Notes

nations" is not a policy; it is a fact. The man who coined the phrase. did not do so because he liked the idea. He did not like it at all, and he devised a scheme which was intended to combat the reality which it expressed. But he was enough of a realist to recognize that it was the fundamental reality of Canadian life. In the one hundred and thirty years since he wrote his report, this reality has not altered; and, beside Durham's realism, the government's declaration that "biculturalism does not properly describe our society" appears quite absurd. But it is also a good deal more than absurd: it is both ineffective and dangerous. It is ineffective because it reinforces the particularism of Quebec which it is meant to deny - as the response of Gabriel Loubier, and even of Robert Bourassa, has already demonstrated . Ironically this is a result of which the Commission had given warning: the attempt to define Canada as a multiplicity of cultures, it foretold, leads "by way of a detour... back to the concept of Canada as an English country with the French enclave of Quebec." The government's policy is dangerous, because it will assist English Canadians to close their eyes to reality and to adopt an intransigent posture which will prevent adjustment in an intelligent and tolerant manner to the evolution of the Canadian state. This, too, the Commission foresaw : "To the degree that the demands of certain ethnic groups make awareness of the fundamental duality of the country more difficult," it warned, "to that extent they aggravate the state of crisis in Canada. Above all they provide new arguments for the partisans of a 'One Canada.'" The government's unrealistic interpretation of the nature of Canadian society should not be allowed to gain currency. This will not be an easy task, because there is already a strong inclination on the part of English Canadians to accept the Prime Minister's approach and to sweep the problems created by Canadian duality under the political carpet. 64 If this happens, the country will be in for an even rougher time in the next decade than in the last. A second task may seem less important, but it is not so. The government has tried to deceive the Canadian people in two ways: by claiming to endorse a Report with whose analysis it is in fundamental disagreement and by attempting to play upon the various meanings of "culture" in such a way as to enlist the widespread support for multiculturalism in the cause of denying the fundamental duality of Canadian society. The contempt for the intelligence of the Canadian people which it appears to exhibit must not be allowed to go unchallenged. R.R. H. Notes Peter Neary is a member of the Department of History in Talbot College at the University of Western Ontario. He has written previously in the Journal on democracy in Newfoundland . The second part of his paper will appear in the February, 1972 issue of the Journal. John Pettigrew and B. W. Jackson make their annual appearance in the Journal with their reviews of the Stratford season. Professor Pettigrew is with the Department of English Literature at Trent University, Professor Jackson is with the Department of English at McMaster University, and both are moving forces in the Stratford Seminars. Robin Mathews teaches English at Carleton University in Ottawa and is a standardbearer in the cause of Canadian intellectual independence. John A. Munro is a member of the Historical Section of the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa. Helen J. Dow teaches fine arts at the University of Guelph. Revue d'etudes canadiennes ...