National Post

Canadian values have come a long way — but not as far as we think.

- ALLAN LEVINE Historian and writer Allan Levine is the author of Toronto: Biography of a City. His next book, The Bootlegger’s Confession, a new Sam Klein Mystery, will be published in October.

Ti mes and att i t udes change, generally for the better. Yet intellectu­ally adopting “progressiv­e values” and patting yourself on the back for doing so can be a lot more challengin­g than actually living with the new realities this progress has created. Since the early 1970s, Canadians have lauded multicultu­ralism and their tolerance toward minorities and immigrants, now world- renowned, according to our political leaders.

“As the first country in the world to adopt a policy of multicultu­ralism 45 years ago, Canada has shown time and time again that a country can be stronger not in spite of its difference­s, but because of them,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared on Multicultu­ralism Day in June. “As Canadians, we appreciate the immense freedom we have to show pride in our individual identities and ancestries. No matter our religion, where we were born, what colour our skin, or what language we speak, we are equal members of this great country.”

So when Conservati­ve MP Kellie Leitch wonders whether it might be a good idea to screen new immigrants for “anti- Canadian values,” however those are defined, or a Toronto public school has to refuse Muslim parents’ demand that their children be excused from mandatory music class because it violates the family’s religious beliefs, Canadians become agitated, even confused.

As Matt Gurney pointed out in his recent column, MP Michael Chong, one of Leitch’s rivals for the Conservati­ve party leadership, denounced the idea that “that some immigrants are ‘ anti- Canadian.’ ” Yet at the same time, the public school made the right call by putting its foot down to the Muslim parents, according to Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail. “Canadian schools are the engine of integratio­n,” he wrote. “It is where children of every culture, race and religion learn to get along with each other. It is where they learn to be Canadian.” The parents, of course, can opt to send their children to a parochial school where music classes wouldn’t be a problem.

Our ancestors would be shaking their heads at this baffling debate and seemingly contradict­ory message: asking newcomers if they share “Canadian values” is “un- Canadian,” but drawing a line on mandatory music classes because of religious beliefs is, in fact, very Canadian. In the harsh and bigoted old days, these issues would not have been even up for discussion.

During the early part of the 20th century when “a vast procession of humanity,” as one British writer called it, descended on North America, forever altering its demographi­cs, a majority of Canadians, white Anglo and Protestant, knew exactly who they wanted to allow in: “desirable” Chris- tian immigrants who spoke English, dressed as they did, and could easily assimilate to the Canadian values of the day. No ifs or buts about it. “Undesirabl­es” and “unassimila­ble” immigrants included East European Jews, Chinese, Italians and Slavic newcomers who were considered primitive, uncivilize­d, dirty, immoral and degenerate. Politician­s, reformers, academics and journalist­s described them as “foreign trash,” “heathens,” “vermin,” and “foreign scum,” who, in the words of a 1915 report from the Canadian Methodist Church’s Department of Temperance and Moral Reform, were “a menace to our national life.”

And make no mistake about it, these attitudes were mainstream and liberal. In 1907, Dr. Charles Hastings, who within three years was to be Toronto’s respected chief medical officer, wrote that the undesirabl­e newcomers who were arriving — thanks to the federal government’s fairly open immigratio­n policy from about 1897 to 1913 — and living in poverty would only “breed degenerate­s.” “Who would think of comparing for a moment, in the interests of our country, mentally, morally, physically or commercial­ly, a thousand of these foreigners with a thousand of Canadian birth?” he pondered.

Likewise, in his bestsellin­g 1909 book, Strangers Within Our Gates, J. S. Woodsworth, later one of the founders of the Co-operative Commonweal­th Federation, the predecesso­r of the New Democratic Party, who had worked with immigrants at his All Peoples’ Mission in Winnipeg, organized the book by ranking each different nationalit­y and ethnic group according to how eas- ily they would assimilate and adapt to “Canadian” values, as he defined them. Thus, sections on British, Americans, Scandinavi­ans and Germans portrayed them as assimilabl­e and desirable, while chapters on Italians, Slavs, Galicians and “Hebrews” were far less positive. “Negroes” and “Orientals” were deemed unwelcome and unwanted.

Notions of multicultu­ral tolerance had a few advocates. Social worker Jane Addams, who worked among the impoverish­ed newcomers in Chicago, thought of them “as citizens or citizens-in-the- making,” rather than as ignorant or inferior. U. S. philosophe­r Horace Kallen, who in 1924 coined the term “cultural pluralism,” asserted the radical idea that there was “unity in diversity.” But it would be decades before Canadians would even consider such a concept.

In the meantime, public schools, as they are today, were given the tough job of transformi­ng immigrants into good Canadians. This was a lot more than teaching some of their students how to speak English; it was also about imparting to them the purity of Canadian morality — teaching them respect for law and order, and having them embrace “thrift, punctualit­y and hygiene.” As one Toronto public school teacher put it, “Canadians are ‘ tidy, neat and sincere’ — foreigners are not.” In short, it was about the young newcomers learning and adopting proper behaviour and submissive­ness in a capitalist society. Such attitudes pushed provincial politician­s in Canada to establish compulsory school laws in the first decade of the 20th century and to speak out against private ethnic or religious schools as an impediment to assimilati­on.

We have come a long way since then, but not as far as we think we have, as this recent debate about values and adapting to religion in public schools shows. In a survey done by the CBC News in late 2014, 75 per cent of respondent­s agreed that Canada “is a welcoming place for all ethnicitie­s.” But only 55 per cent “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that immigrants are “very important to building a stable Canadian economic future,” while 30 per cent “agreed or strongly agreed that ‘ i mmigrants take jobs from Canadians.’” Whether we want to admit it or not, most Canadians still want our immigrants to adapt and conform to “majority” values. And when they don’t, we wonder, but much more quietly than our greatgrand parents did, why they came here in the first place.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AS THEY ARE TODAY, WERE GIVEN THE TOUGH JOB OF TRANSFORMI­NG IMMIGRANTS INTO GOOD CANADIANS. — ALLAN LEVINE IT WASN’T LONG AGO THAT EVEN RESPECTABL­E CIVIC OFFICIALS MUSED THAT JEWS AND CHINESE WERE SIMPLY INFERIOR TO REAL CANADIANS.

 ?? VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY ?? A Chinese railroad track gang, circa 1900.
VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY A Chinese railroad track gang, circa 1900.

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