Isuma

VivianLea Doubt

Thompson Rivers University

SOCI 399: Project Exam

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I want to begin this paper with some words of John Ralston Saul, writing on the Inuit

concept of “isuma”:

The Inuit quality of isuma summarizes that essential context. It has as much to do
with positive nationalism as with the public good. Isuma – intelligence that
consists of the knowledge of our responsibilities towards our society. It is a
characteristic which grows with time. If you choose to look, you can find it at the
core of events through the long line of the Canadian experience. It is an
intelligence, the Inuit say, which grows because it is nurtured (Saul, 1997, p. 508).

Perhaps I can delineate an idea from human geography on cognitive or mental mapping – the

psychological constructs that people carry as representatives of geographic areas. Using the

techniques of mental mapping, we see that people hold very different mental images of the same

places – this becomes particularly interesting when people are asked about their impressions of

places they‟ve never been to. The „North‟ for example, might conjure up a wide variety of

images for different individuals. This could be seen as important when we think of the vastness

of Canada, the differences between regions, and the multiplicity of ethnicities. This diversity of

images or constructs is a huge part of Canadian identity – not just in relation to geography but in

cultural terms. Perhaps we have developed a reputation as tolerant, or polite, or as peacekeepers

in large part because we hold this multiplicity of images. This shaping of the imagining of

Canada – whether for good or ill – must in large measure be attributed to the reflection, writings,

and speech of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. But Trudeau, so to speak, did not spring fully formed from

the head of Zeus, so we will turn back a little in history first.

Lord Durham‟s report to the British government recommended that the English needed to

attempt to destroy French nationalism, and that Upper and Lower Canada should be united with

one legislature and free votes, rather than continue under the rule of a (British) military governor.

Although he did not live to see it, The Act of Union came into force in 1841. The French
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members of the new legislature under Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine, and the English members

under Robert Baldwin joined forces, and these two are called the „fathers of responsible

government‟ – it was their actions that brought about the nation-state of Canada, in both real and

imagined ways. When I speak of the real, I refer to the accomplishments of a public university

and public education, municipal democracy, legal reforms, the post office, the railroads. When I

speak of the imagined, I refer to the ideas and concepts of the „great ministry‟; the idea, as John

Ralston Saul describes it, “that serving the public good in Canada would be based on restraint

and moderation” (1997). Surely Baldwin and LaFontaine must represent one of the stories that

hold us together as a nation – that there, 150-odd years ago, began what Stephen Leacock calls

“that peculiar balance of nationalities which has held the French and English together ever since

by keeping them sufficiently apart” (1941, p.136).

Nationalism, as it is generally understood, is the sense of identity held by belonging to a

nation; here we see the articulation of the view of the two-nations theory of Canadian history.

This dualism, as it is called, ignores the First Nations role in the history of Canada, which seems

striking when we consider the differences between Canada and the US. While relations between

First Nations and immigrants were by no means always peaceful, never the less they were far

more cooperative than the American example. George III of England, in the Royal Proclamation

of 1763 declared:

And whereas it is just and reasonable, and essential to our Interest, and the
Security of our Colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom
We are connected, and who live under our Protection, should not be molested or
disturbed in the Possession of such Parts of Our Dominions and Territories as, not
having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as
their Hunting Grounds (Maton, 1996).
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The Canadian fur trade and subsequent exploration of the country was dependant on the many

First Nations people who guided, befriended, and worked side by side with the newcomers from

overseas, and the development of the country must be traced at least in part to this history. But

we will come back to this at a later point, in order to next consider Quebec nationalism.

According to Trudeau, “British-Canadian nationalism gave rise, as was inevitable, to

French-Canadian nationalism”.

For a conquered, occupied, decapitated people shut out of the commercial

domain, driven out of the cities, reduced little by little to a minority, and with
diminished influence in a land they had discovered, explored, and colonized,
there were not many attitudes of mind left that would have allowed them to
preserve that which made them themselves. The security system they created
around themselves resulted in a stranglehold; in its clutches people sometimes
attached too great a price to everything that distinguished them from everybody
else, and regarded with hostility any change (even if it were progress) suggested
from the outside (Couture, 1998, p. 27).

