he clearly feels the implications of his work extend beyond
this province.78 For McKay, as for scholars interested in the political economy of regional
protest, the creation of Maritime regional identity is part of an historical process. What is
significant for McKay, however, is not simply the fact of regional identity, or even the fact that it
is made as part of an historical process heavily conditioned by political economy. Instead, he is
also interested in the character of scope of this identity and here what fascinates McKay are the
historical origins and ideological underpinnings of stereotypes of Atlantic Canadian
conservatism. The conservative, traditionalist conception of Maritime Canada -- what McKay
refers to as the “Folk” conception of Maritime culture -- may have certain elements of truth, but
the wider truth of the matter is that Atlantic Canadians have rarely been as traditionalist and as
conservative as this stereotype suggests, a point aptly demonstrated by the social scholarship of
the 1970s and 1980s which focused on long-standing progressivist concerns on the part of
Atlantic Canadians and the modernity of their socio-economic development. If this is so, where
does the myth79 of Maritime conservatism come from?
McKay contends that the myth of Maritime conservatism as the cornerstone of a unique regional
identity emerged only in the twentieth century and needs to be understood as only one of a series
of possible ways in which the identity and culture of the region could have been framed. The
eventual triumph of this “Folk” conception of the region, McKay argues, should not be
understood as a political or culturally neutral process. Nor, is it simply the result of pre-existing
identities or a general historical trajectory. The “folk” conception of the Maritimes was actively
encouraged by the provincial state in Nova Scotia,80 professional cultural producers, and tourist
industries, all of whom saw in it a source of revenue -- a way of marketing regional identity as a
development strategy created in the face of de-industrialization -- and the urban Maritime middle
77
It is important to bear in mind that a treatment of regionalism is not the key objective of this
scholarship. Its focus lies elsewhere and thus conclusions drawn about its understanding of regionalism
relate more to its logic and trajectories than actual conclusions.
78 Ian McKay, “Among the Fisherfolk: J.F.B. Livesay and the Invention of Peggy’s Cove” Journal of
Canadian Studies 1 & 2 (1988).
79 On the work of myth in culture see Daniel Francis, National Dreams (Vancouver: 1997).
80 McKay, “In My Small Field of Things Historical: Will R. Bird and a New Kind of Public History” (paper
presented at the Atlantic Canada Workshop, University of Maine at Orono, 1990).
15
class -- for whom it constituted a safe, nostalgic heritage free of labour radicalism and other trials
of modernity.81 McKay contends that the rise of a “Folk” conception of Atlantic Canadian
culture was built upon the suppression of alternative regional voices that articulated a very
different -- and far more radical -- conception of Atlantic Canada, its culture and identity.82
The key to this argument is twofold. First, the historical process by which regional identities
were fashioned was itself formed in social and cultural conflict. Regional identity represents not
simply a representation of region, but a particular representation of region evolving out the needs
of the provincial state, class conflict, social prejudices, the work of cultural producers, and the
silencing of alternative voices of region. Second, from the perspective of regional identity, what
is important about McKay’s study is how the construction of a particular regional identity
involves implicit identity coding that serve to both include and exclude other identity markers:
the “folk” conception of Maritime culture intersected with some identities, but excluded others.
Maritime cultural identity involved explicit ethnic (white and particularly Celtic), class (rural
single-commodity producers), gender (separate spheres), and political (socially conservative)
coding.83 To this, one could add an imputed religious coding in that there was a relative
presumption that Atlantic Canadians were Christian.
Exclusions from Maritime regional identity were equally profound. Marginalized within this
conception of Maritime culture were non-White ethnic groups, the unionized working class
(urban or rural), non-Christian religious groups, and particular political views (labourism, social
democracy, or feminism). Also excluded was the contemporary idea of fluid or multiple
identities.84 Maritime identity was presumed to be deeply embedded (or, organic) transcending
class, gender, or generational differences. Using this matrix of implicit and explicit intersections
and exclusions, it became possible to identify “real” or “true” elements of Maritime culture -and “true” or “real” Maritimers -- who could be differentiated from spurious, artificial, or
imported culture traits. In terms of the intersection of identity, what McKay’s analysis makes
clear is that in regard to established conceptions of Atlantic Canadian culture, identities do not
necessarily intersect particularly well. The construction of a traditionalist “folk” conception of
Atlantic Canadian culture did work with and through certain, specific intersections of identity
(ethnicity, political perspective, social location, religion) but also served to exclude other
identities. In this sense, the construction of a traditionalist conception of regional culture carried
with it important political implications that worked to marganize specific groups, identities, and
perspectives within the Atlantic region.85
Recent research into conceptions of multiculturalism in Maritime Canada seems to confirm
McKay’s assessment. Manju Varma’s study of multiculturalism in New Brunswick, for
example, determined that in one predominantly white Maritime community, multicultural ideals
had little impact on children’s conceptions of Canada and their understanding of what it meant to
81
McKay, Quest of the Folk.
Ian McKay, “The 1910s: The Stillborn Triumph of Progressive Reform” in E.R. Forbes and D.A. Muise,
eds., The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation (Toronto: 1993).
83 McKay, Quest of the Folk, chs 2 and 4.
84 Buckner, “Limited Identities Revisited”, 12.
85 McKay contends, in fact, that what he calls the Folk conception of Maritime culture was applicable to
only a distinct minority of the population. See McKay, “Tartanism Triumphant”.
82
16
be Canadian.86 After an intensive qualitative study of elementary school children, Varma
concluded conceptions of ethnic diversity in this predominantly white community retain
frequently stereotypical understandings of diversity, maintain a negative view of immigrants, and
understand a Canadian as a white person. Moreover, images and ideals of diversity introduced
through the media produce other problems with students taking conceptions of ethnic different
and tolerance from American television shows (which may or may not be applicable to the
Canadian context).
Because of the demographic character of Atlantic Canada, studies of predominantly white
community attitudes toward/understandings of diversity are particularly relevant for the region.
