Canada

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Canada

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A country of northern North America. Originally inhabited by various Native American peoples, mainland Canada was explored by the English and the French beginning in the late 15th century. The French established the first permanent settlement at Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal) in 1605 but gradually lost control of eastern Canada, which was ceded to England in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. The Dominion of Canada was formed in 1867 and extended to the western provinces in 1905; Newfoundland formally joined the federation in 1949. The Statute of Westminster (1931) confirmed Canada's status as an independent nation within the Commonwealth. Ottawa is the capital and Toronto the largest city. Population: 31,600,000.

Canadian Ca·na'di·an (kə-nā'dē-ən) adj. & n.

WORD HISTORY   Linguistically, mountains can be made out of molehills, so to speak: words denoting a small thing can, over time, come to denote something much larger. This is the case with Canada, now the name of the second-largest country in the world but having a much humbler origin. Apparently its history starts with the word kanata, which in Huron (an Iroquoian language of eastern Canada) meant "village." Jacques Cartier, the early French explorer, picked up the word and used it to refer to the land around his settlement, now part of Quebec City. By the 18th century it referred to all of New France, which extended from the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and down into what is now the American Midwest. In 1759, the British conquered New France and used the name Quebec for the colony north of the St. Lawrence River, and Canada for the rest of the territory. Eventually, as the territory increased in size and the present arrangement of the provinces developed, Canada applied to all the land north of the United States and east of Alaska.

For more information on Canada, visit Britannica.com.

A self-governing dominion since 1867, much of Canada was colonized by the British and the French. Ships from the west country probably located the Grand Banks fisheries even before John Cabot's explorations of 1497. Despite official discouragement, Newfoundland became the first overseas British colony.

In 17th- and 18th-cent. usage, the name Canada referred primarily to the St Lawrence lowlands. Here the British involvement is usually dated from Wolfe's victory on the Plains of Abraham (1759), but this was not the first British attempt to capture the colony. In 1629 the Kirke brothers seized the fort at Quebec. It was returned to the French three years later. More unsuccessful attacks took place in 1690 and 1711.

From 1670, through the Hudson's Bay Company, England claimed sovereignty over Rupert's Land. The expanding fur trade led the company to set up posts in the far north and on the west coast, establishing British claims to this region. In the long-running 18th-cent. conflict with France, the British acquired Acadia, renamed Nova Scotia, in 1713. Unable to secure allegiance from the Acadian population, British authorities deported them.

With the 1763 treaty of Paris, British control over North America was unrivalled. The attempt to integrate the French catholic population formed a major objective during the next century. The Quebec Act (1774) guaranteed religious freedoms and legal customs, but in doing so, it heightened tensions between Britain and its colonies to the south.

When conflict between Britain and its other North American colonies broke out, Nova Scotia obeyed the military garrison at Halifax. Quebec maintained its allegiance for fear of the more radical protestants of the rebel colonies. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, loyalist refugees streamed north. The arrival of the Anglo-American refugees created new exigencies. Nova Scotia was divided into two colonies, New Brunswick and peninsular Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island had already acquired a separate administration in 1769, and Cape Breton Island enjoyed a separate status as a refuge for loyalists for 40 years. In 1791, Quebec was divided along the Ottawa river to create Upper and Lower Canada. Henceforth, Upper Canada contained primarily an English-speaking population.

The North American colonies were more of strategic than economic importance to the British. With the fisheries secured, the colonies served two other purposes. They provided primary resources, such as wheat, timber, and minerals: they also offered a place for British emigrants. After 1815, Highland Scots and northern Irish flocked to Canada. These huge influxes exacerbated tensions between colonial politicians and the mother country and were important factors in the rebellions of 1837-8 in Lower Canada. A third constitution, the Union Act, tried to address the problem, uniting the two Canadas, in the hope of swamping the French-speaking population. However, French-Canadian politicians made alliances with reformist English-speaking colleagues to defeat the attempts. The fourth constitution, the British North America Act of 1867, rejected the assimilationist policy, by separating again Upper and Lower Canada, and joining them with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The four provinces received important degrees of autonomy, within a federal system. This constitution has proved the most successful. But Quebec separatism, as demonstrated by the referendum of 1995, remains strong.