A Globe and Mail article suggests that pre-quiet-revolution Quebec was characterized by

“church repression, reactionary politics, and cultural isolation” (Yakabuski, K., 2007).This

characterization has certainly been challenged, even called a “noisy evolution” by one writer, but

in general the period 1960 -1966, roughly, is seen as the blossoming of political, intellectual, and

artistic life in the province. (It owes its name to the musings of a reporter on the changes.) The

Quebec government‟s website calls it a “period of major social reforms”. Jean Lesage as the

leader of the Liberal party became the „father‟ of these reforms, which included the

secularization of the school system, the Quebec Pension Plan, a new labour code, to name just a

few. Many of these reforms necessitated the transfer of fiscal powers from the federal to

provincial government, and relations were strained between the government of Canada and

Quebec. Another source of tension was the desire of French Canadians to be recognised as
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equals in Confederation: a source of tension in federal/provincial relations but a burgeoning of

optimism for the people of Quebec in general.

Pierre Trudeau was a force in the quiet revolution, as an intellectual and a writer and the

founder of Cite Libré, which was in its essence the exploring of the redefinition of the “role and

place” of French Canadians (Belanger, 2000). In government, Trudeau implemented the findings

of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism into the Official Languages Act

passed in 1969. The aims of Trudeau are described by Belanger as “increased identification of

francophones with Canada, and a greater role given to French Canadians and their language in

the federal government… to channel Quebec nationalism and deliver a deadly blow to separation

in Quebec” (2000).

In 1971, Pierre Trudeau spoke these words in the House of Commons:

National unity, if it is to mean anything in the deeply personal sense, must be

founded on confidence in one‟s own individual identity; out of this can grow
respect for that of others, and a willingness to share ideas, attitudes, and
assumptions. A vigorous policy of multiculturalism will help create this initial
confidence. It can form the base of a society which is based on fair play for all.

Trudeau‟s belief was in equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. When he said that

Canada had no official culture, he said very clearly that no one group could uniquely claim to

embody ‘Canadianess‟. This was a statement that moved Canada into a brave new age, for as

Kymlicka writes “all liberal democracies have, at one point or another, attempted to diffuse a

single societal culture, namely, that of the dominant majority” (Kymlicka & Straehle, 1999). The

policy of multiculturalism, in contrast, said that an individuals‟ culture provided the very

foundation that enabled the growth and participation in society of that individual. If culture,

which is at the heart of individuals, could be denigrated or devalued or smothered out of

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existence by a majority, the prospects of equality of opportunity for that individual would be

constrained; in effect the outcome was preordained.

By way of contrast, McRoberts writes:

Over the years, other elements of the national unity strategy, such as bilingualism
or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, have tended to attract much more
attention. Yet in many respects the adoption of multiculturalism constituted the
heart of the new vision of Canada. And rightly or wrongly many Quebec
francophones have considered multiculturalism to be a direct denial of their
understanding of Canada, and have vigorously rejected it (1997, p. 117).

Neil Bissoondath writes of hyphenated Canadians, “thus the weight of the multicultural hyphen,

the pressure of the link to exoticism, can become onerous – and instead of its being an anchoring

definition, it can easily become a handy form of estrangement” (1994, p. 117). Here is the

argument that multiculturalism hinders social unity; closely related to the other major critique,

which is that collective rights pose a threat to individual rights. Kymlicka takes great care in his

position that the rights of the group need not overshadow the rights of the individual; the heart of

his argument is in an exploration of the bond between people and their culture; as alluded to

above, “because of the role it plays in enabling meaningful individual choice and in supporting

self-identity” (1995, p. 105). The summation of his thesis is that it is consistent within a liberal

democracy to accept a variety of group-differentiated rights for both national minorities and

ethnic groups, while maintaining a commitment to the freedom and equality of all.

Several writers have spoken of the rise of the constellation of identities around ethnicities

in the 1970s; the celebration of difference, some would say, while to others, identity politics. I

particularly like the way Boyle has characterized this: the „universal‟ versus the „particular‟, or

the idea that our common humanity transcends the pettiness of the ordinary, versus the „personal
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is political’ slogan of the second wave of feminism (Boyle, 2000). The essence of Granatstein‟s

argument is “multiculturalism cannot protect our nationality because, while it preaches tolerance,

many believe, as I do, that it is more divisive than uniting.” A few pages further on he identifies

what he believes to be uniquely Canadian:

The attachment to land and family. Quebec survivance. Institutions. Our deep-
rooted traditions of order and civility. And our history, our belief that we have
done great things together in the past and can do them again in the future
(Granatstein, 1998).