The conclusions of this study reinforce the idea that Maritime (and perhaps-other regional)
culture(s) in Canada works through the exclusion of particular identity markers while
intersecting with others. The final result of this dual process of intersection and exclusion might
be not simply the marginalization of some groups in the region.87 Instead, it could serve to push
some groups out of regional identity completely, leading them to focus the development of their
identities on other markers that transcend region. There is little scholarship on this point, but the
fact that Nova Scotia’s long-established Black communities have begun to focus increasing
attention on the articulation of a disaporic identity might be a case in point. The long-standing
discrimination -- legal and social -- suffered by black Nova Scotians88 combines with a regional
identity that seems to make little space for Black Maritimers as a constituent component of
regional identity. The effect of this is difficult to measure, but it should not come as a surprise if
Black Nova Scotians found the current Atlantic regional identity less than welcoming.89
Recent studies into the historical development of Atlantic Canada and the diversity of Atlantic
Canadian social and cultural experiences are intended, at least in part, to correct this imbalance
and to present a more empirically sound image of the region. In part, studies of women, minority
groups, workers, and other marginalized social groups are intended to regenerate these voices
and make them part of the historical and cultural record. In this sense, such studies are in
themselves political because they seek to re-articulate the voice of region, diversify it, and
explain the processes that led to the silencing of alternative conceptions of regional culture and
identity in the first place.90
IV. The Political-Economy of Ontario Identity
If regionalist scholarship in Atlantic Canada worked to strip away myths of Maritime
conservatism, locate the historical forces that gave rise to this myth, and regenerate alternative
voices of region, scholarship on Ontario as a region has been differently focused. This difference
86
Manju Varma, “Multicultural Children’s Literature: Storying the Canadian Identity” in Nurse and Blake,
eds., The Politics of Nationality.
87 Varma does conclude that effective pedagogical techniques can alleviate many cultural
misconceptions.
88 On this point see Contance Backhouse, Colour Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada 19001950 (Toronto: 1999).
89 Esmeralda Thornhill, “Racism and the Black World Response: An International Symposium”
Background Document (Dalhousie University, n.d.).
90 McKay and Milsom, eds., Towards a New Maritimes.
17
derives in large measure from a presumption that Ontario is not region per se, but instead
constitutes the “heartland” of Canada, the metropolitan core that dominated the peripheries.91
The supposed intellectual dominance of Ontario in Canadian culture derives from a similar
situation.92 It is true that Ontario-centric developments have often been taken in Canadian
scholarship as synonymous with “national” developments. For these reasons, the articulation of
an Ontario regional identity has been, one scholar has argued, particularly problematic.93
Current scholarship on Ontario suggests that the “regionalization” of this province is, in fact, a
process that is only now underway. This process, contemporary scholarship suggests, will
involve a marked change in provincial (or, regional) identity. In effect, it will move Ontarian
identity away from a national identity toward a more regionalized ideal of its position in Canada
and in North America. Underpinning this transition is a shift in Ontarian and Canadian political
economy. In a key study of the changing framework of Ontarian political economy, Thomas
Courchene and Colin Telmer argue that the transition to the more overt form of continentalism
that accompanied the CU-FTA and the NAFTA served to re-orient the Ontario economy in a
way that altered its position as the metropolitan core of the Canadian economy.94 In effect,
Courchene and Telmer argue that the adaptation of the Ontario economy to a north-south
continentalist axis has dislodged its position as the “heartland” of Canada and replaced this with
a status more akin to a region within a broader North American economy.
While Courchene and Telmer’s argument is largely theoretical95 and focuses on economics, it
has important implications for a cultural understanding of the regionalization of Ontario that is in
keeping with the general trajectories of current research on identity in that province. Current
studies of cultural identity in Ontario point to two conclusions. First, while Ontario may have
lacked a regionalized identity, its population did not lack identities. As Norman Knowles study
of the development of Loyalist identity in Ontario, indicates, a process of identity creation went
on in Ontario that bore marked similarities to the process of regional cultural formation in
91
Brodie, The Political Economy of Canadian Regionalism; Kenneth Pryke, “Aspects of Canadian
History” in K.G. Pryke and W.C. Soderlund, eds., Aspects of Canada (Mississauga: 1990).
92 Doug Owram, “Intellectual History in the Land of Limited Identities” Journal of Canadian Studies 24,3
(1989).
93 Robert Drummond, “Is There an Ontario Identity?” in Eli Mandel and David Taras, eds., A Passion for
Identity: An Introduction to Canadian Studies (Agincourt, ON: 1987); 322-336. See also A.R.M. Lower,
“Ontario -- Does It Exist?” Ontario History 60 (1968).
94 Thomas J. Courchene and Colin R. Telmer, From Heartland to North American Region State: The
Social, Fiscal and Federal Evolution of Ontario (Toronto: 1998). See also Thomas J. Courchene,
“Responding to the NAFTA Challenge: Ontario as a North American Region State and Toronto as a
Global City-Region” Global City-Regions Conference Paper (Los Angeles: 1999).
95 For a broader discussion of the way free trade agreements have affected different regions of Canada
see George J. De Benedetti, “Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade
Agreement” in Michael J. Tucker et al., eds., Canada and the New World Order: Facing the New
Millennium (Toronto:2000): 151-62 which seems to empirically confirm Courchene’s and Telmer’s
assessment.
18
Atlantic Canada.96 The ideal of Loyalism, as Rob Cupido’s studies of public spectacles in
Ontario demonstrate, was persistent, contested, and ideologically charged.97
As the work of both Cupido and Knowles suggests, Ontarian attachment to the ideal of Britishness and to Loyalism was itself an identity that worked through processes of inclusion and
exclusion.98 In particular, the provincial government of Ontario, along with a significant
percentage of the population, resisted federal efforts to broaden the scope of Canadian identity in
a manner that would prove more inclusive and would provide a greater recognition of Canadian
diversity.99 In mobilizing the myth of the British heritage of Canada within the province -- and
then adapting this to the nation100 -- it could, in fact, be argued that Ontario projected its regional
identity out onto the nation as a whole. In terms of intersections of identity, the ideal of Ontario
as Loyalist worked thought certain specific intersections of identity, foremost among these were
ethnicity (British), religion (Protestant Christian), and language (English). Simultaneously, this
worked to exclude other identity markers, including linguistic (francophone),religious (Catholic
Christian), and ethnic (First Nations and other visible minorities).101
The changing place of Ontario in Canadian political-econom, seems to also involve a marked reorganization of provincial identity and, perhaps, the development of some sense of the province
as a discrete, constituent part (a region, as it were) of Canada.102 Here, the question becomes
what type of identity will be constructed in place of an older ideal that seems to be receding into
history. What types of intersections of identity will animate this ideal? What types of
exclusions, if any, will this involve?
