Scottish-Australian-Canadian
On Friday night I attended the Immigrants of Distinction Awards, a gala event celebrating the outstanding achievements of immigrants in the Calgary community. It was a great event and as promised, the winners of the awards had done great things since arriving in Canada, both for themselves and for the community.
But throughout the night there was a lot of mentioning of hyphenated nationalities. That’s what I call it when you mash two or more nationalities together. My mother is from Australia, my Dad is Canadian and my Dad’s family moved from Scotland around the turn of the century. So I’m half Australian and half Canadian but my hyphenated nationality could be Scottish-Australian-Canadian. I guess I could just shorten it and call myself an Australian-Canadian (or is it Canadian-Australian?). But whatever I choose to refer to myself as doesn’t mean I’m not proud of my heritage – I still cheer for Canada in the World Cup and cheer for Australia in any cricket matches I watch.
But I think that by using a hyphenated nationality, you are making your life harder than you need to. To me, it’s as if being Canadian (or Australian) isn’t good enough, that you need to further differentiate yourself. But why differentiate? Quebec has done that for the last hundred years and all it’s done is made the rest of Canada resent Quebec and it’s desire to be “special”. Don’t get me wrong, I like Quebec and I have a bunch of friends in Montreal. But anyone who tells me that they are special Canadians because they’re from Quebec gets the thumbs down from me.
The same goes for the all of the “special” hyphenated nationalities. Love and be proud of your heritage, because it’s made you the person you are. But I think that you’re either a Canadian or you’re not. If a hyphenated nationality means that you’re a Canadian deserving of special treatment, then does that make me just a “normal” Canadian? Because that sounds like something I might end up resenting.
And if Canada does continue to go down the hyphenated nationality road, then Heaven help my children who will be known as Scottish-Australian-Polish-Ukrainian-Canadians (or if I can convince my wife to move, they’ll be Scottish-Canadian-Polish-Ukrainian-Australians).
Sun, 03 Apr 2005 06:05 Posted in General