The problem is that this is simply another kind of identity politics, although it is generally not

framed as such, because the identity promoted is that of the so-called „mainstream‟. Schools and

universities certainly became the centre of debate around both inclusiveness and separation;

debate that for some threatened the very ethos of the idea of public education and the autonomy

of the universities. We can hardly ignore Granatstein‟s lament for the loss of history taught in

our schools, though I think it safe to assert that few want a return to those ordered rows of desks

in the 1950s classroom, and the soporific voice of a male history teacher defining the nations‟

great moments.

It was inevitable, perhaps, that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrined in 1982

should give rise to a wave of Charter challenges. Elshtain‟s argument that rights and freedoms

are always social – that rights can only be interpreted in light of how our rights affect others –

raises a necessary point that the „judicialization‟ of politics increasingly leaves the public out of

the debate. Never the less, I would put forward the point that the debate has perhaps decreased

for other reasons to do with changing work and family structures and the resulting time pressures

that have changed our public engagement. This argument, of course, has been capably presented
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by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American community and I

shall not continue it here.

But what about Trudeau‟s vision? – I hear a plaintive reader asking. Interestingly,

Trudeau himself complained that he settled for a “flawed instrument” according to Weinrib, a

Charter that did not put rights and freedoms forever beyond the reach of meddling politicians

(Cohen & Granatstein, 1998, p. 266). But Weinrib, a law professor at the University of Toronto,

offers this analysis:

The combination of the narrow limitation clause with the notwithstanding clause,
however counter-intutitive it seems, may serve rights protection effectively. These
two provisions enlist the institutional strengths of both courts of law and
representative, accountable legislatures in forwarding the Charter‟s guarantees.
Neither has an easy way out (Cohen & Granatstein, 1998, p. 266).

I summarized in a previous piece my ideas of what are uniquely Canadian:

A passionate and heartfelt attachment to celebration of diversity.

An understanding that our history contains wrongful acts and great injustices as well as

great accomplishments, and that our multicultural society is precisely what has enabled

progress forward from those historical facts.

Pride in the concept of ‘responsible government’ arising out of French/English division,

and pride in our ongoing struggles to make our confederation work.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and a system of law that ensures no government

can usurp or override those freedoms.

And to offer up the musings of Ignatieff, writing of a Cree from northern Quebec:
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The word „belong‟ and the idea of property that goes with it are as alien to the
Cree as the word „nation‟. Nationalism may be one form of Western romanticism
about nature, but in the Western tradition, patriotism is related to property and
implies unlimited dominion over nature. To Crees, this is an alien and offensive
concept. Billy does not believe he owns the land; he believes he is part of it, one
of the creatures who depend on it, not only for his life but for his vision of the
world [emphasis mine] (Ignatieff, 1993).

The point of this juxtaposition is to say that my pride in Canada does not preclude my

understandings of its failures. I was filled with shame at the remarks of the Canadian government

on the UN adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; shame and

embarrassment (Canada did not vote to adopt the proclamation). But without making light of

that, we must all recognize the complexity of our country – its history, its geography, its

peoples…There is more than one „imagined Canada‟, there is more than two „imagined Canadas‟

– and that is at the heart, I believe of Trudeau‟s vision of multiculturalism.

Trudeau inculcated a dream of the just society. We might think of political actions as

following a map; maps, mental or otherwise, are simplifications and amplifications of important

features. Dreams are personal, subjective, inchoate; the very essence of the particular. Perhaps it

was his understanding of that which allowed him to see that a truly „national dream‟ – in Pierre

Berton‟s sense of the great railway building – might never come to pass in that fashion again.

That the new national dream would be composed of images, fragments, whispers, and evocations

from millions of disparate people with a bewildering array of voice, and that it was this that

would make Canada a signally remarkable country. That the blend of the particular and the

universal would be needed in building that just society. Isuma. Not Trudeau‟s word, but never

the less at the heart of the citizenship ideal of the just society within a multicultural nation.
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