It is too early to draw any definitive conclusions, but several points should, perhaps, be noted.
First, social inequalities and prejudice will certainly not be eclipsed in the new Ontario -- any
more than they will be eclipsed in other regions of Canada -- without concerted policy measures
designed to accomplish this goal.103 A shifting framework of provincial identity in Ontario,
however, may provide an opportunity for precisely such a project that could be connected to a recoding of regional identity. Courchene’s research suggests that the re-coding of regional identity
in Ontario may occur in a way that could dramatically alter the intersections and exclusions that
96
Norman Knowles, Inventing the Loyalists: The Ontario Loyalist Tradition and the Creation of Usable
Pasts (Toronto: 1997).
97 Robert Cupido, “ ‘The Peurilities of the National Complex’: English Canada, the Empire, and the
Diamond Jubilees of Confederation” in Nurse and Blake, eds., The Politics of Nationality .
98 Political theorists have argued a different position, locating the political culture of Upper Canada in
liberal currents of the Enlightenment as opposed to a Tory tradition. See Jeffrey McNairn, The Capacity to
Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy in Upper Canada, 1791-1854 (Toronto: 2000). There
is, of course, no necessary reason why institutions of deliberative democracy cannot co-exist with
conservative cultural values or imperial loyalties. Some of the complexities of Upper Canadian political
discourse in the early-nineteenth century are explored in Cecilia Morgan, “ ‘When Bad Men Conspire,
Good Men Must Unite!’ Gender and Political Discourses in Upper Canada, 1820s-1830s” in McPherson
et al., eds., Gendered Pasts, 12-28.
99 Cupido, “The ‘Peurilities of t he National Complex’”.
100 Francis, National Dreams.
101 Drummond, “Is There an Ontario Identity?”.
102 John Ibbitson, Loyal No More: Ontario’s Struggle for a Separate Destiny (Toronto: 2001).
103 Stephen Lewis, Report on Race Relations in Ontario (Toronto: 1992).
19
had previously animated Ontario identity. In particular, and while he does not make this point,
Courchene’s overall argument suggests that the re-coded Ontario identity may be an identity that
is organized around specifically political-economic lines. If Courchene is correct and the key
variable in contemporary Ontarian politics is class, this could suggest that a new provincial (or,
North American regional) identity might be built around class identity markers as opposed to
ethnicity, religion, or language.
Would this promote a more inclusive ideal of Ontario? It is difficult to say at this point in time.
Further research on public conceptions of an Ontario identity, its meanings, and its processes of
change are needed before even preliminary determinations can be made. Moreover, even if there
were some element of truth to this idea of a re-coded Ontario identity, it is important to note that
this potential re-coding will not by itself produce a more integrated society in that region. A
regional identity organized around class will affect gender and ethnicity as well because of the
differing lived experiences and material conditions on which it will be built. Nor, is the
marginalization of social classes somehow a less grave matter of public concern. While it is too
early, then, to make final determinations about changes in Ontario identity, what can now be said
is that a shifting regional identity holds out both promise and problems for the future.
VI. Regionalism and the Culture of Protest?
Western Canadian regionalism is, perhaps, the most evident form of regionalism in English
Canada and, as noted above, it has attracted considerable attention. Recent federal election
results have served to reinforce this focus, leading some scholars, in fact, to contend that a new
regionalized political system is emerging in Canada.104 Certainly western alienation and political
protest occupy key positions in scholarly work on Canadian regionalism. As they pertain to
western Canada, however, political regionalism is complemented by cultural studies, which look
to explore the origins and growth of a distinctive western Canadian culture in Canada. As Barry
Cooper has recently explained, current trends in western literary criticism seek to isolate
distinctive patterns of western Canadian cultural production.105 According to Cooper, the
foremost among these is the ways in which western Canadians have – and continue to – imagine
their landscape. Relying on the criticism of Henry Kreisel, Donald Stephens, among others,
Cooper argues that western culture is organized around a fundamentally different conception of
the relationship between human beings and the ecology than are the regional cultures of Ontario
and Atlantic Canada. His objective in making this argument is to indicate that “the west is not a
transplanted imaginative Ontario.”106
In the same manner, Tom Flanagan has sought to establish a long genealogy of political protest,
encompassing diverse western Canadians and organized around resistance to central Canadian
political domination.107 His point is to establish political protest as a near-permanent feature of
104
Young and Archer, eds., Regionalism and Party Politics in Canada. See also: Thérèse Arseneau et al,
“"Reforming Canada’s Political Institutions for the Twenty-First Century”,” Journal of Canadian Studies
35,4 (Winter: 2000/01), 7.
105 Barry Cooper, “Regionalism, Political Culture, and Canadian Political Myths” in Young and Archer,
eds., Regionalism and Party Politics in Canada, 101.
106 Ibid.
107 Tom Flanagan, “From Riel to Reform: Understanding Western Canada” Working Paper of the Fourth
Annual Seagram Lecture (1999) <http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/programs/misc/hom.htm>.
20
western Canadian culture, embedded, as it were, in the structures of western life. The overall
effect of these studies is to suggest that there is a structural dynamic to western Canadian
regional culture that transcends political contingencies and which makes the west, as a region,
distinct in Canada.
In making this point, Cooper and Flanagan are not, in fact, making a new argument. The idea
that culture is shaped by geography is a long-standing tenet of Canadian cultural criticism.108
And, the idea that the distinctive geography of western Canada gave rise to a distinctive culture
is not new either.109 There is, however, some reason to question this assertion. Cultural
geography, as Doug Owram noted in his study of the representation of western Canada, is not an
innate force with an existence independent of perception. In the course of its historical
development, the image of western Canadian geography has changed dramatically over time. 110
Moreover, as Gerald Friesen has recently explained, western Canadian geography is far from
holistic.111 This does not mean that western Canada is a transplanted Ontario, but it does suggest
that western-Canadian regional identity is not determined simply by broad political economic
forces or the structure of western geography.
