Life under the Family Compact

 

y friend the literary immigrant laments that the Canadian literary scene is cliquish. This is a longstanding problem. It is a continuing Canadian problem; it is a burden of our colonial history. one can trace it back to the days of the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique. My literary friend is not equipped to understand, because she comes from Iran. Unlike Iran, at least in recent centuries, Canada has a history and a self-identity as a colony. This causes Canadians to undervalue anything domestic, and overvalue anything foreign: power and significance always comes from away. Ideally not from the United States, because we also define ourselves in contrast to the United States. One result is that anything “diverse,” that is, from abroad, is celebrated and admired. Including foreign governments, as bad as they might be. 

Another consequence is that the popular, the people, are undervalued. They are, after all, stupid colonials, far from the sources of metropolitan wisdom. Cliques form on the implicit premise that to be of any cultural value, to be worthy of power, one must be apart from the general herd. In Canada, this has usually been based on having been born abroad, or educated abroad, or making it abroad.

This is the foundation of “multiculturalism.” Recent immigrants like my friend blunder into this, and benefit from it, without generally finding any sense in it. They know things suck where they came from. They know things are oddly cliquish in Canada. But why bring that up, when, as a "minority," you are being treated like royalty?

This is a world in which it is hard to be honest.