Posted on 12/09/2006 4:35:05 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Canada, after all, is a nation with a constitution that speaks of "order and good government", in contrast to its southern neighbour's declaration, which speaks of "liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
Canada likes to present itself as a caring and just place - a place where everyone smiles all day, where everyone loves their children and small animals, where everyone is welcome and treated equally.
That Canada is most certainly a myth, crafted to make Canadians feel better about themselves. But like most myths it has some truth to it. And it is hard to imagine the kind of riots here that tore through Cronulla.
Yet Canada's immigration policy and ideas on multiculturalism are very similar to Australia's. One main exception is that Canada seeks to diversify the sources of immigration more than Australia. Like Australia, Canada has been transformed in just three decades from a predominantly white, Christian, European nation to a nation that is so ethnically and racially diverse that it has become impossible to say what a Canadian looks like or sounds like.
In its largest city, Toronto, more than a third of the population were born in another country; another third are the sons and daughters of immigrants.
Other Canadian cities are equally culturally diverse.
Modern Canada and Australia are very similar. But they do seem to have slightly different attitudes to violence, probably as a result of their different histories.
"There are no Ned Kellys in Canada's history, no ships full of convicts. Our heroes are more likely to be Mounties," says Robert Bothwell, the author of The Penguin History of Canada.
The Mounties are Canada's national police force, which subdued the country's west without the violence and with much less of the anti-Native Indian racism that marked the development of the American West.
"Our founders were strict Catholics on the one hand [in Quebec] and dour Scots and English [in the rest of Canada]," Bothwell notes. "That doesn't make for a particularly exciting history."
Canada, after all, is a nation with a constitution that speaks of "order and good government", in contrast to its southern neighbour's declaration, which speaks of "liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
Experts on Canada's brand of multiculturalism and on immigration policy all say that serious violence could happen here, but once you get past their sense of academic even-handedness they add "but probably not".
However, the experts have been surprised before, not least by the arrest in June of 17 young Muslim men for allegedly plotting to blow up various targets in Canada. All were raised in Canada, the product of middle-class upbringings and state schools.
"If you had asked me in May if I thought we would see home-grown terrorists in Canada, I would have said no," says Dr Randall Hansen, an expert on immigration at the University of Toronto.
"This wasn't even a question of disaffected or marginalised communities acting out; these were well-to-do kids. This shows it could happen anywhere."
Hansen also points out that if disaffection among Muslims or any other group did break out in Canada, it would probably be similar to that seen earlier this year in France, where there was lots of destruction but little bloodshed.
Riots in Canada have always meant loss of property rather than violence against individuals. People yell and scream, windows are smashed and shops may be looted, but there is no violence.
There is truth to the myths Canadians hold about their society. But Canada, like any developed country with a constant stream of new immigrants, is also a nation in flux. And Canadians are less certain about where all this immigration and multiculturalism is taking them.
Good post, thanks. Our good friends and neighbors to the north will 'get it' when a couple thousand innocent Canadians are murdered in cold blood by islamofascists.
"Canada likes to present itself as a caring and just place - a place where everyone smiles all day, where everyone loves their children and small animals, where everyone is welcome and treated equally."
Utopia exposed!! Time to move north!
Riots in Canada have always meant loss of property rather than violence against individuals. People yell and scream, windows are smashed and shops may be looted, but there is no violence......................How can anyone say that with a straight face.
Some expert. I could have told him that last May, as could most any body here. Sounds more like denial than expertise.
You need only go as far as Lake Woebegone, 'where the children are all above average, the women are handsome and the men beautiful,' according to tax-payer supported National Left-wing Radio.
Either we are equal (all above average?) or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and guns. KM Merry Christmas NRA
"However, the experts have been surprised before, not least by the arrest in June of 17 young Muslim men for allegedly plotting to blow up various targets in Canada. All were raised in Canada, the product of middle-class upbringings and state schools."
...and in other related news these "Canadian" Muzzies discovered that wearing rag towels on their heads keeps their heads from freezing completely during the cold Canadian winters.
"Hey, it can't happen here in Canada. We're better, eh?
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