With the BNA Act, the name Canada extended to take in the provinces involved. Other territories were either annexed or joined the federation subsequently: the Northwest Territories through purchase from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1870; Manitoba (1870); British Columbia (1871); Prince Edward Island (1873); the Arctic Islands (1880), Yukon (1898); Alberta and Saskatchewan (1905); Newfoundland (1949). Constitutionally equal in status to Britain according to the statute of Westminster (1931), until 1949 the final court of appeal for Canada remained the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London.

Between 1902 and 1912 alone, over 1.5 million British emigrants left for Canada. More immigrants arrived following the Second World War. Cultural and emotional links to Britain in English-speaking Canada remained strong and Canada contributed greatly to the allied war effort in both world wars. However, following the Second World War, Canadian politicians and diplomats have attempted to carve out a separate space in world affairs.

By 1994 the population had reached nearly 30 million. Since the Second World War trade between Canada and Britain has levelled out at a lower, but not inconsequential, level. As the economic clout of the USA has expanded, so has its influence over Canada. The passage of the Free Trade Agreement in 1989 (and later the North American Free Trade Agreement) recognized and indeed enhanced Canada's continental orientation.

— Joan Schwartz

See also native peoples and photography.

Bibliography

• Greenhill, R., and Birrell, A., Canadian Photography, 1839-1920 (1979).
• Koltun, L. (ed.), Private Realms of Light: Amateur Photography in Canada, 1839-1940 (1984).
• Borcoman, J., Magicians of Light: Photographs from the Collection of the National Gallery of Canada (1993).
• Schwartz, J. M. (ed.), ‘Canadian Photography’, History of Photography, 20 (1996).
• Cousineau-Levine, P., Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination (2003)

The first professional ballet company in the country was the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, which began in 1939 on a semiprofessional basis. The foundations of ballet in Canada were developed in the late 1940s when schools throughout the country sent performing troupes to the Canadian Ballet Festival (1948-54). In 1951 the National Ballet of Canada, closely modelled on Sadler's Wells Ballet, was formed in Toronto; it became the biggest and most important company in the country. The following year Montreal followed suit with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. The companies based in Winnipeg, Toronto, and Montreal remain the top three, although smaller regional troupes sprung up across the country in the wake of their success. Up until the 1970s Canadian ballet dancers like Lynn Seymour and Jennifer Penney found greater opportunities abroad, but the emergence of dancers like Veronica Tennant, Frank Augustyn, and, especially, Karen Kain, signalled the arrival of popular stars who made their entire careers at home. Canada also has a thriving modern dance culture. Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers was founded in 1964; La Groupe de la Place Royale in 1967; Toronto Dance Theatre in 1968; and Anna Wyman Dance Theatre in Vancouver in 1971. Today some of the top artists in the field of independent modern dance live and work in Canada, among them Édouard Lock, Robert Desrosiers, Margie Gillis, and Danny Grossman. Through its international dance festival (Festival International de Nouvelle Danse), Montreal has become one of the most important centres for modern dance in the world.

Although Ernest Jones chose Toronto as the city from which he would undertake his campaign to institutionalize psychoanalysis in North America, Montreal is the city where it got its start in Canada. In 1957 the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) officially recognized the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society (CPS). Although English and French were the society's two official languages, exchanges and teaching activities took place almost exclusively in English until 1969, when the Société Psychanalytique de Montréal (Montreal Psychoanalytic Society) was established. Only after the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society created a French section, along with other English sections, did it institute a training program in French. Mirroring the relationship between Quebec and the remainder of Canada, the Société Psychanalytique de Montréal and the English-language sections were two isolated entities that continued to question the reasons for their cohabitation.

In 1908 Ernest Jones established himself in Canada as a neuropathologist at the Toronto Lunatic Asylum. He remained there until 1913, when he returned to Europe, after having contributed to the foundation of psychoanalysis in the United States. However, no permanent organization was established in Canada as a result of his presence there, and it would take another forty years before psychoanalysis gained a foothold in the country.

