1. en-ashram-N/G
2. 01-03-2025
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I grew up in Ottawa, and am a product of the Ottawa Public School Board.
At school, they taught us that Christopher Columbus discovered North America. We were told the founding cultures of Canada are the French and English.

Of course, we know that story isn’t entirely true, it was the Scots who built this nation. In fact, Canada was settled by immigrants from not just Europe, but from Asia, India and many other countries over some three or four centuries. Not to mention the contribution of many Indigenous peoples, Inuit and Metis.  

I can say from my own experience, growing up in Ottawa in the 1960’s and 70’s, there was not a single Black person attending my schools in all those years.  We were unilingual English and exclusively white. Of course, this sort of monoculture did not come about by chance, but reflects the racist history of exclusion in our country. 
Tellingly, there were few ethnic restaurants in Ottawa in those years. Whenever my family wanted to eat Chinese food for a change, we had to travel miles to reach the only takeout restaurant in the south end, called the Marco Polo. The menu also featured “Canadian Food”, whatever that means. Historically, nearly every little town in Canada, all across the prairies and Ontario, used to have its own Chinese restaurant. 

I can say, that in the Ottawa of the 1960’s and 1970s, there were almost no other restaurants with food of other cultures.  Maybe a few Italian restaurants or Lebanese restaurants, but that was all.

After the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, about 2,000 Vietnamese refugees ended up in Ottawa. They were resettled under private sponsorship and were known as the “boat people”. It was quite remarkable how the city came together, to welcome the newcomers. This initiative was led by our mayor at the time, Marion Dewar.  Many of the older refugees who fled Vietnam spoke fluent French.

So, in the last fifty years, the face of the ethno-cultural communities in Ottawa has changed a lot. There is still a China Town and a Little Italy, but the boundaries moved, or populations changed to reflect different immigrant groups.  In the south of the city, a large community of Somalis has become established, and Eritreans with their Eastern Orthodox church. We used to have just one mosque, now there are several across the city. Most recently, Syrians and then Ukrainians have settled here. Slowly but surely, Ottawa has become a much more culturally diverse city, but is still a far cry in that respect from large centres such as Montreal or Toronto, for example. 

I’d like to turn now to the matter of official multiculturalism and multilingualism in Canada. We begin in 1969,  with the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism  (the B&B).  If you’re not familiar with what a Royal Commission is, imagine a massive study on some politically sensitive subject, with consultations across Canada, producing a stack of thick reports, and recommendations for our Parliamentarians to consider. 

In 1969, the BB Royal Commission, looked at ways to improve cultural relations between English and French Canada, and promote bilingualism. 

Very quickly, the government acted on one of the key recommendations of the B&B Commission, passing the Official Languages Act in 1969. This legislation gave English and French official status in organizations and institutions under federal jurisdiction, such as Air Canada, and most notably, the Public Service. Henceforth, Canadians from either official language group could demand to receive government services in French or English. 

Canadian history would be awfully dull if it were not for the tensions around the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada. In the 1950’s, the writer Hugh MacClennan famously described Canada as being composed of “Two Solitudes”. This reflects a reality where Francophone Canada is separate from Anglophone Canada, alone as it were, like an island in a sea of English. Consequently, Francophones tend to be very self-conscious about their mother language.

To appreciate the historical context which moved the Federal Government to undertake to undertake the BB in the first place, and then follow through on its recommendation to legislate the Official Languages Act, we need to remember that Quebec was wakening from a sort of dark ages, there was the so-called quiet revolution, and a tidal wave of nationalism in Quebec, separatism we used to called it. It seemed that Canada was on the verge of breaking up, with Quebec going its own way.

This all came to a head in October 1970, when the Front de libération du Québec, known as the FLQ, sought to separate Quebec from Canada. The FLQ exploded mail boxes in Montreal, kidnapped officials, and even murdered one diplomat named Pierre Laporte, leaving his body in a car trunk. This period is known in history as “the October Crisis”.  I remember seeing soldiers everywhere in the streets, while police arrested and filled jails in Quebec with suspected “terrorists”.

Subsequent to these events, in 1971, the then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau introduced the Federal Policy of Multiculturalism in. This policy was based on the concept of Canada as a cultural ‘mosaic”. Picture if you will, a stained-glass window or a pattern of multi-coloured tiles, each one separated by grout, a clear boundary. The policy aimed to make Canada a pluralistic society, one firmly seated within a bilingual framework, that is English and French.

In this way, Multiculturalism was meant to complement the Official Languages Act by serving to help integrate new Canadians into one or both of the official language communities. At the same time, at least in word, the policy looked to preserve and enhance other cultural heritages and languages.

As the Prime Minister explained in 1971, “Although there are two official languages, there is no official culture”.

A few years later, in 1988, Multiculturalism became law of the land through the passing of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act.

There was considerable political pressure from Ukranians living in Western Canada, demanding that their language be given the same official status as English and French. As well, many Portuguese immigrants, the largest immigrant group to arrive in Toronto at the time, they insisted that their children should be taught their own language (Portuguese) first, before having to learn French or English.

Over the last fifty years, little has changed from the original concept of “cultural mosaic” in the way the law is being enacted.  Beginning with the 1970’s, federal government provided modest financial assistance  in the form of grants to ethno-cultural organizations, typically to support traditional dances, folklore, costumes and so forth.  As the years passed, the ethnicity focus shifted slightly to Rights-Based Multiculturalism, and more recently taking on a more anti-racist emphasis.

In terms of critique, the writer Neil Bissoondath, was critical of multiculturalism in his 1994 book titled, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada.  His book was widely read at the time and discussed. For Bissoondath, the Multiculturalism policy was harmful since it undermined Canada’s bicultural nature, and thereby threatened a Canadian identity. This was because the policy, which included federal funding to certain ethnocultural entities, tended to encourage ethnic differences, rather than commonalities. And this emphasis, in Bissoondath’s view, was leading immigrants to adopt a “psychology of separation”, it was creating distinct communities, ethnic ghettoes, which prevented newcomers from becoming fully part of the mainstream culture.  Significantly, for Bissoondath, multiculturalism acted to reduce the fact of French Canadians to a mere ethnic phenomenon, posing a threat to Canadian unity and cohesion.

As Canadians, we like to think of ourselves as being tolerant towards other cultures, and languages other than our own. I’d say most people share the vision of Canada as mosaic, and we are proud not to have gone down the road taken by our neighbour to the south, where the so-called melting pot approach prevails.

There is a saying that English is the language of battle ships. For centuries Britain’s Royal Navy ruled the high seas. On International Mother Languages Day, we remind ourselves just how fragile mother language speaking communities can be, since English increasingly dominates. We shouldn’t be complacent in our schools, homes and daily lives. Clearly, we need to continue to work to validate and promote the many international mother languages in Canada, to ensure their rightful place. 

-Brian Graham
Ottawa 

(This article is adapted from a speech presented at the Centre for Know Thyself on February 23, 2025, marking the occasion of International Mother Language Day)

1. en-ashram-N/G
2. 01-03-2025
4. Tweet