<Begin Segment 7>

OK: And it was also that one time I made a trip out west to Calgary where my sister-in-law and her husband lived. And I went to see them and they were having a barbeque. And my sister-in-law was introducing me to... and my brother was, her husband was a lawyer in Calgary, and these were all lawyers. And he was introducing me, she was introducing me to them and one of them says, "What do you do?" And I said, "Well, I work for the Commissioner of Official Languages in Ottawa." "You son of a bitch." I looked at him and I was absolutely stunned. I thought he was joking. And it was again, "How could you do that? How could you work on something like that which is against the interests of Alberta?" And I never viewed Official Languages as being against the interests of any particular province, but these people obviously did. The irony is, in the end, every one of those people who was at that barbeque sent their kids to bilingual immersion programs. Because they came to understand how important the French language was in the development, the modern development of Canada. But their initial reaction was like Horner and others, that, "You're selling out this province because you're supporting a policy which supports a particular ethnic community in Canada." And the narrowness of their vision of the country was absolutely astounding to me. Just astounding that, "How could you not understand how important this was to the French Canadian community?" That here was a community that was awakening in the late '60s into the '70s, and it was going to become a very, very powerful political force, and they didn't have any clue. I mean, and these were highly educated individuals, they weren't, you know, people working in the fields of Alberta, they were lawyers and others, and it just shocked me. And I said to my sister-in-law's husband, "What kind of people do you work with?" And Pat was not like that. He was very much a progressive and very much a supporter of what liberal government was doing at this time, but he was out of step with his colleagues in that law office. It was astounding to me.

And I guess those were kind of the, some of the things that when I went to work in multiculturalism, those experiences came with me. And in a way, helped me deal with the French Canadian community, which was strongly opposed to multiculturalism. So you had these forces in Canada that a lot of people who were supportive of multiculturalism were opposed to bilingualism. People who were highly supportive of bilingualism were opposed to multiculturalism, and trying to build bridges. And that was, in my view, the genius of Trudeau, that what he attempted to do, that I've often said that Canada as a country set out to do two areas of public policy that would effect tremendous change in the political culture of the society. And they were incredibly ambitious; incredibly challenging things to do. And that Trudeau was able to persuade his colleagues to move in those directions was an act of genius in my estimation. That, I mean, if you look at the polls that were done in terms of support for official languages, it was just, outside of Quebec was absolutely opposed. And even for multiculturalism there was, in the ethnic communities, strong support, but in the dominant Anglo-Saxon community and the French Canadian community, strong, strong opposition. Strong opposition that you were somehow, on the part of the Anglo Saxon elite in Canada, "You've made us concede to this bilingualism stuff. We can buy that to a certain degree, now you want us to go into this multiculturalism stuff? This a British-French country." And they conceded that it was now, there was a French component which they had not acknowledged for a good part of Canadian history, but to ask them to go further was something they were unprepared to do.

And I'll never forget early meetings I had in the early '70s, '72 and '73, meeting with the editorial board of the Toronto Globe and Mail, which was the newspaper of record in Canada, to talk to them about the multiculturalism program, and literally being tossed out of the room. "What are you doing here talking about this nonsense? This is political pandering to ethnics in Canada, get out of here." Meeting with some academics, Ramsay Cook and others who, "Get out of here. What are you doing with this stuff?" You know, "You've prostituted yourself as an academic by even, one, going to work in the bureaucracy," because that was not viewed as a positive thing to do. "But selling this kind of stuff? Get lost." I mean, the opposition was just widespread and deep in the society to both policies. And that he was, Trudeau was able to push these things through his caucus, through Parliament, was a rather remarkable achievement, particularly with multiculturalism, knowing that the French elites were strongly opposed to it. I mean, the prime minister or the premier of Quebec, Robert Bourassa, just strongly announced Trudeau for doing the Multiculturalism Program. I mean, "You can't recognize these other ethnics because that diminishes us."

And that always struck me as a curious thing. Why the recognition of one peoples diminishes another people? I mean, why people think in those terms. And people always want to talk about tolerance, and I'm not a great proponent of tolerance. I'm a strong proponent of acceptance. You've got to accept people, and if you can't accept them, don't talk to me about being tolerant to them. If you're tolerant when you don't accept, you're not doing anything really useful. You're not being genuine, you're not being truly open. And so there, a measure of tolerance developed in Canada to French Canadians, but on the part of a lot of people in the ethnic communities and in the Anglo Saxon elite, there was very little acceptance. And that has come slowly. It's there in a way it wasn't there in the past, I think it's there today in Canada with respect to ethnic minorities in the way it wasn't in the past, but it isn't fully there. I mean, there's still, contrary to what a lot of Canadians like to believe about themselves, a deeply held antipathy to diversity. I mean, diversity is complications; diversity makes people have to work at things. It's so much simpler if everybody is the same, then you don't have to worry about acceptance. And so what I have basically preached most of my career was, "How do we get people to accept one another?" I mean that if we can't get acceptance, then don't talk to me about tolerance, because I don't want that kind of tolerance. So when I went to work in the Multiculturalism Program, one of the things that Ostry, Bernard Ostry had asked me to do was to start providing some kind of academic research basis to some of the things that were being done, because we knew very little about the ethnic communities in Canada. We knew virtually nothing about the Japanese Canadian community.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.