After being established in Montreal, a large metropolis of psychoanalysis in Canada is the result of a paradox that is as strange as it is revelatory of the unique character of the country: an anti-Franco Spanish refugee, Miguel Prados, formed an alliance with a French-Canadian priest, the Dominican Noël Mailloux. Beginning in the spring of 1945, four interns from the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University, founded by Dr. Ewen Cameron in 1944 and affiliated with the Royal Victoria Hospital, began meeting at the home of Dr. Prados, who had obtained a position at the Neurological Institute in the early 1940s. There they discussed clinical cases and studied what they referred to as "Freudian doctrine."

In early 1946 they decided to form a group known as the Cercle Psychanalytique de Montréal (Montreal Psychoanalytic Circle). At this time Prados had only undertook a self-analysis and was not affiliated with any psychoanalytic association. In 1948 Father Mailloux, who had founded the Institute of Psychology at the University of Montreal at the same time as Cameron was founding the Allan Memorial Institute, joined the group, which grew considerably from this time on. The number of members grew to forty, with as many guests invited to meetings. From New York they invited Sándor Lorand, Edith Jacobson, Bertrand D. Lewin, Phyllis Greenacre, Rudolph Loewenstein, Rene Spitz, George Gero, Charles Fisher, and Kaufman; from Detroit, Leo Bartemeir and Richard and Editha Sterbas; from Boston, Eduard Lindeman and Edward and Grete Bibring.

Although the circle certainly helped to spread psychoanalysis, it did not promote the training of Canadian psychoanalysts. Forced to seek training at institutions in the United States, these candidates had little inclination to return to Canada. In 1948, with the help of the Lady Davis Foundation and Father Mailloux, Professor Théo Chentrier, a member of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris (Paris Psychoanalytic Society), became the first psychoanalyst to immigrate to Canada. He was appointed professor at the University of Montreal and joined the Cercle Psychanalytique, of which he later became an enthusiastic and loyal director. Between 1948 and 1950 the circle was very active and held semimonthly meetings, along with weekly seminars on clinical practice and theory.

In 1950 Dr. Eric Wittkower of the British Psychoanalytic Society came to the Allan Memorial Institute. Then in 1951 Georges Zavitzianos, a member of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris, immigrated to Montreal. In the autumn of that same year, Dr. Alastair MacLeod, of the British Psychoanalytic Society, was hired by the psychiatry department of McGill University. Finally, in September 1952 Dr. Bruce Ruddick, who had just completed his training at the New York Institute, returned to Montreal.

With the arrival of these four psychoanalysts, all members of organizations recognized by the IPA, members of the circle felt that it was time to seek official status. Since recognition could only be granted to members who belonged to an affiliate group, Théo Chentrier, Alastair MacLeod, Miguel Prados, Bruce Ruddick, Eric Wittkower, and Georges Zavitzianos formed a study group and applied to the IPA, hoping to be recognized at the 1951 congress. As the bylaws required a recommendation from an affiliate group, they turned to the Detroit Psychoanalytic Society, which was familiar with the circle, to obtain recognition as an independent organization and affiliate of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APA). Since the APA had recently discredited the Detroit training program, it was suggested to the study group that they contact the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, which they never did. At the end of September 1951, the group learned that during the congress in Amsterdam, its request had been referred to the office of professional standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Although the professional-standards committee may have supported the request, the APA's official response was that the time was not right: a member of the group was an analyst but not a physician, and the Canadians were planning to admit lay analysts.