In point of fact, a range of local social and cultural studies raise questions about the degree to
which an encompassing western Canadian culture and identity exist in a simple and
straightforward way. Local studies of different ethnic groups point to processes of
marginalization and discrimination that affected minority groups in other regions of Canada. 112
This suggests that western Canadian regional identity may be organized around and through
similar processes of intersection and exclusion as other regional identities in Canada. It suggests
that western Canada maintains an identity that is far from unified and that this identity may, or
may not, appeal to different groups of people for different reasons.
Recent historical studies of western Canadian regional culture seem to confirm this assessment.
In her study of the historical development of western Canadian regional culture, Francis Kaye
argues that western Canadian culture was created in two stages.113 The first stage involved the
marginalization of indigenous cultures as part of the resettlement process inherent in the
colonialist project. The cultural element of this project was the integration of newly resettled
108
The classic text is, of course, Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
(Toronto: 1972).
109 Henry Kreisel, “The Prairie; A state of Mind” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada Series IV,6
(1973); Donald Stephens, ed., Writers of the Prairies (Vancouver: 1973); Laurence Rictou, Vertical
Man/Horizontal World: Man and Landscape in Canadian Prairie Fiction (Vancouver: 1973).
110 Doug Owram, Promise of Eden: The Canadian Expansionist Movement and the Idea of the West,
1856-1900 (Toronto: 1980). See also Maria Tippett and Douglas Cole, From Desolation to Splendour:
Changing Perceptions of the British Columbia Landscape (Toronto: 1977).
111 Gerald Friesen, The West: Regional Ambitions, National Debates, Global Age (Toronto: 1999).
112 Hira Singh, “The Political Economy of Immigrant Farm Labour: A Study of East Indian Farm Workers in
British Columbia” in Milton Israel, ed., The South Asian Diaspora in Canada: Six Essays (Toronto: 1987);
Rick J. Ponting and Richard A. Wanner, “Blacks in Calgary: A Social and Attitudinal Profile” Canadian
Ethnic Studies 15 (1983): 57-76; Kay Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada,
1875-1980 (Montreal and Kingston: 1991).
113 Frances W. Kaye, “Regionalism, Postcolonialism, and Western Canadian Arts: Orientalism and
Indigeneity” in Tucker et al., eds., Canada and the New World Order.
21
regions into the cultural framework of empire.114 Following this, a regional culture within
Canada was created through a cultural distancing of the region from a central Canadian
metropole occasioned by political-economic conflict. Kaye’s argument significantly modifies the
work presented by Flanagan and Cooper. It maintains the idea of western regional identity as an
important consideration but illustrates its historical development as a process characterized by
disjuncture and marginalization as opposed to some innate properties of the western ecology.
A similar line of argument is suggested in Gerald Friesen’s recent study of contemporary western
Canada. Friesen suggests that the idea of a permanent, politically discontented and encompassing
western Canada needs to be reconsidered in a way that will allow for an historically oriented
understanding of this region. The idea of “the west”, in fact, appears to Friesen as problematic.
He argues for an historical evolution of western identity within Canada that has seen a
progression from two wests (British Columbia and the Prairie Provinces) to one west that is
subdivided into four different provincial wests. In Friesen’s view, western identity has become
fluid and multiple encompassing, simultaneously provincial and regional wests as well as a
national allegiance.115
Current scholarship on western Canadian identity, then, modifies the earlier political-economic
focus that examined regional identity as manifested in protest movements. This scholarship,
however, presents a far from unified perspective on western identity. While one trend looks to
trace a genealogy of western identity rooted in structural factors that transcend immediate
circumstances, other trends suggest that western Canadian identity formation involved the
marginalization of indigenous culture and was, itself, subject to historical shifts that belie the
ideal of cultural continuity. A final trend focuses not on the fragmentation of western identity but
on its multiplicity, on the idea that the meaning of western-ness is changing but this change is
simultaneously constructing different identities within the same region.
VII. Regionalism and the New Canada
Regionalism has constituted both a fundamental way of “seeing” and interpreting Canada and a
complex evolving cultural process constituted out of comlicated historical dynamics. The ideal
of region in Canada is politically charged, reinforcing some identity markers but marginalizing
others. Regions and with them regionalism also continue to evolve because the historical forces
-- the processes of class and identity politics -- which called regional identities into being in the
first place are far from static. Canadian society and culture as a whole continue to change under
the force of immigration, minority rights movements, and the force of supposedly “global”
economic processes. Where will this leave regional identities in Canada? Will region continue to
constitute an important core identity marker in the Canada of the twenty-first century or will it be
supplanted by other intersections of identity?
There is no way to make a hard and fast determination because the future remains unknown, but
there is some reason to suggest that the basis of regional identity in Canada will change for three
important reason. First, as Courchene suggests in his evaluation of the shifting parameters of
114
Accomplished through such things as the establishment of libraries, musical societies, and art clubs.
Friesen, The West. I have also tried to address this issue in Andrew Nurse, “A Profile of Canadian
Regionalism” in Kenneth G. Pryke and W.C. Soderlund, eds., Profiles of Canada 3rd ed. (forthcoming).
115
22
Ontario political-economic status in Canada, the material basis of regional identities will change
with the construction of new continentalized political-economic relations. In particular, the fuller
integration of Canada into a continental political economy stands to simultaneously alter
Ontario’s collective subject position as “central Canada”. This process will also likely be
affected by shifting demographic parameters that make older conception of Ontario as the
heartland of a British Loyalist heritage culture increasingly problematic. If Courchene is correct,
Ontario is in the process of becoming a region in a wider North American economy, the standing
and identity of which are organized more around socio-economic criteria than a particular
heritage culture. To be sure, such a process will not be defined in stark terms: prejudice, ethnic
marginalization, and other forms of discrimination will continue to exist.116 Intersections of
identity based around social class could also reinforce these problems, but new modes of
marginalization based on socio-economic standing and the intersections of identity that animate
these might move more to the fore. The retrenchment of the welfare state in Ontario in the 1990s
and the implicit and explicit gender and ethnic politics involved in the implementation of a neoconservative economic agenda will reinforce barriers of class which intersect with gender and
ethnicity.117
Moreover, these policies are not confined to Ontario. Provincial governments in Atlantic Canada
and the west have followed -- and are following -- similar policies.118 The final result might be
broadly similar processes of socio-economic marginalization across Canada. Such similarities -affecting, say, women, visible ethnic minorities, and the disabled – could serve to undercut the
material basis of regional identities because they illustrate the commonality between different
marginalized groups. Theoretically, material commonalities might encourage marginalized
groups in different regions to construct new identities in alliance with groups in other regions.
