Canadian Identities:

1
Canadian Identities

• -- General Views
• -- Its formation and Related Issues
• Settlement Colonies
• Language and Cultural Identity
• Gender/Race Relations
• Gender/Cultural Identity
• -- From Two Solitudes to
• Many National Myths Realities

2
Which of the following are Canadians?
Saturday Night Life Dan Aykroyd
Jim Carrey
MICHAEL J. FOX
Keanu Reeve
Captain Kirk
Megan Follow asAnne of Green Gables
Paul Anka, Neil Young,Peter Jennings
Pamela Ander-son Lee
k.d. Lang
ALANIS MORISSETTE
Celine Dion
3
Internet Jokes on Cultural Differences

• Aussies Dislike being mistaken for Pommies
  (Brits) when abroad.
• Canadians Are rather indignant about being
  mistaken for Americans when abroad.
• Americans Encourage being mistaken for
  Canadians when abroad.
• Brits Can't possibly be mistaken for anyone else
  when abroad.

4
Internet Jokes on Cultural Differences

• Americans Spell words differently, but still
  call it "English".
• Brits Pronounce their words differently, but
  still call it "English".
• Canadians Spell like the Brits, pronounce like
  Americans.
• Aussies Add "G'day", "mate" and a heavy accent
  to everything they say.

5

Internet Jokes on Cultural Differences

• Aussies Are extremely patriotic to their beer.
• Americans Are flag-waving,anthem-singing, and
  obsessively patriotic to the point of blindness.
• Canadians Can't agree on the words to their
  anthem, when they can be bothered to sing them.
• Brits Do not sing at all but prefer a
• large brass band to perform the anthem.

6
General Themes (1) Settlement Colonies

• Colonization 2 Settlement
• Canada U. K.
• MetaphorMiranda
• Colonization 3 Internal colonialism
• racism against the immigrants Quebec

• Colonization 1 invasion, exploitation cultural
  imposition
• India U.K. e.g. moth in The God
• the Caribbean Holland, Spain, France, U.K.
• Metaphor Caliban
• Colonization 4 neo-colonialism U.S.

7
Canadian History

• 1534 --New France
• 1670 -- Charles II of England established
  HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY
• 1867 -- Canada become a confederation of former
  colonies (The British North America Act)
• 1947-- the creation of the status of Canadian
  citizen
• 1967-- expo '67 in Montreal
• 1982-- The Constitution Act ended British control
  over amendments to Canada's Constitution.
• 1988-- Canadian Multiculturalism Act

8
General Themes (2) Language Cultural
Identity/Hybridity

• the Caribbean terms metaphor creole
  metissage colors, houses and animals
• causes
• Europeans Africans Asian indenture
  laborers

• Indian subcontinent
• metaphor masala midnights children, god of
  small things cracking earth.

• Canada -- metaphor mosaic
• causes
• settlement cultural colonization
  immigration
• Multiculturalism Act (1988)
• e.g. Syntax

• causes
• language,
• religion,
• race and caste

multiple invasion/colonization
9
Canadian Identity

• Compared with the States, it merged quite late,
  slowly and peacefully in the 20th century.
• Defined in contrast with the Americans -- White
  North (but not the West), Irony (but not
  Innocence), victim mentality (but not heroism),
  Mounties but not cowboy, etc.
• Charateristics (?) Gentleness violent hockey,
  Two solitudes.

10
General Themes (3-1) gender relations

• Marital Social Relations
• Honor Fire
• Antoinette
• Allegory The Adjuster, , The Handmaids Tale
  Blossom

11
General Themes (3-2) race/gender (class)
relations

• Canadas national identity//Gender
• Atwoods Tricks with Mirror
• Handmaid

• Race/Gender power
• parallel women as double-victims (WSS Earth)
• marriage as a constaint (Her Mother Annie
  John)
• opposite Clares hunting experience (Abeng)

the Caribbeans in Toronto (Rude
Blossom) poverty, drug, sexism inverse racism,
defense mechanism survival skills
12
General Themes (4) gender/cultural identity
migration

• 1. A girl/childs growing process (education)
• SB, Gainda, Her Mother
• SA, Antoinette, Annie, Clare
• The Found Boat

• 2. Departure Memory
• Baggage, film screen (Imaginary Homeland)
• Annie John
• Self-Destruct in Rude
• Photos House burned (The Adjuster)

• 3. fear, lack, and ways of resistance
  self-assertion
• Clare, Antoinette
• Handmaid, Rain Child

13
From Two Solitudes to MANY

• National Myths Racial Realities
• e.g. Who Are We?
• "As Canadian as possible, . . ., under the
  circumstances."

14
The Canadian North Its Myths and Realities

• The Group of Seven

15
Myth 1 Victim Mentality

• Garrison Mentality
• Victim Mentality vs.
• American individualism
• e.g. Atwood?Survival?????????????????,????????????
  ?,?????????????,???????????????????????--??????--?
  ????.

e.g. Can Lit. by Earl Birney
But who are the victims?
16
Myth 2 Two Solitudes

• Duality -- caused by settler-colonization and
  neo-colonialism
• French and English
• British, American Canadian
• e.g. Tricks with Mirrors
• The victims are not necessarily powerless.
• Interactions between the victimizer and the
  victimized.

17
Tricks with Mirrors from You Are Happy

• November
• Kill what you cant save
• what you cant eat throw out
• what you cant throw out bury
• What you cant bury give away.

What do the Mirrors mean here? What tricks does
the mirror/speaker do to you with mirrors?
18
Tricks with Mirrors from You Are Happy

• Mirror
• Identity narcissism, self-absorption,
  entrapment, stasis.
• Note Atwood compares writers to trickster.
• The trickster figure embodies contradictions,
  often using humor, parody, and satire to expose
  hypocrisy and pretension.

19
Myth 3 Mosaic and MulticulturalismImmigrants to
Canada

• Early 20th century Italians and Jews
  discriminated against
• the postwar new-comers at first mainly British,
  and then Dutch and German
• in the 1960s -- Mediterranean peoples, notably
  Italians, Greeks and Portuguese,
• in the 1970s -- a steadily growing number of
  Asians--from India and China via Hong Kong
  especially and of people of ultimately African
  origin via the Caribbean.

V e r t i c
a l
Mosaic
Ghettoized?
20
Examples of Self-Conscious Artists Laiwan

• 
  

http//www.belkin-gallery.ubc.ca/laiwan/
Laiwan, born in Zimbabwe, of Chinese origin
emigrated to Canada in 1977 to leave the war in
Rhodesia.
21
An Example of Multi-Media Artists Laiwans The
Imperialism of Syntax

• What does syntax mean?
• What are the consequences of being subject to
  anothers syntax?
• What are the speakers ways of survival and
  resisting the others syntax?
• What are the differences between the Chinese and
  the English versions?

22
An Example of Multi-Media Artists Laiwans The
Imperialism of Syntax

• subject to their rules
• Self-forgetting, ridiculed
• Talk back
• Chinese not mother tongue, openness to another
  interpretation

23
An Example of Multi-Media Artists Laiwan

• http//collections.ic.gc.ca/waic/laiwan/laiwan02_e
  .htm
• 
  

ETHOS writing with found objects, detail seven
panels of laminated Vancouver bus transfers, 1982