Postmodern patriotism: Canadian reflections

Canada is an evolving human geography that has nurtured difference and made a unitary state impossible. In this short essay I allude to the historical-geographical construction of Canada and the type of confederation it encouraged. I show how deeply different identities are ingrained in the fabric of this country. As the state cannot provide equally for all these identities, I consider the special claims of Native peoples and French speakers, particularly in relation to those of multiculturalism, and argue that the country has a particular responsibility to those societies that were here before the Canadian state, and found it super-imposed upon them. Overall, I try to show that Canadian patriotism, based less on an overriding meta-narrative (which the country had never found) than on an appreciation of difference and the responsibilities of citizenship, provides a welcome alternative to either an exclusionary ethnic nationalism or a borderless electronic postmodernity. Keywords: identity, nationalism, federalism, multiculturalism, archipelago, Aboriginal people, ethnicity, citizenship