Getting to know Canadian culture has been a helluva'n eye opener. The main thing to say is that there are a myriad of cultures to get to know. Living in a big city like Vancouver, immigration is big and by far the greatest number of immigrants here are Chinese. There are also a lot of Japanese as well as Koreans, Vietnamese, Greeks, Indians, Italians etc and of course us Brits.
Everywhere I go someone tells me a story about how their parents, grandparents or great grandparents came over from England, Scotland or Wales and goes on to wax lyrical about the area they came from. They generally favour the North to the South (of course I would agree), saying that when they went to visit London it was dirty, lots of litter everywhere, the food was rubbish (we overcook our vegetables and the meat is generally very chewy) and it was generally very grey. Whereas when they drove up country it was beautiful, in parts! It is very mountainous and forested around here and they are used to seeing some spectacular scenery so Scotland comes close to that.
They are also used to driving for 12 hours at a stretch. One woman told me a funny story of how she hired a car in London saying she and her husband were going to drive up to Scotland that day - the car hire woman was incredulous telling her that it couldn't be done, so she got the map out and stared at it again - she just couldn't get her head around the fact that here was this tiny little piece of land and someone was telling her she wouldn't be able to drive that far in a day 'Are the roads bad?' she asked 'Well there are Motorways up to the south of Scotland' says the car hire woman, 'Well I reckon it will take us around 10 hours to get to this place called Glasgow' she says 'You cannot drive for 10 hours non stop - you will need to stop at least twice'...... and so it went on with the Canadian woman completely non-plussed about all this, they think nothing to driving 12 hours at a stretch as long as they have their trusty coffee cup refilled every now and again (coffee is another story), it is such a vast place, they need to drive for 12 hours to get anywhere!
Underpinning the mainstream culture is the native american culture. They generally live in disadvantaged areas and there is a lot of discussion of 'what to do with them'. BC has a particular problem in that over the rest of Canada, there were a lot of treaty's drawn up to take land from the indians, these treaty's were, by and large, just a way to steal the land from them but make the white men feel better about it as far as I can see. But in BC, they just took the land, no treaty's at all were made. So now, the indigenous people are asking about the legitimacy of this and trying to stake their rightful place back in mainstream society.
Many Canadians generally think of them as a big problem, with views being expressed as to what to do with them ranging from 'Give them all $1,000,000 and let that be the debt paid, then they might go and leave us alone' to 'They should all be rounded up and made to stay on reservations like they were before, if there was a curfew we would know where they were at night' - this last because they are seen to part of a lot of organised crime. This is pretty extreme for such mild mannered people. I was saddened and shocked to find out how they are treated, it was one of the first knocks my rosy idea about all things Canadian took! But, alongside all this goes the complete acceptance that it is 'part of our heritage' and tourist attractions include totem poles and lots of indigenous art.
The Chinese are now a very successful group of people here. They were brought over around the beginning of the last century to help build railroads and develop the towns. Building the railroads was a very dangerous job with hundreds of Chinese men dying just to get a railroad from one side of the country to the other! They used dynamite to blow the mountains through to make tunnels, it was too hard to climb back out once you had placed it, so many died in this way.
Many of the construction agencies are Chinese controlled. The area called Richmond is over 80% Chinese, they chose this area to settle as they are a very superstitious people - the fact that the name has 'Rich' in it is deemed to be lucky. The number 5 is unlucky (some apartment blocks call the 5th floor the 6th, to avoid having to get anyone to live on the 5th!), the number 8 is lucky and you will often get Chinese addresses with an 8 in them.
Many others have settled here through necessity in the past - there are a lot of refugees. I was talking to a Vietnamese woman and asked her whether she liked Canada and what had made her decide to come and live here, she started with 'Well, there was a war in Vietnam back in the '70's, it was not very nice to live in Vietnam at the time, I was worried about my children ......' She has family there still but for years she did not hear from them, now, when she could return home politically, she has built up her business here and fears for financial security back home.
With this kind of history, it is hard to say who is 'truly Canadian', they welcome new people with open arms, well that is not quite true - at least we have been welcomed as Britain is a big part of the history isn't it. Vancouver is in British Columbia and stories about how the European settlers came and 'discovered' various parts of it and named them after places back home are many and can be widely found - in books in the heritage section of the Library, on the Knowledge Network on the TV and in various tourist attractions and literature.
The areas in greater Vancouver have names like Richmond, Surrey, Langley, Burnaby etc. The street names, if they are not a number, all reflect the commonwealth influence - 'King Edward Ave, Victoria Place etc. and the capitol of British Columbia is Victoria which is on Vancouver Island. A Scottish explorer called Simon Fraser came and 'discovered' what is now known as the Fraser valley, he has a University named after him and lots of other things!
The main culture is one of a church going society; you should be caring towards those who are not as fortunate as yourselves, you should be helpful at all times, you should not make a noise after 9pm, you should not let your dog walk in many public places - there are signs on beaches and in woodland areas about when you can and cannot walk your dog and I have seen a little pathway, screened by a wire fence, running alongside the main pathway, that is just for dogs. I hate dog poo so this welcome for me but I wonder how it all adds up in a country where the animals are often deemed more important than some of the people!