Thanksgiving, Christmas, funerals, Easter - there are only a few times every year when we gather with family and friends to sit down at the dinner table together. At my age, everyone's drinking, and plenty of those relatives are quite distant. This, of course, leads to some disagreements.
As someone who writes for a living, these disagreements, however frustrating they might be, are wonderful in their own way. More column fodder.
So here's something I heard at two different dinner table discussions with completely different groups of people. Two unrelated people trotted out the line that they were sick and tired of immigrants trying to keep their lifestyles in Canada. When people come to Canada, they said, they have to adopt "Canadian values." Both people brought up women wearing hijabs or RCMP officers wearing turbans.
Firstly, I think that the phrase "Canadian values" is a little bit strange. What, exactly is Canadian culture? My ancestry is Dutch, Scottish, and either Belorussian, Ukrainian, Polish or Russian (the fact that no one in our family is quite sure is itself evidence of how complex my ethnic identity is). I was raised on Dutch food (stroopwafels, dropje, hagelslag, croquettes), a vague Scottish pride, a love for Russian music and literature, Japanese martial arts and (since the opening of a certain restaurant in Edmonton) Laotian and Thai food. I went to a small private school and my friends were African, Middle-eastern and Pakistani Muslims, Christians of all stripes, Jews, atheists or agnostics. I was myself raised completely irreligiously. Religion simply wasn't discussed and we never went to church.
My family celebrated Christmas in the way most people in Canada do - with nativity scenes (Christian), Santa Claus (himself a fusion of a figure of old English folklore, a Dutch saint and a Greek Orthodox one), and a Christmas tree (originally a secular German tradition). I could go on and on and on.
But the point is that I, like most Canadians, wasn't raised by one specific tradition. Much of what we did was Christian, but we also celebrated the end of Ramadan with mouth-watering baklava, Chinese New Year, and (if we were lucky enough to be invited) Seder. My "Canadian identity" didn't consist of this culture or that culture. For me, what it means to be a Canadian is that I am surrounded by diversity. If someone else brings their culture to the mix, so much the better.
So what are "Canadian values?" Well, today, as it was in my parents' childhood, "Canadian values" means acceptance, diversity, tolerance. That's what we see around us. Another view, of course, is that Canadian values are better defined by our laws. But our laws, including the Bill of Rights, support acceptance, tolerance and diversity.
Of course, the picture is more complicated. "Tolerance," after all, isn't a noble goal in itself, and certainly not Canada's. We don't "tolerate" murder. But our past and the laws have made quite clear what the Canadian attitude is. People are free to do what they want culturally as long as it doesn't impinge on other peoples' rights. Should an RCMP officer be allowed to wear a turban? No one is being affected by his choice of headgear besides himself. Granted, the RCMP uniform has never involved a turban before, but it has also undergone many changes.
This brings me to my second point, about tradition. Both participants in dinner table conversations brought up the issue of Canadian "tradition" being destroyed by the influx of immigrants.
Tradition is a dangerously slippery concept. Is tradition what our parents did? Their parents? Some of both? Everything that is now considered "traditional" was once brand spanking new. And there are plenty of "traditions" that almost no one has any time for. How many Canadians would consider the idea that women shouldn't wear pants "traditional?"
Many people think that when they appeal to tradition, they're not talking about their own values. Our neighbours to the south in particular like to talk about how half of the country believes in their own "liberal values" and the other half believes in tried-and-true traditions. The implication, which is frequently spelled out directly, is that so-called liberals just create whatever beliefs they want, while so-called conservatives "take" their beliefs from history.
In Canada, for example, gay marriage is a relatively uncontroversial topic. It's legal, and the most conservative federal party has no plans to revisit the debate. But in the United States, the debate rages on. For those in favour of legalizing gay marriage, the argument is clear - you can't discriminate against someone on the basis of their sexuality. For conservatives, the argument is equally clear. "Marriage" has always been defined in terms of a man and a woman.
Except that this isn't true. The definition of marriage has changed many, many times even just in western culture. Marriage once had nothing to do with love (or even choice). Men were once all but expected to keep mistresses, now it is frowned upon. In the United States, 41 out of 50 states created anti-miscegenation laws, which meant marriage was only supposed to be between men and women of the same race. Divorce has fallen in and out of favour, depending on one's religion, and divorce rights have also changed dramatically. The comparative status of the husband and wife have also undergone changes, as exemplified in divorce agreements. Marriage isn't, nor has it ever been, a static thing.
So someone who believes in legal divorce can consider his or herself traditional. So can someone who believes in the opposite.
Anyone who wants to base their beliefs on the past is making decisions just as much as the so-called liberal mentioned above. Which era do you choose? What do you keep from the present? No conservative wants eight-year-olds working in factories.
In part because I was eventually drowned out (once by detractors, once by supporters), I never got to deliver my dinner table response to those who believe people coming to Canada should adopt "Canadian values," and they were sick and tired of putting up with other cultures. So here it is.
Putting up with other cultures is part of our values as Canadians. If you don't want to live here, you don't have to. Everyone in Canada is subject to the same laws - if someone wants to do something Canada considers illegal, they're not allowed to regardless of their culture or religion. Talk of Canadian "tradition" is equally ridiculous. There's no such thing as a simple, easily-defined Canadian "tradition" that hasn't changed over time. Some people might declare they want to keep their parents' values. Why not their grandparents? And which of those values do you want to keep, and which do you want to throw away?
We have always lived in a changing world. The pace of technological innovation and globalization has meant we experienced greater changes in this century than any other time in human history. The invention of photography and video mean we have also witnessed the world of our ancestors to a greater degree than any other generation.
It's understandable people want respite from this change - it's exhausting to keep up with. It's difficult to feel at home in a world with a changing demographic makeup, changing gender relationships, bewildering technology and so on.
Everyone, at every time in human history, has felt confused and lost in the world. In the words of Kafka, "we are as forlorn as children lost in the woods." Making sense of an arbitrary, seemingly indifferent world has always been a central human conflict.
Some people deal with this feeling by blaming others, or by blaming the era they live in. Neither works. There was no golden age, and there has never been an easily-defined scapegoat responsible for human decline. We can always demand justice and fairness. We should always approach life from a perspective of love. But we should also remember that "utopia" literally means nowhere. There is no perfect era to return to, no one source for our problems. At the end of the day, a woman wearing a hijab is not a serious issue