Second, and working in tandem with processes of political-economic change and demographic
shift, is the development of more activist political stances on the part of marginalized groups. It
is important to note that political activism on the part of marginalized groups represents an
assertion of historical agency; it is not simply called into being by political-economic changes.
This activism involved two inter-related developments: (i) a willingness to confront the structural
dynamics of marginalization, and (ii) an increased determination on the part of marginalized
communities to articulate their own identity.119 This determination represents a fundamental
challenge to conceptions of Canada and regional identity because it highlights the uneven-ness of
identity in Canada and its non-inclusive character. Said differently: it highlights the ways in
which regional identities intersect and exclude specific subject positions.
Political activism on the part of marginalized groups is not new.120 What is new is the public
attention devoted to it.121 The articulation of minority subject positions challenges conceptions of
116
Lewis, Report on Race Relations in Ontario.
For a discussion of neo-conservative political economy see David Laycocok, The New Right and
Democracy in Canada: Understanding Reform and the Canadian Alliance (Don Mills: 2002).
118 Friesen, The West, pt. III.
119 Minelle Mahtini, “Representing Ethnic Minorities: Examining the Literature on Media and Minority
Relations in Canada” Identity Policy Research Seminar Paper (Halifax: 2001).
120 Robin Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History 2nd ed. (Montreal and Kingston: 1997).
121 This is not to say that the attention devoted to the articulation of alternative subject positions is in any
117
23
regional identity, potentially pushing regional identities in new directions or leading away from
regional identities completely. In certain instances, it is clear that existing regional identities are
far from hospitable to identity differences within the region. Because of this, minority groups
will likely articulate different identities in the process of establishing their own voice in the
public sphere. Henry Chow’s research among western Chinese-Canadian identities is a case in
point. In examining the identities of Chinese Canadian youth in western Canada, Chou’s research
indicates that virtually none took a western regional identity as their own identity, instead
defining their own subject positions as “Canadian” or “Chinese Canadian”.122 Exactly what this
self-definition indicates cannot be determined with finality, but it could be part of a broader
process in which Canadian identity is redefined in a more inclusive manner (and in a manner that
de-emphasizes regional identities) or it could lead to the articulation of more globally-oriented
diasporic identities that transcend regional and national boundaries.123
Finally, it is also possible that broader cultural changes brought by the creation of what is often
called “post-modern” culture will de-stabilize all identities. In his critical investigation of
Atlantic Canadian identity, McKay argued that post-modernity presents a dual-edged sword.124
On the one hand, post-modern conceptions of the fundamental fluidity of all identity can serve
create a situation in which identity positions in general are seen as artificial contrivances that
speak more to personal preferences or the play of signifiers that to fundamental cultural
processes. At its most extreme identity becomes little more than a consumer good, reorganized
for entertainment or according to purely market criteria.125
On the other, it exposes the constructed character of regional identity in ways that permit an
examination of its power relations. While the full “logic” of post-modern culture may not be
conducive to a progressive engagement with the identity politics of regionalism, a more
circumscribed variant can clearly be of use. Such an approach to analyses of regional identity
could focus, as does McKay, on the interlacing discursive, economic, class, and ethnic politics
that infused the making of regional identities. Such an analyses does not, by itself, occasion
progressive political developments, but it could work with more pragmatic policy orientations to
promote alternative conceptions of region.
VIII. Regionalism, Policy, and Research
way commensurate to the historical silencing of alternative voices or that “new” voices will be listened to.
My own view is that the impact of these voices in the public sphere and on majority views of Canada has
been at best partial and incomplete. Still, I also feel that these voices deserve respect and that the
development of a good society in Canada requires that the Canadian state and civil society not only listen
to them but act on their words.
122 Henry P.H. Chow, “Ethnic Self-Identification and Ethnic Language Learning: A Study of the ChineseCanadian Adolescents in Calgary” Paper Presented at “Ethnicizing the Nation” CESA Conference,
Halifax, 2001.
123 See, for example, information on the establishment of the James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black
Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University <http://www.dal.ca/~jrjchair/jrjindex.html> and the increasing
studies of diasporic communities in Canada. For instance: Frances Henry, The Caribbean Diaspora in
Toronto: Learning to Live with Racism (Toronto: 1994) and Milton Israel, ed., The South Asian Diaspora
in Canada: Six Essays (Toronto: 1987).
124 McKay, The Quest of the Folk, ch. 5.
125 Frederic Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” New Left Review 146
(1984): 53-92.
24
The demographic, political-economic, and cultural shifts currently under way provide an
opportunity to reconsider the meaning of regionalism and regional identity within Canada.126
Indeed, it is a contention of this essay that such a reconsideration is now taking place in scholarly
studies of regionalism and identity. A key assumption of this essay is that this reconsideration is
a progressive development both for Canadian scholarship and for Canadians. In terms of
scholarship a further reconsideration of regionalism can deeper our understanding of the
dynamics of the Canadian experience. In terms of public policy, it can help to organize a
cultural policy framework that respects diversity and different voices within the country,
understands the complicated way in which intersections of identity “play out” in different parts
of Canada, and thus can become more attuned to the dynamics of cultural integration, diversity,
and alternative voices on the local and national level. Such research should look to understand
the dynamics of diversity on a regional level and the way it affects lived experiences.
