In his 1997 book National Dreams: Myth, Memory and Canadian History, which explores the roots, foundations and part-truths that form the basis of Canadian identity, historian Daniel Francis wrote that civic ideology in a country like Canada must be a deliberate product: something that needs to be “continually recreated and reinforced.” Canadians rely on this social construct more than other people, Mr. Francis argued, “because we lack a common religion, language, or ethnicity, because we are spread out so sparsely across such a huge piece of real estate.” It is not, as Mr. Francis wrote, something “we come by naturally.”
Surely that is even more true now than it was more than 25 years ago.