Faced with this situation, the study group withdrew its request to the American association and turned to the British Psychoanalytic Society, which granted them membership after no more than a few weeks of deliberation. As a result, in March 1952 the Canadian Society of Psychoanalysts became an affiliate of the British Psychoanalytic Society. Chentrier was the president, and MacLeod the secretary. The response from the APA was immediate. They let it be known that the Marienbad Agreement of the 1936 IPA congress gave them exclusive control over all of North America. The British Psychoanalytic Society replied that since Canada was part of the British empire, it was only fair that it serve as sponsor in this case. The Americans rejected out of hand a compromise that would have involved joint sponsorship from both associations. In July 1952, after lengthy negotiations, the British Psychoanalytic Society indicated that it would not oppose an agreement with the APA if this solution would help to establish in Canada a psychoanalytic society recognized by the IPA. To facilitate negotiations with the Americans, Chentrier, who was not a physician, decided in August 1952 to give up the presidency of the Canadian Society of Psychoanalysts. MacLeod became president, and Ruddick secretary. After being dissolved on October 17, 1953, the society was replaced by the Canadian Society for Psychoanalysis. But more important, in October 1952 Prados proposed dissolving the Montreal Psychoanalytic Circle because he was convinced that the Americans confused it with the Canadian Society of Psychoanalysts, which consisted exclusively of member analysts. These concessions turned out to be pointless because the Americans never granted affiliate status to the Canadian group.

On October 17, 1953, the group was officially formed as the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. In December 1953 the group withdrew its request for membership in the APA and reaffirmed its membership in the British Psychoanalytic Society, which had never been abandoned. Because Canada is bicultural, with equal weight given to French and English, it was decided that the society would officially be bilingual. During the summer of 1953, Dr. Jean-Baptiste Boulanger, his wife Françoise, and Dr. J. P. Labrecque, all of whom were trained by the Société Psychanalytique de Paris, became members of the study group. The following year, Dr. W. Clifford M. Scott, a Canadian psychoanalyst who had become president of the British Psychoanalytic Society; Drs. Hans and Friedl Aufreiter of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society; and André Lussier, who was completing his training at the London Institute, joined the new organization. Initially incorporated in Quebec by the lieutenant-governor of the province in 1955, it became incorporated under Canadian federal law on April 3, 1967. And with the sponsorship of the British Psychoanalytic Society, it became officially recognized as a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association on July 31, 1957, during the twentieth IPA congress.

The British Psychoanalytic Society also sponsored the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis. This professional organization made its initial foray into the professional sphere in 1954 in a university setting, at the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University (directed by Dr. Ewen Cameron). With the help of Doctor Clifford Scott, agreements were concluded in mid-1954 to initiate a training program identical to that of the British Institute, with three training analysts. After thriving in Britain for a quarter century, Scott, at Cameron's request, returned to Montreal to run the program. The way was now open for training future analysts.

The first students had already begun their training in Montreal, London, Paris, or the United States. Scott helped them complete their training. The other analysts supported this decision, with the exception of Cameron, who had integrated psychoanalysis in his program at the university so it would be under his direct control. When Cameron refused to hire another training analyst, Scott and the other colleagues realized they could avoid his controlling efforts only by forming their own autonomous institute. The training committee of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society developed and introduced a teaching program in 1958. The first seminar was held on April 4, 1959. On October 1, 1960, members of the society ratified a proposal recommending the creation and incorporation of the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis, which was done on March 17, 1961, in Quebec. Jean-Baptiste Boulanger was the first director. The first training program, in 1959, had twelve teachers for thirteen students. Of the thirty-seven candidates trained from 1959 to 1967, eleven were French speakers.

Around 1968 and 1969, for cultural as well as geographic reasons, a federal model was used to create different sections within the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. A French-speaking section was created in Montreal, the Société Psychanalytique de Montréal, and an English-speaking section in Quebec, the CPS Quebec English Branch. In Ontario the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society was formed. Currently, at the start of the twenty-first century, the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society has approximately four hundred members, seven sections, and three institutes. In addition to those already mentioned, which have had an associated institute since their formation, three sections—the South Western Ontario Psychoanalytic Society (located in London), the Société Psychanalytique de Québec, and the CPS Western Canadian Branch—do not yet have an institute, while the Ottawa Psychoanalytic Society is still in the process of formation, since it does not have the requisite number of training analysts (five). Service agreements have been concluded with the CPS Quebec English Branch so that candidates of the Ottawa Psychoanalytic Society can continue to be trained locally. For the CPS Western Canadian Branch, the national executive committee recently authorized two training analysts from the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society in the United States to work with the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute to train candidates in Western Canada locally. Candidates of the Société de Québec must complete their training in Montreal, since the Quebec group has only a single training analyst. Candidates of the Western Canadian Branch in Ontario undergo training at the Toronto Institute.

