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MICHIEL HORN GLENDON COLLEGE, YORK UNIVERSITY "Identities Are Not Like Hats": Reflections on Identity Change, Dutch to Canadian

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MICHIEL HORN GLENDON COLLEGE, YORK UNIVERSITY MICHIEL HORN GLENDON COLLEGE, YORK UNIVERSITY "Identities are not like hats": Reflections on Identity Change, Dutch to Canadian In 2004 the Congress of the Humanities and any study, whether individual or more gen­ Social Sciences, with which CAANS meets eral, of the adaptation of immigrants to their annually, met at the University of Manitoba host country. and had as its theme "Confluence: ideas, identities, place". Quite possibly inspired In an overview of Dutch immigration and by Winnipeg's origins at the confluence of adaptation to Canada, Herman Ganzevoort the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, the theme writes: "Few immigrants purposely aban­ invited reflection about Canadian-ness, for doned the past or wholeheartedly accepted the population of this country has "flowed the Canadian way, yet by simply being in together" from an increasing number of other Canada they were changed. While most countries. How have they modified or shed of the first generation never did become their former national identity to become completely Canadianized, they also never Canadian - and in changing, what have remained wholly Dutch. They became tran­ they changed into? What has this meant for sitional in character."2 Most of us will intui­ people who have their origins in the Nether­ tively recognize truth in these lines. Yet the lands? questions remain. What is "the Canadian way"? 1 tried to address the process of becoming Canadian in my book Becoming Canadian: More than one eminent Canadian historian Memoirs of an Invisible Immigrant. In it 1 asked has over the years addressed the issue of the question: "In becoming Canadian, what Canadian identity. Forty-five years ago, W L. did 1 become? ... What is a Canadian? The Morton, then of the University of Manitoba, simple answer is 'a resident of Canada who published four essays as a book with the has Canadian citizenship.' As a legal defini­ title The Canadian Identity. As Morton saw tion this is fine, but in a country of immi­ it, this identity was rooted in several ineluc­ grants it unavoidably strikes many people as table facts: first, the country's northernness; being too simple. Does being Canadian mean second, the cultural duality that took shape conforming to a Canadian type and accepting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Canadian values? And if so, what are they?"l third, its history as a British dependency; Questions like this are bound to come up in fourth, its retention of the British monarchy 34 Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies even after independence had been achieved; lectuals Canadians find this situation quite fifth, its continued membership in the British satisfactory. "5 Commonwealth; and sixth, its proximity to the United States. Seeking a theme in Canadi­ Soon afterwards the University of Toronto's an history, he found it in "endurance and sur­ ]. M. S. Careless took up Cook's suggestion. vival." The lessons of our history, he wrote, Offering two quite different accounts, both were two: "One is that the only real victories plausible, of the course and significance of are the victories over defeat. We have been Canadian history from the Laurier years into beaten many times ... but we survive and the 1960s, one written from a centralist and we go on in strength. And our experience the other from a regionalist point of view, teaches also that what is important is not to Careless asked how the Canadian experience have triumphed, but to have endured."3 (The was to be discerned and defined. Much of sceptical observer may say that this is mak­ that experience, he answered, lay in the "lim­ ing a virtue of necessity). Morton felt that the ited identities" identified by Cook. "These preservation of a national society in which represent entities of experience for Canadi­ "two major cultures and many smaller ones" ans no less than the transcontinental federal lived together was "not the unique mission of union; indeed, it is largely through them that Canada." However, he concluded, "it is the Canadians interpret their nation-state as a central fact of Canadian history that it has whole."6 These factors were evident in other been preserved and elaborated by Canadi­ countries as well, and they had not escaped ans in one of the largest, harshest, and most notice by Canadians. "But what is still needed intimidating countries on earth. Canada, that is more study of their roles in this country of is, has preserved and confirmed the essentials relatively weak nationalizing forces: a land of of the greatest of civilizations in the grimmest two languages, pluralized politics, and ethnic of environments."4 multiplicity, yet all so far contained within one distinctive frame of nation-state exis­ A few years later Ramsay Cook, a member of tence."