Culture Wise Canada
Graeme Chesters & Sally Jennings
Travellers often underestimate the depth of cultural isolation they can face abroad, particularly in a country with a different language. To many people, Canada is seen as an ‘easy’ option, with its English language (in most places), long history of immigration and multicultural society. However, sooner or later, most newcomers find certain aspects of Canadian life alien – not least the weather – and some come unstuck as a result. Culture Wise Canada will help you understand Canada and its people, and adapt to the Canadian way of life. Most importantly, it will enable you to quickly feel at home.
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Extracts from the book…
Climate
Life in Canada is heavily influenced by the climate, which is nothing less than daunting in much of the country. It doesn’t just get very cold, but very hot too: while it can be -40°C in the winter, it can be 40°C in the summer – and as humid as the tropics. Having to put up with such extremes has made Canadians impressively adaptable, able to tolerate anything that Mother Nature throws at them. It also means that they spend a lot of time indoors (to keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer), which probably explains why they invented the board game Trivial Pursuit.
The long, severe winters in much of Canada have a significant effect on how people live their lives. You have to be patient in winter and take things at a leisurely pace, because it can take a long time to get anywhere, to have things delivered or to get anything done.
Temperatures of -20°C are common and -40°C is often exceeded in the east and north, sometimes for weeks on end. This type of weather can be wearing and depressing: many institutional buildings such as schools, especially in the coldest areas, have few or no windows (for reasons of insulation), and people can spend only a minimal amount of time outdoors in the winter, leading to seasonal affective disorder (SAD – which is depression and lethargy caused by a lack of natural light).
The population in the bleakest northern areas of Canada is very sparse – too low for there to be a variety of activities – which has an obvious effect on people’s state of mind. This is best illustrated by the fact that Inuit suicide rates are six times the national average, although this is the result of cultural alienation as well as climate.
Apart from Vancouver and Victoria, Canada’s cities also have harsh winters. Montreal has more snow than any other major city in the world, and major blizzards regularly strike Toronto and other east Canadian cities, especially between December and March. The Maritimes (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island) have less snow than much of the country, but are still colder than the west coast. Alberta has relatively little snow because it’s dry, and some Canadians maintain that Calgary has the perfect winter, due to its blue skies and warming Chinook winds. In comparison with the rest of Canada, winter on the west coast is very mild, similar to winters in Western Europe.
Attitudes to Foreigners
Canada has an official policy of multiculturalism, is pro-immigration, and its race relations are described as among the world’s best. That doesn’t mean that racism is unknown, however, and the indications in
the early 21st century are that it’s increasing, particularly against Arabs and Muslims, as a result of terrorism. Recent surveys (by Statistics Canada and the newspaper Globe & Mail) show that 36 per cent of ‘visible’ minorities feel that they’ve experienced discrimination because of their ethno-cultural characteristics. Nearly half of black people and Aboriginal people (living off-reserve) reported discrimination, but ‘only’ a third of Asians had experienced it.
Racism is most evident in the cities, where 95 per cent of visible minorities live. In Vancouver and Toronto, over a third of the population is a visible minority, projected to increase to half by 2016. Canada’s vastness affects how some Canadians view other countries. People who live on the west coast fail to take much interest in what happens on the (very) distant east coast (and vice versa), let alone in anything happening abroad, which might as well be on another planet. Events occurring even in Europe (the ‘mother continent’ for a lot of Canadians) are regarded as having little or no influence on life in Canada. Indeed, Canadians sometimes find it difficult to relate to events happening in small countries, i.e. most other countries, from a Canadian viewpoint. Compared to Americans, however, Canadians are extremely alert to international events, and their best newspapers are anything but parochial.
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PRICE: £9.95
PUBLICATION: January 2008
EDITION: 1st
PAGES: 240
BINDING: paperback
SIZE: 200 x 130mm
COLOUR PHOTOS: approx. 200