The CPS Quebec English Branch consists of analysts from Montreal from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds who concentrated on English language and culture when sections were created in 1969. As of 2002, it consisted of a hundred members. The training program of its institute was, until the first few years of the twenty-first century, much more academic than that of the Société de Psychanalyse de Montréal (SPM). Since 2000, the CPS Quebec English Branch has added European authors such as Piera Aulagnier, Wilfred Bion, and Jacques Lacan to the fourth-year program.

Psychoanalysis has also made progress in Toronto. In September 1954, Alan Parkin, who had just completed his training in London, England, arrived in the city. In 1956 he created the Toronto Psychoanalytic Study Circle with a core of eleven psychiatrists with an interest in psychoanalysis. He attempted to establish a psychoanalysis training program at the department of psychiatry of the University of Toronto and obtain recognition for his study group from the Ontario Psychiatric Institute. After two years of activity the circle decided to transform itself into the psychotherapy section of the Ontario Psychiatric Society by opening its doors to all members of that association. The request was ratified on January 23, 1959, and two years later, on January 20, 1961, the psychotherapy section held its first scientific congress. In his History of Psychoanalysis in Canada, Parkin comments on the prodigious growth of this section, which in January 1970 had no fewer than ninety-three members. The establishment of psychoanalysis within the context of psychiatry helped determine the medical orientation psychoanalysis assumed in Ontario. This growth continued until psychoanalytic psychologists of the Ontario Psychological Association, with the support of Division 39 of the American Psychological Association, decided, at the end of the 1980s, to found their own organization, the Toronto Contemporary Society, and their own institute, the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Initially, candidates training at the new institute were not physicians; then psychiatrists began to apply to the organization, although it was not a part of the IPA. They were attracted by the diversity of approaches used in its training program and wanted to escape the incessant conflicts between Freudian and Kohutian factions that divided the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society. The Toronto Psychoanalytic Society would likely have split if there had not emerged a third group, the post-Kleinians, whose members were partisans of object-relations theory and followers of Margaret Mahler and Otto Kernberg. Their emergence prevented the complete polarization of the society. Today the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society has approximately 130 members.

After the formation of the first three sections of the society and the institute, other sections were created when at least five analysts or training analysts belonging to the same geographic or cultural community submitted a request. In 1972 the Ottawa Psychoanalytic Society was formed, followed by the Ottawa Institute in 1978. Then, also in 1978, the CPS Western Canadian Branch was founded, consisting of members scattered throughout the four western provinces. Donald Watterson, in Vancouver, was the first psychoanalyst to settle in British Colombia, yet there was little growth in psychoanalysis in the province until the end of the twentieth century. Julius Guild settled in Edmonton, Alberta, followed by Perry Segal in 1971 and Hassan Azim in 1973, but as of 1998 there was only one analyst in Calgary and two in Edmonton. Similar numbers were found in Winnipeg and Manitoba. Even though it covers an area that is roughly a third of Canada, the CPS Western Canadian Branch currently has only ten members: six in British Colombia, three in Alberta, and one in Manitoba.

The Southwestern Ontario Psychoanalytic Society is the sixth section of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. It was founded on June 5, 1982, and currently has fourteen members. Formed in 1988, the Société Psychanalytique de Québec (Quebec Psychoanalytic Society), with ten members, is the most recent of the seven sections of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. The senior member is Henri Richard, who began practicing after psychoanalytic training in Paris from 1952 to 1959. A few years later he was joined by Noël Montgrain, who had also studied at the Institut de Psychanalyse de Paris (Paris Institute for Psychoanalysis). There is currently no organization in the maritime provinces of eastern Canada. Aside from the cultural and economic centers of Montreal and Toronto, psychoanalysis throughout Canada has grown very slowly.

