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January/February 2001 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Inside Story Feature: Immigration À la carte Curious by nature Reverberations

Visible majorities | Immigration timeline: 1900 | Immigration timeline: 1950
Immigration timeline: 2001 | Diversity facts | Immigration Acts

"SOMETIMES THE MYTH CREATES THE REALITY," ventures Calgary high school principal Stephanie Davis. "Canadians like to see themselves as welcoming of others." Davis is talking about the high-speed non-violent transformation of Canada from a 98 percent white outpost dominated by two rival northwest European tribes to what it is becoming today: one of the most spectacularly diverse societies that has ever existed. Forest Lawn High School, which Davis runs hands-on with blunt language and great gusto, is a mirror of that fact.

Back in the early 1960s, when Forest Lawn was a new blue-collar suburb on the eastern edge of Calgary, people wanting to come to Canada had to run the gauntlet of the racist Immigration Act of 1910, which coyly stated that we reserved the right to refuse admission to those who did not suit "the climate or requirements of Canada." (We had better public relations advice than the Australians and never had anything as crude as an explicit "White Canada" policy.) But then, in 1967, we opened our gates to immigrants of every colour, faith and language, and in only 34 years, we have changed the country forever.

Immigrant families will typically stay in Forest Lawn for three to four years while getting their act and their money together, before moving on to a bigger place in a more upmarket suburb — quite unlike the whites, who mostly don't move up and out. "Many of our [white] young people are confined not by their ability," says Davis, "but by their expectations. "You know, 'This is what we do in our family - we don't go to university.' Whereas the immigrants, almost by definition, are very differently motivated. They expect their children to succeed, to be professionals."

It ought to be a recipe for vicious racial conflict, but it isn't. The older generation of whites feels some discomfort at the changes happening around them and particularly at the erosion of a population base able to sustain traditional community activities, from drop-in centres for the elderly to Scout troops. The total population hasn't decreased, but immigrant families in their first few years in Canada have a strong tendency to patronize their own separate community institutions, often based in a church, mosque or temple, where the language and the culture are comfortingly familiar.

So why has it been such a peaceful and even friendly transition, at least in Canada's big cities (leaving aside the alleged redneckery of our rural areas for the moment), when all the lessons Canadians absorbed from their giant neighbour to the south pointed to the opposite outcome? How have Torontonians gone from around 3 percent visible minorities in the early 1960s to more than 50 percent now without any major disruption, while the people of Los Angeles, experiencing about the same degree of change over the same period, felt the need to burn down parts of their city not once but twice?

Davis's surmise, that "the myth creates the reality," is that Canadians, saddled with a national self-image of being nice, friendly, tolerant people, ended up behaving well almost despite themselves.

Perhaps Davis is right, and it's as simple as that - but I have trouble with the notion of Canadians being uniquely blessed with tolerance. How would you then account for London and Paris, cities that are not normally seen as suffering from an overdose of niceness?

This raises the suspicion that maybe the United States is not the norm in race relations, as we all supposed when it was the only industrial society of mainly European origin to have a racially diverse population. Perhaps it is the exception. Perhaps the chronic racial tensions in America are a result of that country's unique history and, in particular, of the fact that it is the only developed country where black slavery was once a major domestic institution.

This distinction remains true in the United States even today. Non-blacks who aren't white either, such as the recent wave of Asian-American immigrants, move up the economic ladder rapidly, while a very large minority of African-Americans still lags behind. But this appears to be an American problem, not a universal one. Indeed, it begins to look as if the real norm for ethnically diverse societies, at least in countries with mass education and modern mass media, is an easygoing acceptance of diversity.

In that case, Canadians need not congratulate themselves too warmly for the ease with which they have adapted to the vast changes in their cities. We may be doing only what comes naturally. But Canada is far ahead of the rest of the pack in this regard, which quite suits our history as a country that has been inundated by successive waves of immigration for at least 15 millennia.

For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.

Gwynne Dyer is a Newfoundland-born historian and independent journalist whose column on international affairs appears in newspapers in 45 countries around the world. He is currently based in London, England.

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