In organizing research into intersections of diversity and identity in different regions of Canada,
it will be important to establish a research programme that works with different communities and
individuals, treating these communities and people as active partners in the research process
rather than as objects of study. In other words, a new research agenda designed to explore the
dynamics of regionalism in Canada should aim to create materials and studies that will be the
property of different communities as much as they are the property of scholarship.127 Under this
research rubric, scholars should work with communities and individuals to organize research
programmes that they find meaningful and which permit them to tell their own stories.128 If this
ideal is followed, it is difficult to determine, in advance, the form different research projects will
take because the project itself will require the input of different communities. In terms specific
proposals some matters that might be considered include:
1. The creation of oral history archives which could be organized in conjunction with different
community and cultural groups. Such archives could be established in cooperation with
different communities and would be designed to record the stories of different groups in
Canada. This project could involve extensive interviewing and well as autobiographical
writing. It could be conducted under the auspices of the Metropolis project and work with
their network and personnel. 129
2. In the Atlantic region, it would also be possible to broaden this framework to include First
Nations. Here interaction with established First Nations educational and research
organizations – such as the Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs and the Treaty
and Aboriginal Rights Research Centre – would allow for constructive interchange and the
sharing of resources.
126
For data on recent demographic changes see Tables A-C.
Marika Morris, “Participatory Research Across Canada” CRIAW Newsletter 21,2 (2001), 6-7.
128 Joan Sangster, “Telling Our Stories: Feminist Debates and the Uses of Oral History” in Veronica
Strong-Boag et al., eds., Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History 4th ed. (Don Mills: 2002).
129 Metropolis Project Team, Pathways to Federal Partners: A Guide to Federal Partners’ Organization
around the Metropolis Project (1999). See also: <http://www.canada.metropolis.net>.
127
25
3. Efforts should be made to evaluate regional variations in identity formation among different
cultural groups. This should begin with a more detailed review of the local case study
literature on different cultural communities in Canada and then proceed to a more sustained
engagement with the current situation of different communities in different regions of the
country.
4. Research should focus the self-articulation of diasporic identities. Such research should, of
course, work in partnership with different groups in order to explore the dynamics of transregional and trans-national identities among marginalized cultural groups.130
5. In this regard, specific attention should be paid to two further matters: (a) the articulation of
diasporic identities across generations and (b) the contextual variance of this articulation in
different regions of Canada. It is possible, for instance, to examine how diasporic identities
are articulated by first, second, third, fourth generations of people in immigrant families and
to compare this articulation in different parts of the country.
6. Historical research should be conducted into the processes of identity formation among
different ethnic groups in Canada. As Donald Akenson’s important study The Irish in
Ontario indicates, immigration and resettlement altered conceptions of self among at least
some immigrant groups.131 Fuller studies of specific ethnic immigrant groups would permit a
more encompassing understanding of this process and the ways in which it affected the lives
of immigrants.
7. “Microhistorical” research might prove extremely useful in studying the ways in which
intersections of identity play themselves out in different contexts. Current research on the
affects of colonization on First Nations, for example, indicates that broad “metahistorical”
processes produce differing effects in different contexts.132 There is every reason to believe
that this is also true for other identity markers. Local studies are most effective way of
exploring the complexity of intersection identities and power relations and their effects of the
lived experiences of real people. Further research into local histories that are specifically
attuned to differing identities markers can illuminate these complex processes.
8. Research into intersections of identity, the complexities of power relations, and regional
variations into the effects of diversity in Canada needs, as well, to be finely attuned to the
fact of diversity. Exactly what this means for “national” studies is, however, problematic and,
perhaps, properly so. If the complexities of identity and their effects on lived experience are
diverse, efforts to “synthesize” this diversity into a grand national narrative133 become more
problematic because such a national synthesis impedes – rather than facilitating – an
understanding of this issue. For this reason, there is reason to question to nationalizing
narratives and studies. However useful a national focus might be, its ability to illuminate the
For a suggestive but non-Canadian example see Andrew Walsh, “ ‘Nouvelles Frontiers’: Gender and
the Construction of Transnational Identities in Madagascar and France” Paper Presented at “Ethnicizing
the Nation” CESA Conference, Halifax, 2001.
131 Donald H. Akenson, The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History (Kingston and Montreal: 1984).
132 John Lutz, “Gender and Work in Lakwammen Families, 1843-1970” in McPherson et al., eds.,
Gendered Pasts, 80-1.
133 Cf. Granatstein, Who Killed Canadian History?
130
26
complexities of the lived experience of identity are, in my view, questionable. For this reason
I question the usefulness of “national” studies as a field of research into identity and
diversity.
9. Finally, attention should be directed toward intersecting ethnic identities and their meanings.
As Lawrence Hill indicates in his study of mix-race lived experience,134 intersections do not
always produce intersecting representations or treatment. Appreciable new research is being
conducted on the meaning(s) and lived experiences of mixed-race people.135 Such research is
important in that it illustrates how individuals negotiate their own identities in interaction
with the world around them, how they conceptualize themselves, and the problems they
confront. More work in this area is required.
Lawrence Hill, “"Black + White ... equals black”,” Macleans 114.35 (27 August 2001): 16.
Leanne Taylor, “Searching for the ‘Exotic’; An Exploration of Multiraciality in the Academy” Paper
Presented at “Ethnicizing the Nation” CESA Conference, Halifax, 2001.
134
135
27
Appendix A
Quebec as Region
In no other part of Canada are the intersections of identity at once more seemingly overt but also
potentially more problematic than Quebec. For this reason, this essay has not addressed
questions of Quebec’s status as a Canadian region. This is not because Quebec is not an integral
part of Canada, but because of the unresolved question of Quebec’s status within the country.
Both politically and constitutionally, Quebec’s position in Canada is not clear. Constitutionally,
the original patriation agreement constructed a three regions model of Canada for purposes of
constitutional amendment in which Quebec and Ontario were merged into a single region.136 A
later federal Parliamentary resolution altered this arrangement by lending the federal
constitutional veto to Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec thus creating a different legal
arrangement, the implications of which are far from clear. Politically and culturally, Quebec is a
distinct element of Canada, but whether or not this distinctiveness can be captured under the
ideal of regionalism is unclear.137 Two matters, however, bear particular attention here.
