CANADA: A CULTURAL MOSAIC

In the last articles of this blog, we’ve been mainly talking about Korea and its adaptation to the new wave of foreigners within different institutions such as universities, transports, touristic infrastructures and restaurants. We will know jump to another area, Canada and North America, which was also part of our program. Amélie and I both experienced living in Canada which is a real melting pot of people from very different origin and however living all together. Therefore, I will explain in this article what is the particularity of Canada and its culture.

Canada is one of the most culturally diverse country in the world attributable to its history and its immigration policy. We observe in every big cities of the country a large variety of shops and restaurants from all over the world; communities of Indian, Chinese, Italian and others are settled pretty much everywhere and they are connected and united to each others.  The country has people from more than 200 countries of origin , and in 2010 the country received around 280,000 migrants from Philippines, India and China as a top 3 of country of origin (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2011).

Table 4: Permanent Residents Admitted in 2010, by Top 10 Source Countries (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2011)
Rank	Country	Number	Percentage
1	Philippines	36,578	13.0%
2	India	30,252	10.8%
3	People’s Republic of China	30,197	10.8%
4	United Kingdom	9,499	3.4%
5	United States of America	9,243	3.3%
6	France	6,934	2.5%
7	Iran	6,815	2.4%
8	United Arab Emirates	6,796	2.4%
9	Morocco	5,946	2.1%
10	Republic of Korea	5,539	2.0%
Total Top 10		147,799	52.7%
All Other Source Countries		132,882	47.3%
TOTAL		280,681	100.0%

 

Many of the migrants arriving in Canada are temporary residents such as foreign workers, as part of the Canada’s economic growth, international students, thanks to the diversity of the educational system and visitors for pleasure or business. As a result, a part of the foreign workers and international students will apply for the Canadian citizenship after living in the country for few years (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2011). For those reasons, the country is populated by people from very distinctive culture, however they succeed to live together in the same country known for its serenity.

The question that comes to mind then is how to define the Canadian culture if there are people from all over the world?  There is no real definition of the Canadian culture. It is a nation that believes in peace, order and good government. People are gentle, tolerant, helpful and trustful. Nevertheless, the rest of world tends to compare Canada and the USA as the same culture, but the big difference here is that Canada doesn’t need to adapt to its inhabitants, students or tourists because the population has a culture awareness that make people respect each other’s customs without dropping its own origin or culture. Canadians adapt the common community standards, which make the country so ethnically rich, whereas USA inhabitants encourage a form of nationalism and pride to be part of the American culture only: Unity VS Diversity that what differentiate those two similar but very different countries that are the USA and Canada (Beaver, 2013).

What we can remember from this exception, is that Canada’s people found the way to keep their own culture, values and origins but they still adapted to a common culture that respect each other and create a unique and rich ethnical heritage to one of the biggest country of the world and also one of the most tolerant country , Canada, the land of 200 languages.

Beaver, O. (2013, May 9). Seeing the similarities in Canada’s different cultures. Récupéré sur Inside Halton: http://www.insidehalton.com/opinion-story/3067777-seeing-the-similarities-in-canada-s-different-cultures/

Citizenship and Immigration Canada. (2011, 10 27). Récupéré sur Governlent of Canada: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/annual-report-2011/section2.asp#part2_1

Ophélie Bourgeois