Quote:
Originally Posted by vincent_delacroix
i was just asking what you thought about Quebec and its separatist movement. anyways the maritime provinces and Quebec are very separate from the rest of Canada because of the langauge and cultural boundary. although the Maritime Provinces who speak Acadian are quite far from any other one of the Canadian provinces.
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Vincent - I think you're over-emphasizing the differences, though... like I said before, Canada is a mosaic of unique and differing cultural groups... and as much as Quebec separatists like to play up the idea of "two solitudes" - Anglophone vs. Francophone, that's not the reality on the ground - that's not even the reality in Quebec. A Montreal Quebecer is as different from a Saguenay Quebecer or a Nunavik Quebecer as he is from a Torontonian or a Nova Scotian Acadian.
That's the philosophy of Canada - we're not a melting pot like the US. We don't expect new immigrants to submerse their culture into the greater whole. Like everything, though, that has it's good side and it's bad side - the price for preserving our cultural diversity is that it's harder for Canada to develop a sense of national identity in the same way the US does, which opens the door for threats like Quebec separation.