Path: utzoo!lsuc!nrcaer!cognos!rayt
From: rayt@cognos.UUCP (R.)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Canada: one or two cultures?
Message-ID: <6642@cognos.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jul 89 20:41:45 GMT
References: <615662921.9256@myrias.uucp> <568@UALTAVM.BITNET> <604@philmtl.philips.ca> <89Jul19.104948edt.18727@me.utoronto.ca> <609@philmtl.philips.ca>
Reply-To: rayt@cognos.UUCP (R.)
Distribution: can
Organization: Cognos Inc., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 30

In article <609@philmtl.philips.ca> Michel J. Tremblay writes:
 
>I dont know how you can talk about 'our (canadian) culture' without using
>plurial.  Canada like many other countries (Swiss, Belgium...) do not have a 
>true culture but is composed of a many cultures. For Canada that is an 
>English Canadian culture and a French Canadian culture. The English Canadian 
>culture (that I assume you are part of) would not lose anything in the event 
>of a Que'bec separation. With or without separation, anyone who care may
>enjoy our 'vibrant' French Canadian culture.

I believe this to be a mistake. I perceive the two Canadian cultures as
being representatives of what has been termed the two `modernisms'. One 
based on the modernism of technology with its deterministic and anitseptic
scientific sense of progress (linear time), and the other based on a
rebuttal of romanticism: idealized neo-classicism; history becoming a much
more convolved circumlocution on recurrent themes. In the worst case, the
former degenerates into sterility, the latter into triteness; the antogonism
of the Canadian melange acts as a bulwark against such a degeneracy - WHEN there
is some recognition of their complementary natures. Regrettably, the fracturing
into an exclusive bipolarity which is being fostered these days threatens to 
separate out the agents. No doubt the purists will be happy - until they
recognize the long-term debilitating effects of their own particular brand
of monomania.

							R.
-- 
Ray Tigg                          |  Cognos Incorporated
                                  |  P.O. Box 9707
(613) 738-1338 x5013              |  3755 Riverside Dr.
UUCP: rayt@cognos.uucp            |  Ottawa, Ontario CANADA K1G 3Z4