For years oral communication was the primary mode of transmission within the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. The first generations of analysts were more absorbed with fundamental issues and transmission than in the preparation of written texts. Although a number of practitioners—such as W. Clifford M. Scott, Georges Zavitzianos, Jean-Baptiste Boulanger, Jean-Louis Langlois, Paul Lefebvre, André Lussier, Jean Bossé, Pierre Doucet, Guy Da Silva, and Roger Dufresne—wrote important articles, they spent the majority of their time training future generations of analysts.

The ephemeral character of psychoanalytic reviews bears witness to the phenomenon. The first issue of the Revue canadienne de psychanalyse, published in 1954 and sponsored by the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, was the final one until the reappearance, nearly forty years later in the spring of 1993, of the semiannual bilingual Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis/Revue canadienne de psychanalyse, edited by Eva Lester. Similarly, the Société Psychanalytique de Montréal has, since 1988, published an internal periodical three times a year, the Bulletin de la Société Psychanalytique de Montréal. Julien Bigras, however, was the first to promote written communication within the psychoanalytic community with the review Inter-prétation, of which he was the founder and editor-in-chief from 1967 to 1971. Josette Garon, Jacques Mauger, Lise Monette, and François Peraldi continued his efforts with the publication of Frayages. In the autumn of 1992, Dominique Scarfone published the first issue of Trans, a semiannual, semithematic, interdisciplinary journal. The journal played a key role in encouraging the exchange of psychoanalytic ideas and also played an important role in the Montreal psychoanalytic community by organizing annual colloquia open to the public. Despite this success, the editorial committee decided to discontinue publication in the spring of 1999 with the publication of issue ten of the journal. The year 1992 also saw the introduction of the semiannual Filigrane, financed by the publication of Santé mentale au Québec and directed at psychotherapists and professional psychoanalysts whose clinical methods were compatible with psychoanalysis.

Patrick J. Mahoney, Jean Imbeault, and Dominique Scarfone are among the first analysts to make significant contributions on an international level to a critical analysis of the psychoanalytic corpus.

In Canada, as elsewhere, the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and its various sections are not the only entities involved in psychoanalysis. Alongside them have always existed unaffiliated psychoanalysts working alone or in small groups. Among the first to practice psychoanalysis outside an institutional context was Michel Dansereau, a doctor who had trained with René Laforgue in Casablanca, Morocco, and was active during the 1950s. Much later were François Peraldi, who arrived in Montreal in 1974, and Mireille Lafortune, who was active during the late 1960s.

There also exist many organizations devoted to psychoanalysis. In 1986 François Peraldi established the Réseau des Cartels (Network of Cartels), composed of analysts interested in the work of Jacques Lacan. This network did not survive the loss of its founder, and in 2004 only a single cartel is still active. The Association des Psychanalystes du Québec (Quebec Association of Psychoanalysts), founded in 1967 and having only ten members in 2004, is Lacanian in focus. The Association des Psychothérapeutes Psychanalytique du Québec (Quebec Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists), founded in 1985 and consisting of some 150 members in different regions of Quebec, includes clinicians who make use of psychoanalytic methods. The association organizes colloquia and conferences, to which members of the Société Psychanalytique de Montréal are invited. The Groupe d'Études Psychanalytiques Interdisciplinaires (Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Study Group) consists of some fifteen professors from the Université de Québec at Montreal who teach psychoanalysis while practicing. The Institut Québécois de Psychothérapie (Quebec Psychotherapy Institute), which has existed since 1992, provides a two-year training program in analytic and systemic psychotherapy. Father Henri Samson, who trained in France and was a contemporary of Father Mailloux, founded the Institut de Psychothérapie de Québec in the 1960s for those who wanted training in analytic psychotherapy. The Groupe Interdisciplinaire Freudien de Recherches et d'Interventions Cliniques et Culturelles (Interdisciplinary Group for Freudian Research and Clinical and Cultural Interventions), founded by Willy Apollon and cooperating with psychiatrists from the Robert-Giffard Center, has gained a considerable reputation in analytic psychotherapy based on Lacanian principles, especially in its work with psychotic patients. The Cercle Jung de Québec (Quebec Jung Circle), founded in the 1970s by Marcel Gaumont, a Jungian analyst trained at the Jung Institute in Zurich, promotes Jungian psychoanalysis in Canada through public conferences and discussions. André Renaud, a psychoanalyst with the Société Psychanalytique de Québec, established in 1984, and ran until 1996, Étayage (Support), a training program for doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers who wanted to study analytic psychotherapy. Finally, a group of analytic psychotherapists has also been at work in British Columbia in Western Canada.