First, historically, anglophone and francophone scholars have viewed Quebec’s place in, and
relation to the rest of, Canada differently. English Canadian scholarship has tended to treat
Quebec as a region of Canada.138 This scholarship has been complicated by idealized images of
traditional French Canadian culture139 but, on an overt level, few English-speaking scholars were
prepared to recognize that Quebec could be something other than a region. French-Canadian
scholarship, on the other hand, worked within a different framework that, to a greater or lesser
extent, expressly conceptualized the existence of a French-speaking nation in Quebec. It would
be simplistic to attempt to adjudicate between these competing perspectives because: (i) as we
have seen the definition of region is hazy and historically dynamic and (ii) English-Canadian
scholarship seems to have, largely, abandoned this conception of Quebec.140 What this division
indicates is that scholarship on Quebec identity and on identity differences has been framed in
markedly different ways by francophone and anglophone scholars.
136
This is, of course, not specifically what the amending formula says in-text but it is the de facto status of
the seven of ten plus fifty percent plus one of the population formula. The seven of ten provision ensures
that amendments not meeting the approval of all four western or all four Atlantic provinces will be
defeated. The fifty percent plus one provision ensures that amendments rejected by both Ontario and
Quebec (see here, perhaps, as “central Canada”) will be defeated.
137 This essay’s failure to engage this issue is necessary but unfortunate. The rich scholarship on Quebec
identity is potentially suggestive of the historical processes through which other regional identities in
Canada have been created and may be recreated in the future. In relation to Quebec, considerable
research has been completed on ethno-cultural communities within the province, on the changing
dynamics of Quebec’s conception of its place in Canada, on the evolution of Quebec’s national identity,
on the material affects of cultural practices, on the intersections of public policy with specific identity
markers (such as gender), and on state formation and its affects on identity. All these matters raise
questions that are important to include in research agendas focused on other parts of the country. For
references, see attached bibliography.
138 Eli Mandel and David Taras, eds., A Passion for Identity: An Introduction to Canadian Studies
(Toronto: 1987).
139 Francis, National Dreams.
140 Although, of course, it remains politically salient. See Laycock, The New Right and Democracy in
Canada.
28
Second, as with other elements of the Canadian experience, scholarship on Quebec is changing.
Recent English-Canadian historical studies of Canadian cultural development implicitly
recognize Quebec’s cultural difference from the rest of Canada.141 While the exact nature of
Quebec differences is often poorly explained in these studies, a de facto distinction between
Quebec and the rest of Canada is maintained in them. Current studies in both political theory and
multiculturalism and ethnicity work to support this implicit recognition of Quebec difference in
more exact terms.142 While the conclusions reached in these studies remain matters of debate,
they do suggest that Quebec needs to be viewed more as a “nation” than a region.
Likewise, French-language scholarship related to identity is changing. At the same time that this
scholarship upholds the national distinction between Quebec and Canada toward which some
English-speaking scholars are moving, it adds remarkable complexity to the image of Quebec as
a cultural entity. Sociological, art historical, historical, and cultural research on Quebec presents
an image of a complex, evolving national culture that makes it impossible to maintain easy
generalizations about Quebecois (es).143
141
Cf. Maria Tippett, Making Culture: English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massey
Commission (Toronto: 1990) and Ramsay Cook, The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian
English Canada (Toronto: 1985).
142 Kymlicka, Finding Our Way, pt II; Kenneth McRoberts, Misconceiving Canada: The Struggle for
National Unity (Toronto: 1997).
143 For an assessment of historical scholarship see Michael D. Beheils, “Recent Contributions to the
History of Twentieth-Century Quebec” Canadian Historical Review 68,3 (1987): 393-413,
29
Appendix B
A Consideration of Real and Spurious Culture
Contemporary cultural theory makes the distinction between the “real” and “spurious” in culture
seem antiquated and a-historical. There are good reasons for this. As Ruth Philips has noted in
her studies of First Nations art history, the delineation of the “real” (or “true”) from the
“spurious” involved both explicit and implicit assumptions about “authenticity” -- determined by
“experts” 144 -- which were alien to the communities and artists involved. The distinction
between “real” or “true” elements of a culture and “spurious” elements were, in this sense,
themselves artificial and more often than not ideological in character.145 Put differently: the
construction of the real and spurious served to include and exclude particular cultural traits and,
in fact, groups of people from particular identities.146 Because contemporary cultural and identity
theory does not make this distinction but works instead with historical conceptions of culture, it
is easy to forget that this distinction formed a core element of cultural work in Canada’s past,
particularly among Canadian anthropologists and folklorists. From the professionalization of
anthropology and folklore in the first decades after WW I until the post-World War II era, the
primary work of anthropologists and folklorists was to “salvage” -- collect and preserve -authentic traditional cultures from the supposedly ruinous process of modernization. In effect,
their key goal was to disentangle the “real” from the “spurious”.
This matter is important for contemporary considerations of the intersections of diversity because
the legacy of such an approach to culture remains a potent force in Canadian cultural discourse.
For example, research collections in Canadian museums were often organized and developed
using this distinction.147 How research is now conducted can be affected, in other words, by the
state of archival or artifact collections. Collections structured around now-rejected conceptions
of, say, the “authentic” First Nation or the “true” Nova Scotian can prove problematic because
elements of intersectionality were intentionally removed from them in order to enhance the
144
On the professionalization of cultural expertise in Canada see Douglas Cole, “The Originso f
Canadian Anthropology” Journal of Canadian Studies 8,1 (1973).
145 Ruth Philips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 17001900 (Montreal and Kingston: 1998).
146 The most important exclusion in Canadian history is, of course, the exclusion of First Nations from
their own heritage and identity. Throughout much of the first half of the twentieth century, Canadian
scholars widely contended that “authentic” First Nations no longer existed in Canada or, if they did, only in
small numbers in isolated rural communities. The people claiming to belong to various First Nations,
Canadian anthropologists contended, could not, in fact, claim to be authentic by virtue of either
intermarriage with whites or cultural borrowings from Euro-Canadian society. It was on this basis, for
example, that noted Canadian anthropologist Marius Barbeau developed his rationale for the forced
enfranchisement of Aboriginal Canadians and the dis-establishment of reserves. I have tried to address
this question in Andrew Nurse, “ ‘But Now Things Have Changed’: Marius Barbeau and the Politics of
Amerindian Identity” Ethnohistory 48/3 (2001).
If all this idea were confined to the past it would merit consideration for its contemporary
implications. Unfortunately, tests of the “authenticity” of identity remain part of public discourse today,
particular with regard to aboriginal rights. For a discussion see Dara Culhurn, The Pleasure of the Crown:
Anthropology, Law, and First Nations (Burnaby: 1998).
