How Did Canada Shaped Canadian Political Culture

Canadians are known for their political culture of openness and comity. Canada, in contrast to the United States, is said to be based on peace, order and good government, whereas the latter is typically known for a culture of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. According to Elizabeth Mancke, this Canadian political culture comes from the Loyalists of the British crown who emigrated to Canada in the eighteenth century, fleeing American independence. That being said, although this is what she argues, her argument is not very compelling for there are several other factors that shaped Canadian political culture. The Loyalists did have slight influence on political culture, but history bring us back to the British role in Upper Canada, it’s

People such as the “German-speaking Mennonites and Dunkers (or Tunkers), as well as English-speaking Quakers” arrived as well after suffering “persecution for their pacifism, reaping arrest, confiscations, and heavy fines from rebel officials”. It is said they preferred Upper Canada to America, given that they felt nostalgic of “colonial social order that seemed more tolerant of ethno cultural minorities”, rather than the nationalism, individualism, and majoritarianism of the United States. Because of this “Upper Canada was a loosely affiliated set of dispersed and distinctive communities”. This is a very solid basis for explaining Canada’s openness towards minorities and ethnic groups, as well as multiculturalism. “The empire promised to leave” these groups alone and distinct, which lead to them forming their own distinct communities. Furthermore, this can explain Canada’s political culture of openness to multiculturalism, in which individuals retain their own culture within Canada, rather than the melting pot of America, which is a mixture of several cultures forming one big American culture. The melting pot model, which is the United States, is exactly what officials and these settlers attempted to avoid and succeeded in doing so. Mancke stating that the Loyalists are behind the organic, corporate, and hierarchical society that is Canada

It was not only Loyalists that shaped the political culture of Canada, rather the power of the British government in suppressing another rebellion, the various concessions they made, as well as the arrival of “Late Loyalists” and other ethnic groups that shaped the culture of openness and comity in Canada. Mancke argues that the Loyalists deplored “both the rebels and the British for resorting to violence to solve political problems, yet the creation of a responsible government in Canada was “launched with election riots throughout the 1840s and with the burning of Parliament by a mob in 1849”, by these same Loyalists. Furthermore, it can even be argued that a “civic culture beyond official control barely existed before 1820”, and only then did liberal norms such as “newspapers, Masonic lodges, agricultural societies, and debating clubs” begin to proliferate, long after the arrival of the “original British