History of Justin Trudeau’s Canada Series Part III: Origins of Canadian Identity
How did Canadians think about their country after confederation in 1867? Not the multiculturalism of today
In Part II of this series, we saw that the central tenet of Justin Trudeau’s Canada - that multiculturalism and diversity are at the heart of what it means to be Canadian - is supported by polling data showing that the majority of Canadians view the country as a divisive and multicultural nation, but that Canadians are less decided on issues like immigration.
This time, I want to start looking at the history of Canadian identity and Canadian values. How Canadians came to value multiculturalism and inclusion, and how issues like immigration have been continuous throughout the nation’s history.
My starting premise is that Canadians did not always value diversity and inclusion and that Canada did not always identify as a multicultural nation, but that, as we will see, may be open for debate.
This post will look at how Canadian identity developed during the first decades after confederation in 1867. We will look at two competing visions of Canadian nationhood that emerged in mainstream Canadian society: English-speaking Canadians who envisioned Canada as an Anglo-Saxon, protestant nation, and French-speaking Canadians who wanted Canada to have a strong French-speaking, Catholic character.
These two versions of Canadian nationalism and identity emerged in the context of a rapid changing country - national expansion, industrialization, and mass immigration - and are similar to debates that have occurred throughout Canadian history and today.
At the time of confederation, there were many ideas about what the new nation could be.
One of the most consequential was the Canada First Movement, founded in 1868 by five English-speaking Canadian nationalists concerned about the lack of a national identity for the young nation. They looked to Canada’s northern climate, rugged landscape, and Anglo-Saxon heritage for an identity that saw Canada as a British, protestant nation. Canada Firsters saw themselves as heirs to an “Aryan” destiny in North America and were often openly hostile to Indigenous people, Métis, French Canadians, and Americans. They were also strong proponents of western expansion (by English Canadians).
While the views of most mainstream English Canadians were not so extreme, it was a widely held belief that Canada should be an Anglo-Saxon, protestant nation with a strong British character. That view informed Canadian government policy towards bringing new regions into confederation, Canada’s relationship with the United States, and policies targeting indigenous people in western Canada. By the 1890s, it would play a major role in the development of immigration laws and foreign policy.
The most prominent group to offer an alternative vision were French Canadians who envisioned a strong French-speaking, Catholic component of Canadian identity.
French Canadians in Quebec were apprehensive about confederation in 1867 and initially turned inwards, focusing on French Canadian rights in Quebec and maintaining Quebec’s separateness and autonomy. Over the next two decades, however, education and language rights controversies, which I discuss below, and French Canadian sympathy with the plight of the French-speaking Métis in western Canada led many Quebecers to view Quebec as the guardian of French Canadian rights across the country. French Canadian nationalists began to envision Canada as bi-cultural nation, with provincial autonomy for Quebec and minority rights for francophones across the country.
During the first fifty years of confederation, these two competing visions of Canadian identify and nationhood came increasingly into conflict.
One of the main areas where this debate played out was in education policy.
National debates erupted in New Brunswick in the 1870s and Manitoba in the 1890s when legislation was introduced to ban French and Catholic instruction in schools. English Canadians believed that education policy should reinforce the British, protestant character of the nation, and so many supported such legislation. French Canadians naturally viewed such moves as a threat to their language and religious rights.
The usual solution to these debates was to allow public schools to provide religious instruction for half an hour at the end of the day if there were enough French-speaking students in the class. But that solution rarely pleased anyone.
By the 1890s, the question of Canadian identity and national character had taken on a new sense of urgency when the country entered twenty years of economic boom. Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and immigration to western Canada challenged social norms and alarmed many in French and English Canada that the character of the nation was changing.
English Canadians were particularly concerned with the large number of non-British immigrates who came to the county during the Laurier Boom (1896-1911). Before 1896, Canada had no restrictions on who could immigrate to the country, but in the first years of the twentieth century numerous regulations were introduced to encourage immigrants of British origin to come to Canada, and discourage or even ban immigrants that threatened the so-called character of the nation.
The education debates in Manitoba, and later in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario in the early twentieth century, were fueled by concerns that offering even a French, Catholic education was too much of a threat to a British, protestant nation in the face of rising immigration numbers, let alone a German or Ukrainian education.
The debate between English and French Canadian nationalists also spread to foreign policy at the turn of the century.
English Canadian imperialists believed that, as a British nation, Canada should fully participate in the British Empire and imperial wars. French Canadian nationalists viewed imperialism as a threat to French rights in the country and argued that Canada should have an autonomous foreign policy.
Again and again from the 1890s to the 1920s, imperialists and nationalists clashed whenever the question of Canada’s participation in the British Empire came up, from Canadian involvement in the Boer war in 1898, to the creation of a Canadian Navy, to Canada’s role in the First World War.
Like with education, much of the debate was rooted in fears of a rapidly changing society. Many Canadians fell back on what they already knew to provide stability during often traumatic events and socio-economic change.
Concerns created by changing times is perhaps the most important take away from early debates about Canadian identity. Canadians, it seems, have always lived during periods of rapid social change.
The divisions of the early twentieth century were followed by the Great Depression and the Second World War. In the 1960s and 1970s, many Canadians were concerned about the going influence of American culture in Canada. In the 1990s, Quebec separatism led many to question whether Canada could ever truly be a unified nation.
Today, much divides us, as we can see, for example, from the fact that every Canadian region voted for a different party in the 2019 federal election.
On the question of whether or not Canada has always been a multicultural nation, the debates between French and English Canadians in the first decades of confederation suggest no.
Mainstream Canadian society was very much influenced by the idea of Canada as a nation with two founders, French and English Canadians. The attitudes of indigenous nations and ethnic and racial groups in particular were not included in these debates, and in fact were in many ways the very groups that were feared to threaten Canadian identity.
But when we take the experiences of these groups into consideration, does that change the argument that Canada was not founded as a multicultural nation? That’s what I want to discuss in the next History of Justin Trudeau’s Canada post.
Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed this post, check out parts I and II to the series here and here, and please subscribe to get future posts in your inbox. Follow me on Twitter for updates on the newsletter.