Research Assignment: Expo 67 and National Identity
What does it mean to be Canadian? What is Canada’s national identity? These are questions which are difficult to answer. The International and Universal Exposition in 1967, or otherwise known as Expo 67, was an exhibition held in Montreal, Quebec from April to October, which was celebrating Canada’s centennial. I found many primary and secondary sources that recognize how Canadians perceive national identity through the exhibition. The theme for the Expo was ‘Man and his World’ and this raised the sense of national pride for Canadians. I found some sources that looked at ‘Canadian National Identity’ as a whole; as well as Canadian National Identity for the Natives, the French Canadians and English Canadians. Themes that are recurrent include how to represent Canadian national identity at the exposition, the French/English relationship towards Expo 67, as well as the search for a united Canada.
Primary Sources
Lister Sinclair’s pamphlet Change Comes to Canada was distributed at the Canadian Government Pavilion during Expo 67. Sinclair looks at the meaning of the name Canada. She analyses common points in people’s daily lives such as the meaning of ‘our home and native land,’ Canadian history, Canadian resources, transportation, climate and culture that tie each Canadian together. She claims that “every Canadian who thinks about Canada has his own idea about the meaning of that dream.” She argues that there is no actual national identity but individual identities that made up our national identity. She challenges the questions related to a national identity. It is interesting that something that questions the national identity would be distributed at Expo 67; but, it provides in...
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...ally and Joanne Sloan, 27-46. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.
Miedema, Gary. “Changing the Meaning of the Word ‘Canada’: State-Sponsored Public Religion at Expo 67.” In For Canada’s Sake: Public Religion, Centennial Celebrations, and the Remaking of Canada in the 1960’s, edited by Gary Miedema 114-136. Montreal: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 2005.
Ontario Department of Economics and Development. Predispositions and Expectations of Ontarians with Respect to Expo ’67. Toronto: Institute for Analytical Research, 1967.
Rembold, Elfie. “Exhibitions and National Identity.” National Identities 1, no.3 (1999): 221-225.
Sinclair, Lister. Change Comes To Canada. Montreal: Canadian Government Pavilion Expo 67, 1967.
Speir, Rosemary. “Indians Migrating to Expo Pavilion.” The Canadian Press, August 9, 1967. http://expo67.ncf.ca/expo_67_news_index.html.
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Much has been written about the ways in which Canada's state as a nation is, as Peter Harcourt writes, "described" and hence, "imagined" (Harcourt, "The Canadian Nation -- An Unfinished Text", 6) through the cultural products that it produces. Harcourt's terms are justifiably elusive. The familiar concept of "Canadian culture", and hence Canadian cinema, within critical terminology is essentially based on the principle that the ideology of a national identity, supposedly limited by such tangible parameters as lines on a map, emerges from a common geographical and mythological experience among its people. The concept that cultural products produced in Canada will be somehow innately "Canadian" in form and content first presupposes the existence of such things as inherently Canadian qualities that can be observed. Second, it presupposes a certain commonality to all Canadian artists and posits them as vessels through which these said "inherently Canadian qualities" can naturally flow. Third, it also assumes the loosely Lacanian principle that Canadian consumers of culture are predisposed to identify and enjoy the semiotic and mythological systems of their nation, and further connotes that Canadians have fair access to their own cultural products. Since these assumptions are indeed flawed but not altogether false, this paper will deal with the general relationship between the concept of Canada, its cultural texts, and its mythological and critical discourse as an unresolved problematic that should be left "open" in order to maximize the "meaning potential" of films as cultural texts within the context of "national identity," an ideological construct that remains constantly in flux.
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National Identity Crisis in Margaret Atwood’s Through the One-Way Mirror National identity is one of the most important factors in maintaining a country. It defines one’s nation, culture and everything associated with that country. When it comes to Canada, however, it seems that our national identity has been lost. In Margaret Atwood’s essay “Through the One-Way Mirror,” she effectively questions Canada’s national identity through symbolism and ambiguity. At first glance, this essay seems to be about American dominance in the Canadian-American relationship with its numerous powerful metaphors and extensive use of symbolism.
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Newman, Garfield et al. Canada A Nation Unfolding. Toronto: Mc Graw – Hill Ryerson Limited, 2000.
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Thompson, John Herd, and Mark Paul Richard. "Canadian History in North American Context." In Canadian studies in the new millennium. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 37-64.
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