WHAT IS A CANADIAN?
I am a Canadian and very proud of my country. However, people sometimes don’t know what being Canadian really means. People who come to Canada are encouraged to be proud of their own culture and keep their own customs.
Except for the native Indians, everybody else who lives here came from another country or their ancestors did. Canada is a mixture of many cultures and races. It is what we call a multicultural country.
We have two official languages, French and English. Even though we encourage people to keep their own customs, we expect everyone to learn French or English in order to live in Canada. If you live in the province of Quebec, you are expected to speak French.
“Canada” means “village”. Toronto and Ottawa are also native Indian names.There are radio and television programmes, newspapers and magazines in over 80 different languages across Canada, and the Toronto city government offers help to people in 70 languages.
Many of our big cities have areas where people from the same culture live near each other-there might be a Chinatown , a little Italy , a Korea Town and so on.
However, people whose families have lived in Canada for a long time are usually all mixed up. My own family is a mixture of English, Native Indian and French. My neighbour’s family is Chinese, German and African!
When I say that I am proud to be a Canadian, maybe you can help me decide what a Canadian is.