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A Rose by Any Other Name

To encourage the creation of works that reflect Canada’s cultural mosaic, Canadian Heritage has developed a number of strategic objectives. Chief among these is recognition of our cultural diversity.

Canada is officially bilingual. Government of Canada services are offered in both English and French across the country, and more than two million students are taking second-language courses—350,000 in immersion programs. In addition to Canada’s two official languages and Aboriginal languages from Cree to Inuktitut, community centres and schools in many parts of the country offer courses in the languages of Canada’s numerous cultural communities, including Arabic, Cantonese, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and many others. Community centres and municipally funded continuing education programs support classes in traditional dance and music. The Canada Council for the Arts, provincial arts councils, and regional and municipal governments support artists from diverse cultural backgrounds and disciplines. Municipal, regional and national museums, archives and libraries showcase the cultural and scientific achievements of Canada’s many peoples. Other Canadian institutions provide funding and support for artistic expression from diverse cultural traditions.

The Canadian Cable Television Association is a national organization representing 78 Canadian cable companies that provide a wide range of telecommunications, Internet, information and entertainment services. The cable industry currently provides television services to 7.6 million subscribers and high-speed Internet services to 2.3 million Canadians.

National Film Board (NFB) productions reflect the diversity of Canadian society. They often explore subjects related to immigration and the cultural mosaic. The NFB provides opportunities for ethnic communities in Canada to tell their stories. In 2003-2004, there were 147 original films and multimedia titles: 94 original NFB productions and 53 original co-productions. Of these, 79 were in English, 42 in French, and 26 in other languages. In addition, 25 percent of all productions were the work of artists from Aboriginal and ethnocultural communities. The NFB supports numerous festivals that screen films representing diverse cultures, such as the First Peoples Festival, the Journées du cinéma africain et créole, the Toronto Hispano Film Fest and the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival. Established in 1939, the NFB remains a major cultural institution. To date, it has received 4,724 awards in Canada and abroad, including 11 Oscars.

The wealth of Canadian diversity is also reflected in our broadcasting system. In addition to broadcasting across the country in English and French, CBC/Radio-Canada broadcasts programs in eight Aboriginal languages in Canada’s North. A wide range of private, community, and educational broadcasters deliver radio and television programming in both official languages and a number of other languages. There is also a network that broadcasts Aboriginal programs exclusively. Many local stations also allocate a portion of their daily schedules to a mix of programming from nations around the world. For its part, Radio Canada International (RCI), one of the most respected shortwave services in the world, broadcasts programs in eight languages worldwide. The CBC Newsworld in English and the Réseau de l’information (RDI) in French broadcast news and current events programs across the country 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Organizations such as Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) also ensure that funding is available for projects that tell a diverse range of stories. Both have a dubbing and captioning assistance fund to increase the exchange of cultures, ideas and stories between Canada’s French-, English- and Aboriginal-language communities, and the CTF has funding set aside specifically for Aboriginal-language projects.

“In the morning, I go to the Korean corner store to buy Le Devoir and The Gazette. Then I get my fresh challah at the European Kosher Bakery and say bonjour to my Greek neighbour. This may or may not be your Canada, but it’s my neighbourhood. And my neighbourhood is my Canada.” Marie-Louise Gay, Canadian author and illustrator

In turn, Canada’s grassroots cultural vibrancy has led to an arts scene that embraces new forms of expression. This means that beyond the established audiences for Canada’s renowned dance, theatre and opera companies and orchestras, you will also find many Canadian artists experimenting with innovative ways of bringing disparate cultural traditions together. Musicians combining the sounds of a Newfoundland jig with a Pakistani qawwal, for example, or an author using her traditional upbringing in China as a lens through which to view small-town life in Alberta. A visual artist interpreting his ancestral Aboriginal roots using multimedia computer technology, or a filmmaker charting the experience of Japanese immigrants in Canada through the eyes of her century-old ancestor. The excitement of Canadian culture today lies in fusion, based on freedom of expression, and an inherent acceptance of, and interest in, the cultural traditions of others.