Er... apparently Frum doesn't consider Hispanics to be "people of European descent".
Posted at 2006-05-11 13:36:59 [PermaLink]Michigan:
That's because many/most people referred to as Hispanics in the U.S. (for the most part from Mexico) are mixed race - indigenous and Spanish. They also have a vastly different cultural outlook from immigrants who arrived directly from Europe.
John Ibbitson can call for the immigration floodgates to be opened, because he and his fellow members of the elite have their neighbourhoods effectively dammed against the tide.
They can afford not to have to live with the consequences.
To them, multiculturalism is all about colourful folk art, exotic world music, trendy fusion bistros and nannies who'll work for cheap.
They never see the damage outside their bubble.
One thing I've always found curious about modern day Canada is why you've had a large migrant intake from the developing world at all.
Given that ethnic diversity has long been one of the most noticeable things about the U.S, I'm surprised that more Canadians didn't want to retain their French/Anglo-Saxon majority culture just to be "different".
Some parts of Canada indeed have preserved their British identity, obviously I mean the Atlantic provinces.
The Canadian West has always been wildly diverse and polyglot and chockablock with foreigners, and so nothing here ever changed either. If anything there's more of a coherent local identity than there used to be.
Quebec outside Montreal has also shown no change. It's always been French and it shows no prospect of changing.
So the whole immigration thing is first and foremost a phenomenon of southern Ontario, and to a lesser extent Montreal and B.C.
For the most part it had to do with events in Britain, which to a large extent after the immediate post-war period stopped producing emigrants. Such British emigration as remained preferred to go to Australia or the States, which offered a better climate, economically and physically. They were replaced in the late forties and fifties by immigrants from Mediterranean Europe.
The influx of such people into Montreal provoked an angry and fearful response among the French Canadians, most of whom were convinced that foreign immigration was a deliberate attempt by English Canada to destroy Quebec's national identity. Trudeau and most of his team came right out of that scene, and were more or less openly attempting to give us a taste of what they imagined to be our own medicine. They definitely wanted to destroy the country's British identity. As it happens they had the luck to find themselves kicking it when it was already down and out.
I have to feel sympathy for an American trying to understand Canada. It must seem like Mars x 12 much of the time. It might surprise you to realize that most Canadians have no conception of how ethnically diverse the US is. The cliche is that the US is a melting pot where we are a mosaic. The fact that any fool can see at a glance that this is plainly not so just tells you how many people here aren't capable of taking a glance.
Thanks ebt, you explained the situation very well. It's something I've often found curious and hopefully I didn't come off as sounding too facetious.
Posted at 2006-05-12 18:37:24 [PermaLink]