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

Obvi­ous Canada #1 icon: the weather. When you think of Canada, you have the men­tal pic­ture of a frozen tun­dra. Can’t blame you, because it’s pretty accu­rate! Weather changes are often dras­tic and we can go from +40C in the sum­mer to –40C in the winter.

I took the first pic­ture on the left in the sum­mer, at sun­set. This is the Cana­dian Par­lia­ment in Ottawa. The sec­ond pic­ture was taken dur­ing last year’s Win­ter­lude. In front of the actual build­ing is an ice replica of the Parliament.

The weather here has a price. I’m not talk­ing about the zil­lions weather chan­nels and weather-related web­sites, but also about the snow clear­ing bud­get. The last big storm buried Ottawa in debt, as the Ottawa Cit­i­zen explains. Salt­ing roads, clear­ing snow in the streets, clos­ing schools and some­times ser­vices comes at a — pretty high — price Snow removal some­times turns into a big issues, and I’m not even talk­ing about the dreaded ice rains and ice storms that can destroy crops and par­a­lyze a city faster than you can say “oh shit”.

Yet, Cana­di­ans love to brag about the weather, and I like to indulge too, as in Bliz­zard, checked or Through The Storm. If you wait for the bus in and it’s –40C out­side, chances are that some­one wait­ing with you will com­ment: “oh, that’s noth­ing… back in the 70s, it was at least –50C for six months a year!”. If you’re shov­el­ing snow on your dri­ve­way, passerby may say: “well, the 1990 storm was much worse, trust me on that eh!”. Basi­cally, the weather was always colder, the storms were always big­ger, the rain was much wet­ter… long time ago. Prefer­ably when you weren’t here or too young too witness.

I’m tellin’ ya. They like it. And so do I.

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