On Cultural Appropriation

 

Friend Cyrus laments that Toronto lacks cultural traditions and seasonal rituals, unlike cities he knows in Europe, or like NYC “where there's so much that ‘everyone knows’ about the city, down to the level of individual city blocks, and so many experiences everyone rushes to repeat every year in its proper season.”

I know what he means about the city having so little lore. This has always bothered me about Canada in general. It is one reason I ran off to Asia. It is a big reason why I write poetry—to try to consecrate the ground and our shared life on it. It is why Canada is so notoriously dull.

Of course, Europe and Asia have had more history, and more time to accumulate cultural touchstones. But we do not do well, as he notes, in comparison to the US of A either, which is full of references by comparison. Back in Syracuse, I was in the middle of the burnt-over district. Not to mention homes of Mark Twain, Rod Serling, and L. Frank Baum.

I think it comes from having been colonized, in the true sense. We as Canadians have been conditioned to believe that anything of significance happens elsewhere. Previously in Europe, more recently in the USA, increasingly in Asia. The US, by comparison, threw off that sense of inferiority emphatically over two hundred years ago. They dumped it into Boston harbor. 

Multiculturalism is both a symptom and a cause of the disease: it assumes culture is, by its nature, foreign.

 I know what Cyrus means too about old neighbourhoods losing their character as new groups move in. He writes “Toronto lost many of its one-time customs and old neighbourhood identities through the years of immigration, population churn and transformation that followed the Second World War.” That is multiculturalism. There is almost no hint left of old Jewish Spadina and Kensington Market. There is no trace left of old Irish Cabbagetown and Corktown. I used to live at the end of King Street, almost at the point where the Battle of York was fought. There was no trace of a memorial. I had to do heavy research to figure out the spot. It is occupied by a monument to the Katyn Massacre.

In the US, it seems instead that each new wave of immigrants enriches the culture with the best of what they bring. This is the melting pot. Hot dogs and hamburgers from Germany; rock and roll from Africa; movies about Italian-American gangsters; and so on and on. But multiculturalism ghettoizes us in Canada instead, so that we ignore and do not learn from one another. Each new wave just paves over the last. Making Canada less like a home and more like a hotel.

The spring cherry blossoms in High Park are one example of a cultural tradition that has jumped the fence of prejudice and become pan-Canadian. It deserves celebration.

Cultural appropriation is the foundation of all civilization, and all culture.