Who are we? Every once in a while, we won­der, locals and immi­grants alike. Peo­ple shaped the coun­try we live in, but the face of this same coun­try changed, evolved and reflects today’s world as well as its his­tory. At least, I hope so, because I con­sider change chance and not a threat.

Canada is a mul­ti­cul­tural coun­try. Today, accord­ing to the BBC , 20% of peo­ple liv­ing in Canada are foreign-born and 250 000 new­com­ers make Canada their home each year. These peo­ple will soon be Cana­di­ans are most of them will adapt to the North Amer­i­can way of life, while bring­ing some aspects of their own cul­ture in Canada. Food, lan­guages, cus­toms, skills… we all win.

Yet, some are scared. Who are we? We all are the faces of Canada. The tra­di­tional Anglo-European face of the coun­try is chang­ing, that’s true. But Canada is very much alive. National iden­tity isn’t some­thing sta­tic and we don’t have to look alike to form a coun­try. A lot of things make Canada a dis­tinct coun­try, from the triv­ial lit­tle things to polit­i­cal choices, from geo­graph­i­cal places to spe­cial peo­ple, from val­ues we share to things that bring us together.

In 2008, I’ll apply for Cana­dian cit­i­zen­ship. I first came here in 2002 and I’ll be one of these foreign-born. French. Cana­dian. And a cit­i­zen of the world.

What defines Canada? I’m start­ing a series on our icons, from peo­ple to places, from every­day life’s items to sports, from trade­marks to cus­toms. Don’t expect any­thing too deep: this is Canada the way I see it. I don’t bring answers. I just want to share, and I will with you every Sat­ur­day — enjoy!

Zhu

Canada is now a mul­ti­cul­tural coun­tries, but was founded by French and Eng­lish set­tlers. As I wrote a few months ago in Two Soli­tudes And One Lone­li­ness, the lan­guage issue is com­plex and highly polit­i­cal. It’s also one of Canada’s most touchy sub­ject, so it’s hard to speak with­out offend­ing anyone.

The province of Quebec’s offi­cial lan­guage is French, and the province of New-Brunswick is offi­cially bilin­gual. For the other provinces and ter­ri­to­ries, it’s a bit of a grey area… Eng­lish is most widely spo­ken but there are French com­mu­ni­ties almost every­where: in Ontario (the Franco-Ontariens), in Man­i­toba, in Alberta…

French’s his­tory in Canada is quite painful. Eng­lish has for long dom­i­nated the coun­try, eco­nom­i­cally, polit­i­cally and socially. But start­ing in the 70’s, a bilin­gual­ism politic became one of the cor­ner­stones of the gov­ern­ment of Pierre Trudeau.

The first Offi­cial Lan­guages Act was adopted by Par­lia­ment in 1969. Its three main objec­tives were: the equal­ity of Eng­lish and French in Par­lia­ment, within the Gov­ern­ment of Canada, the fed­eral admin­is­tra­tion; the preser­va­tion and devel­op­ment of offi­cial lan­guage com­mu­ni­ties; the equal­ity of Eng­lish and French in Cana­dian soci­ety. The prin­ci­ples of bilin­gual­ism in Canada were also pro­tected in the Cana­dian Char­ter of Rights and Free­doms of 1982.

It is today wrong to say that the whole coun­try is bilin­gual, but it is also wrong to deny the obvi­ous progress. It is now easy to get ser­vice in both French in Eng­lish at the fed­eral gov­ern­ment level, and more and more young peo­ple are edu­cated in both lan­guages. I’m pretty opti­mistic, and a lan­guage pol­i­tics takes time to take effect in my opinion.

This “stop/ arrêt” sign on the pic­ture (“arrêt” is French for “stop”) was found on Par­lia­ment Hill. This is an exam­ple of the bilin­gual­ism politic at the provin­cial level.

Funny thing though is that the stop sign in France is just… “stop”. Yes, “stop­per” is a verb in France! I had never seen “arrêt” signs before I came to Canada and most of my friends back home find it quite funny.

Related arti­cles:

1. French, Eng­lish and Montréal
2. Two Soli­tudes And One Loneliness
3. Learn­ing French Or Eng­lish In Canada (6÷10)
4. Bro­ken English
5. Why Do Peo­ple Choose to Move Abroad? [Spon­sored Post]