“The Society of Difference”

The kind of responsible government which gave us our democracy and our exercising of it as Canadians over the last 150 years is a paradigm for what has happened in many Western industrialized countries.

Where Canada is different is that we have virtually insisted on making our society one which accepts and wishes to integrate people from all over the world. At first glance, this seems like a foolish and far-fetched notion. How do you make a country out of such disparate elements? How can you have children wearing turbans and veils and head scarves? What do you do about your Christmas tree and about the fact that people observing Ramadan may be very cross for forty days because they can’t eat between sunrise and sunset? A lot of these questions seem very trivial, and yet their very triviality makes them important in the day-to-day lives of Canadians.

First of all, we must conquer the ignorance that we have about other people’s habits and customs. How many people understand that every year Christian festivals like Easter and Muslim ones like Id al-Fitr are set by the phases of the moon? Do we know what the purpose is of going to confession in the Catholic religion or making the pilgrimage to Mecca in Islam? Can we balance out what Buddhist monks actually mean when they wear their saffron robes and carry begging bowls without asking for food? Do we actually know what circumcision signifies? Without attempting to overcome this ignorance and learn something about others, we can only hide in refuges of bigotry and prejudice.

The recent remarkable event in a small Quebec village which has prohibited women from being stoned to death is simply a manifestation of an unease with not only what is not understood but what seems to be not understandable. The fact that there is nobody asking to stone a woman to death or that the situation hasn’t really arisen where female circumcision could be banned is immaterial in this particular case because it’s really all about fear of the unknown. And yet, in this little town there are black families and black adopted children who are happily accepted by the village. Again, it’s a case of “but we know them.” The fear of the unknown is so huge that it can crush all reasonable judgments. The fact that the black family is headed by a former school principal and a town councillor who has lived in the village for thirty years and that the Haitian boy who was adopted by a white family has been happily at school and integrated for seven years does not seem like a contradiction to the rules against stoning. Perhaps this is simply a way of people reacting to what they fear is going to happen to them rather than what is actually happening.

That is why we must persist in our creation of a country which has every possible difference in it. We must encourage difference. When Voltaire went into exile in England and saw the numerous religious sects that had grown up, he observed: “If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of despotism; if there were only two, they would cut each other’s throats. But there are thirty, and they live in peace.”

We have seen this in our own history in Canada when there were only Catholics and Protestants. We had the Orange Order attempting to rip apart the fabric of the country and tear Catholicism out of it like a living sacrifice. And the Catholic ultramontane movement demonized Protestants, circling themselves in narrow prejudice. As the country opened up to everyone over the next hundred years, these pitched forces declined completely in vitality. The difference of dozens led to a harmonious civil society.

Unquestionably, the multiplication of difference has helped us to not tear each other’s throats out, but on the other hand we have to recognize that the introduction of difference has often meant that there is a period, not always concurrent, of misunderstanding, miscalculation, confusion, and adjustment. But if the long-term goal is to create a democratic project in which everyone will have a positive civic identity, then we simply have to be constructively patient while the rough places and the rough edges get smoothed and eventually buffed.

It’s a great challenge for us as Canadians because they’re not managing to pull it off in Britain, France, Germany, Holland, or even in Scandinavia, which we have always regarded as the holy of holies of democratization. Here we are out on our own, doing different things with different people.

It’s important to remember how we got here, that we started out with a very narrow base, and that as we have enlarged it, it has brought us to a greater and greater understanding of what life can be like in a civil society. After all, a civil society is a relationship of human beings, and without that fundamental condition we do not have the basis with which to negotiate our living together. When pessimistic voices are raised as to how long we can continue with our project, we have to be ready to come up with ideas which will not solve future problems but will give us exercised muscles with which to deal with problems.

I’m always extremely interested when people worry and have worried in the past about things like the rcmp wearing turbans. It caused varying degrees of consternation at the time, but now rcmp wear turbans and nobody thinks twice as they see the Musical Ride with one or two turbans in it. The very fact that people are allowed to express their identity without coercion is something which we should be grateful for. The discussion and the unease also are something we should be relaxed about. We don’t have to be happy about everything — de Gaulle with his typical acerbic asceticism said, “Happiness is for idiots.”