1 Creating the Canadian Mosaic
Ryan McKenney and Benjamin Bryce
Canadians often describe their country as a “mosaic.” This idea is present on government websites and in many contemporary articles in the media (on outlets such as The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, and the Huffington Post) and most importantly in the minds of people across the country. Though used in different contexts and with different goals, the mosaic almost always describes Canada as a multicultural landscape and symbolizes a national ideology of inclusion and diversity. Canadians hold great pride in this idea, placing it on the progressive end of a spectrum opposite to the American melting pot. Yet we rarely question where the term comes from.
Many Canadians would likely be astonished to find that the first person to use the term “mosaic” to discuss the national character of Canada was in fact an American. In 1922 the travel writer Victoria Hayward published Romantic Canada, a piece of travel literature detailing her journey from the Maritimes to British Columbia. She uses the term mosaic to refer to both the variance in European church architecture found in the Prairie provinces and to the Japanese fishermen of the Fraser River in British Columbia who had “stepped out of the Far East to serve this river of the Far West.” She painted a rather patronizing portrait of Canada, focusing on the welcoming Gaelic housewives of the Maritimes, the fusion of French and Indigenous culture found in Huron villages, and the Swedish music carried on the winds of the Prairies. From Hayward’s American point of view, Canada’s population had distinctively “old world” characteristics, but incorporated smaller groups of Asians and Indigenous peoples to create an exotic landscape, which she referred to as a mosaic.
Hayward’s concept was then adopted by the Canadian Kate Foster in her 1926 publication, Our Canadian Mosaic. She describes seventeen groups of immigrants from both Europe and Asia, and she details how they contribute to Canada as a whole. She concludes her book with a discussion of the Canadian mosaic as a “true painting for eternity,” composed of a human pattern cemented together by “good will and friendliness born of mutual respect and confidence between all peoples within our borders.” While this may seem close to our contemporary definition of the mosaic, she also emphasized the importance of conformity and repetition because “a principle of order must prevail in every ornamental composition – otherwise the pattern is spoiled and there will be disturbing patches.” Her focus on structure suggests a desire for one group–Canadians of British heritage–to structure and mould the overall mosaic.
John Murray Gibbon pushed the mosaic into the Canadian mainstream in his 1938 book, Canadian Mosaic: The Making of a Northern Nation. Gibbon was already an influential figure in Canadian culture, involved in founding the Canadian Authors’ Association and the creation of the Governor General’s Awards.