- "In
order to adapt to the new continent, discover its
spirit and learn to survive in its environment, our
ancestors had to borrow the ways and customs of our
native peoples--a first instance of the cultural
interaction which was to recur every time a new ethnic
group landed here. Haphazardly brought together along
trails, roads and portages, our families mingled their
labours, sufferings and joys, joined their traditions
and buttressed their courage, so that this country
could develop socially, politically and economically.
"
"We
claimed an immense, almost unfathomable land in which
"the soul-- or the personality--seems to have
indefinite room to expand," said the poet Rupert
Brooke." ....
"By
no means must we renounce our national personality, our
regional characteristics or our distinctive cultural
traits, whoever we are or wherever we live in Canada. On
the contrary, we must assert the Canadian identity,
establish once and for all what this identity consists
of, and express it more vigorously through our actions,
both individual and collective. " ...
"We
have been obsessed with this search for identity for a
long time. "The future of Canada, I believe,
depends very largely upon the cultivation of a national
spirit", proclaimed the parliamentarian Edward
Blake, scarcely six years after Confederation; "we
must find some common ground on which to unite, some
common aspiration to be shared, and I think it can be
found alone in the cultivation of that national spirit
to which I have referred." But for a long time the
linguistic duality and regional diversity of Canada have
been perceived as almost insurmountable obstacles to the
creation of "a peculiar national temperament and
bent of mind", in the words used by Archibald
Lampman in the 1880s." ...
"This
country, which Jean Talon already called Canada three
centuries ago, has