? the University of Toronto History department though about to move to York University, re­ In the year 2000, Cook returned to the sub­ stated the issue of identity Morton, it seemed, ject that had first engaged him in the mid- had not persuaded everybody back in 1960, 1960s. The limited-identities hypothesis had for by 1967, the centennial of Confedera­ proved to be useful, he wrote, but its limits tion, there was a good deal of hand-wringing also needed to be highlighted. "Identities, about the absence of a clearly defined Cana­ limited or unlimited, local or national, are dian identity Cook did not share this alarm. neither hermetically sealed nor easily defined. "Perhaps instead of constantly deploring our Their edges are always fuzzy and shifting .. , lack of identity," he wrote,"we should attempt Identities are not essential but contingent, to understand and explain the regional, eth­ constructed and deconstructed by changing nic and class identities that we do have ... It historical circumstances."8 He went on to might just be that it is in these limited iden­ make a further remark that is of particular tities that 'Canadianism' is found, and that relevance to a group like the Dutch-Canadi­ except for our over-\heated nationalist intel- ans: "A little reflection, a little common sense, I I "Identities are not like hats": Reflections on Identity Change, Dutch to Canadian 35 makes it obvious that no region is only a liberally Protestant, Catholic, labour/social region, for it contains classes, ethnic groups, democrat, and secular Liberal/religiously and genders; nor is any ethnic community neutral. They were strongly present in poli­ only that, for it has its divisions, too. Regions, tics, with proportional representation guar­ groups, and individuals have several identi­ anteeing that each group would get its fair ties."9 He quotes the British-born historian representation in Parliament. Each had its Linda Colley: "Identities are not like hats. own labour unions, employer associations, Human beings can and do put on several at a voluntary organizations, and news media, time."l0 in the newspaper world but most notably in broadcasting. Schryer writes that a central How true this is of Dutch immigrants to Can­ finding of his study of Canadians of Dutch ada emerges from the book by Ganzevoort, background "is that postwar immigrants from from Anne van Arragon Hutten's engaging the Netherlands replicated many structural survey of post-war immigrant children, as features of Dutch society, despite a high level well as from Will C. van den Hoonaard's of linguistic assimilation and weak ethnic study of Dutch settlers in New Brunswick.ll identity. "14 But no author sheds more light on the com­ plexities of Dutch-Canadian identity than This last phrase is important. One key feature Frans]. Schryer in his book on the Dutch in of the Dutch-Canadian experience has in fact Ontario. His chapter on "Dutch-Canadian been a rapid weakening of Dutch identity, Dispositions: Identity and Culture" is a finely even in the first generation. The main reason nuanced and skillfully presented depiction of for this is surely the high degree of accep­ the variations among Dutch immigrants and tance and low level of discrimination experi­ the ambiguities they feel in trying to place enced by Netherlanders. In the early I970s themselves within the host society. 12 KG. O'Bryan,]. G. Reitz and o. Kuplowska surveyed ten ethnic groups in five Canadian Probably the most important variable influ­ metropolitan centres. Fully 88 per cent of the encing the process of identity change, Schryer Dutch sample responded that "discrimina­ finds, is the identity that immigrants felt they tion by employers [was] not a problem."15 had in the Netherlands. Most Dutch migra­ The only other group with a response as high tion to Canada took place during the fifteen were the Scandinavians. 16 The survey did not years after the Second World War, a time include a question concerning discrimina­ when social stratification and division into tion in other contexts, but I suspect that only religious or political groupings (verzuiling) 13 a small minority of Netherlanders would were still much in evidence. As well, regional have expressed concern. Language retention and class identities were real and strong. Fri­ among Dutch-Canadians was found to be sians had a particularly strong sense of geo­ relatively low, but this did not worry many graphical and lingUistic identity, but regional ofthe immigrant group. Some 35.2 per cent identities existed in other parts of the Nether­ of them were indifferent to the retention of lands as well. the Dutch language, and almost 15 percent thought it was actually undesirable. I? Well The five zuilen were orthodox Calvinist, more over half did not think the decreasing use of 36 Canadian Journal of N etherlandic Studies the Dutch language was a problem at all, and of all proportion to their membership. The a further 10 percent did not think it was a reason lies in their solidarity and their identi­ serious problem.
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