Courting "Our Ethnic Friends": Canadianism, Britishness, and New Canadians, 1950-1970
2006; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1913-8253
Autores Tópico(s)Canadian Identity and History
ResumoABSTRACT/RESUME A series of political memos from 1950s and 1960s reveal in striking detail major political parties competed for allegiance of ethnic minority voters. Political courtship helped integrate new Canadians into civic life, and in particular, into Canada's British parliamentary system with its voting blocs, interest groups, and networks resembling patron-client relationships. The historiography has neglected foundational contribution of ethnic courtship to this story. In turn, a misunderstood aspect of ethnic integration has been role of ethnic voices in flag debate of 1964, when country is presumed to have adopted a more inclusive flag. Some Anglo-Canadian nationalists assumed that immigrants and ethnics could not relate to Canada's Britishness. But some could, and record reveals a complex nexus between ethnic political participation, changes in symbolic order, and emergence of multiculturalism. Une serie de memoires politiques au cours des decennies 1950 et 1960 revele de facon saisissante et en detail comment les partis politiques importants ont rivalise pour se procurer la fidelite d'electeurs de minorite ethniques. En faisant la cour aux ethniques, les partis politiques ont aide a integrer les Canadiens-Nouveaux a la vie civique et en particulier au systeme parlementaire britannique du Canada avec ses blocs de vote, groupes d'interet et reseaux qui ressemblaient aux rapports de client-patron. L'historiographie a neglige la contribution fondamentale de cette cour aux a l'histoire. A son tour, un aspect mal compris de l'integration des communautes est le role de leurs voix dans la discussion du drapeau de 1964, quand on pretend que le pays a adopte un drapeau plus inclusif. Certains nationalistes Anglo-canadiens ont suppose que les immigrants et ethniques ne pouvaient pas s'associer au Britishness du Canada. Mais certains ont bien pu le faire, et le record revele une relation complexe entre la participation politique ethnique, les changements dans l'ordre symbolique et la naissance du multiculturalisme. INTRODUCTION In summer of 1961, 37-year-old Liberal Party organizer Andrew E. Thompson, MPP for Dovercourt, Ontario, packed his suitcase and moved in for a month with a family of Toronto immigrants to discover how Italians live. It was a interlude for Thompson (Toronto Star 26 June 1961)-an episode interpreted by Franca Iacovetta as typical of Anglo-Saxon condescension toward hardworking exotics (Iacovetta 1992, 121). (1) No doubt there was something patronizing, a touch of British-Toronto, about Thompson's whimsical experiment. But term strange had some justification, for Thompson was himself an immigrant, an Ulster Protestant from Belfast, with a ruddy complexion and a flowing Irish accent (Palmer 1976, 327, n. 10; Who's Who 1969, 1082; Manthorpe 1974, 67). (2) He also had an affinity for what, at time, seemed quaint and beguiling: urban immigrant groups. More prosaically, resourceful activist was keen to win over votes that such liaisons might accrue for provincial and national Liberal parties. A series of memos written by Thompson a half-century ago reveal in remarkable detail major political parties came to grips with ethnic voters in 1950s and 1960s. Ten years prior to his Italian interlude, ambitious Ulster-Ontarian had parlayed a master's degree in social work from University of British Columbia and his proclivity for unfamiliar into a highly successful political career as friend of Toronto's ethnic communities and a key mobilizer of his party's electoral base. Three weeks before 1953 election that gave Louis St. Laurent a second majority government, Thompson raised alarm that the ethnic vote was shifting to Progressive Conservatives under George Drew. The Tories, Thompson warned, had seized control of ethnic press. …
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