147 Pascal Galipeau, Les paradis du monde: l’art populaire au Québec (Hull: 1995).
30
“authenticity” of the material under study or being collected. For example, ethnographers
studying First Nations culture might intentionally “edit out” cultural elements integrated into a
First Nations culture from, say, European settlers leaving near them. Likewise, elements of
modern cultures might be edited out of “folk cultures” by folklorists of an earlier generation.
The impact of this cultural editing is to create images of cultural groups isolated from each other
and from the socio-economic, political, and cultural processes of modernity. Research into
historical processes of diversity and intersectionality will need to bear this point in mind and
avoid precisely the same problem. It is likely that intersects of identity and culture have a long
genealogy that has been obscured by earlier scholarly methodology. One useful – and currently
popular – way to address this issue is to explore the processes through which determinations
related to authenticity are made and the criteria through which ethno-cultural museums and
archives are created and maintained. The merit of this scholarship is that it highlights the
artificially limited ways in which identity has been constructed in Canada. Such artificial
processes tend to work with limited conception of identity, reducing pluralistic perspectives into
singular criteria. Such research is also useful because it unearths a narrative of cultural
complexity that will allow Canadians to think, again, about the meanings of identity differences
and identity multiplicity in contemporary life.
31
Working Bibliography148
I. References
Artibise, A.F.J., ed. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Canadian Society: A Guide to the Literature.
Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990.
Berry, John W. and J.A, Laponce, eds. Ethnicity and Culture in Canada: The Research
Landscape. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
Noel, François. Bibliopgraphie des thèse et des mémoires sur les communautés culturelles et
l’immigration au Québec. Montreal: Institution, 1985.
Riewe, Rich, et al. Nunavut Atlas and Bibliography.Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute,
1991/4.
II. Perspectives on Identity and Diversity
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Singh, Hira. “The Political Economy of Immigrant Farm Labour: A Study of East Indian Farm
Workers in British Columbia” in Milton Israel, ed. The South Asian Diaspora in Canada: Six
45
Essays. Toronto: The Multicultural Historical Society of Ontario, 1987.
Stanely, Timothy J. “ ‘Chinamen, Wherever We Go’: Chinese Nationalism and Guangdug
Merhcants in British Columbia, 1871-1911” Canadian Historical Review 77,4 (1996): 475-503.
Stephens, Donald G., ed. Writers of the Prairies. Vancouver: University of British Columbia
Press, 1973.
Thomas, Greg and Ian Clarke. “The Garrison Mentality in the Canadian West” Prairie Forum 4
(1979): 83-104.
Tippett, Maria and Douglas Cole. From Desolation to Splendour: Changing Perceptions of the
British Columbia Landscape. Toronto: Irwin, 1977.
Ward, Peter. “Class and Race in the Social Structure of British Columbia, 1870-1939” BC
Studies 45 (1980): 17-35.
________. White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Toward Orientals in
British Columbia. 2nd ed. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990.
Young, Walter. Democracy and Discontent: Progressivism, Socialism, and Social Credit in the
Canadian West. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1969.
IX. Contemporary Trends
Abu-Laban, Yasmeen. “The Future and the Legacy: Globalization and the Canadian Settler
State” Journal of Canadian Studies 35 (2000-1): pages.
Bickerton, James. "Atlantic Canada and the CHST" Policy Options 17/5 (1996): 18-22.
Boothe, Paul and Barbara Johnson. "Stealing the Emperor's Clothes: Deficit Offloading and
National Standards in Health Care" Papers in Political Economy 28 (1992).
Cameron, David R. "Half-Eaton Carrot, Bent Stick: Decentralization in an Era of Fiscal
Restraint" Canadian Public Administration 37/31 (1994): 431-44.
Canada, Intergovernmental Affairs, Social Union Framework Agreement. (1999).
Edmonston, Barry. Interprovincial Migration and Canadian Immigrants. Research on
Immigration and Integration into the Metropolis Working Paper Series No. 02-10. Vancouver:
2002. (PDF at <http://riim.metropolis.net/research-policy/research-policy2/papers_e4.html>).
Gibbins, Roger. "Decentralization and National Standards: 'This Dog Won't Hunt'" Policy
Options 17/5 (1996): 7-10.
Hiebert, David and David Ley. Assimilation, Social Exclusion, and Cultural Pluralism Among
46
Ethno-Cultural Groups in Vacouver. Research on Immigration and Integration into he Metropolis
Working Paper Series No. 01-08. Vancouver; 2001. PDF at <http://riim.metropolis.net/researchpolicy/research-policy2/papers_e3.html>).
Krótki, Karol J. “How the Proportion of Artificial Canadians Varied among Regions of Canada
and Ethnic Origins Between 1991 and 1996.” Canadian Journal of Regional Science 20, 12(1997): 169-181.
Shields, Margot and Stéphanie Tremblay. The Health of Canada’s Communities. Supplement to
Health Reports, v. 13; Stats Canada Catalogue 82-003. 2002. (PDF available at
<http://www.statcan.ca:80/english/freepub/82-003-SIE/free.htm>.)
Simeon, Richard, et al. "Globalization, Fragmentation, and the Social Contract" in Keith G.
Banting et al., eds. Degrees of Freedom: Canada and the United States in a Changing World.
Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997.
X. Government Documents
Canadian Heritage. Canadian Identity: Culture and Vision: Building a Cohesive Society. 8 April
1997; 13 September 1996.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Toward a More Balanced Geographic Distribution of
Immigrations. Special Study: Strategic Research and Review. Ottawa: Communications Branch,
CIC, 2001.
Government of Ontario. Ontario Speaks: A Dialogue on Canadian Unity. Place: Government of
Ontario, 1998.
Province of Nova Scotia. Report of the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr.
Prosecution.
47
Table A
Immigration to Canada by Province 1998-2000*
*
Data source for Tables: <http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pub/anrep02.html#app-a>.
48
Table B
Immigration by Census Metropolitan Area, 1998-2000
Principal Applicants and Dependants
49
Table C
Immigration by Category, 1998-2000
Principal Applicants and Dependants
50