I was asked a few weeks a go by a student to compose a short article on Canadian culture. I sat on the request for sometime. I spent days thinking and talking with other Canadians about how one can define our culture. Everyone I polled produced the same short list, “Hockey, Poutine, Tim Horton’s…” and then they all ended the conversation with the same comment that I was embarrassed to admit: “I don’t think we (Canadians) really have a culture.”

That comment is true. Yet it is not a sad truth, it is one that should be celebrated. Canada doesn’t have ‘a’ culture, we have many cultures. We are a land of immigrates which encourages and welcomes diversity and the maintenance and practice of other cultures under one flag. It is this aggregate of cultures that makes Canada’s one culture, diversity.

Canada is not a melting pot where we expect new immigrants to adopt a new code of behavior and rules; Canada is more like a tossed salad. Individuals who become Canadian citizens are encouraged to maintain their cultural identities, complete with customs, languages, and traditions, causing Canada to often be referred to as a mosaic. For example, in Nunuvat the primary language is Inuitituk with secondary services available to individuals in English. Pierre Trudeau may have said it best “We are a bilingual country with a multicultural face.”

Enhancing, preserving, and sharing Canada’s multiple cultures is a subject that all Canadians greatly value, and could be considered a reason why Canada is regarded as one of the most prominent countries in the world.