Bibliography

Cloutier, Yvan. (1988). La naissance de la psychanalyse à Montréal. Philosophiques, 15(1), 221-225. (Reprinted from Frayages, 3 (1987).)

Paradis, André. (1988). La naissance de la psychanalyseà Montréal. Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, 41(3), 443-446. (Reprinted from Frayages, numéro spécial (1987).)

Parkin, Allan. (1987). History of psychoanalysis in Canada. Toronto: Toronto Psychoanalytical Society.

Prados, Miguel. (1954). La psychanalyse au Canada. Revue canadienne de psychanalyse, 1, 1-33.

Sourkes, Theodore L., and Pinard, Gilbert (Eds.). (1995). Building on a proud past: 50 years of psychiatry at McGill. Montreal: McGill University.

Vigneault, Jacques. (1993). Transferts et déplacements: fondements de la psychanalyse en Amérique du Nord. Trans, 3, 223-237.

—JACQUES VIGNEAULT

As in all immigrant societies, the spread of formal education in Canada followed a predictable pattern as religious orders and missions attempted to "civilize" both the aboriginal and the settler communities. All levels of formal education from the seventeenth century onward had their roots in Catholicism, Anglicanism, and after 1763, when the British assumed control, a whole range of protestant denominations. Dramatic change occurred in 1867 with the enactment of the Constitution Act (formerly the British North American Act) when the principle of secular and separate systems of education funded by the state was accepted throughout Canada with a few significant exceptions. Section 98 of the act allocated exclusive jurisdiction for education to the provinces. This division of constitutional powers has remained in place and has been the basis for a degree of tension between the federal government and the ten provincial governments. The federal government is responsible for education in the three northern territories. With regard to public education, Canadians subscribe to three common social and educational values: equality of access, equality of opportunity, and cultural pluralism.

Influences on the Educational Systems

According to Rodney Clifton, Canada is the "only country without a national office of education: all other nations, including all other federated nations, have national offices of education that coordinate and/or administer various aspects of their educational system" (p. 7). While there are many similarities among Canada's systems of education, they have each developed in unique ways. These systems are profoundly influenced by the distribution of the population of 31 million across the vast country, which covers four and one-half time zones. More than 80 percent of Canadians live in urban centers within 100 miles of the border with the United States.

Canadian society has developed as a mosaic of peoples, beginning with aboriginal populations and then followed by French, British, and other European settlement. Canada has two official languages: English is the mother tongue of 61 percent of the population, and French is the mother tongue of 26 percent. Most French speakers live in Quebec, where they make up 82 percent of the population, but there are also many French speakers in New Brunswick, Ontario, and Manitoba. Education is available in both official languages, but to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the region. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, immigrants from all parts of the world were attracted to Canada, with the largest proportion coming from Asia.

The patterns of immigration have had an enormous impact on the structure and organization of educational systems. Although the systems of the western provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia followed the patterns laid down in Ontario, more emphasis was placed on meeting the needs of all people, not just Anglicans and Catholics. While "separate" (Catholic) publicly funded schools were resisted in Manitoba, by World War II only British Columbia, out of the ten provinces, maintained a secular system of education. This stance was modified in 1977, when the province began providing subsidy to private and independent schools. In 1998 Newfoundland abandoned denominational education and became the only province with a secular system.

The French tradition and language have dominated educational systems in Quebec and parts of New Brunswick and Manitoba. Since the "Quiet Revolution" in Quebec in the 1960s and the adoption of a bilingual and multicultural policy at the federal level in the 1970s, French culture has become part of all Canadian educational systems. The challenge has been to privilege the "founding" cultures while at the same time recognizing aboriginal peoples and the vast range of other cultures that form Canadian society. The complexities that come with geography, immigration, and settlement gave rise to socialization processes that placed great emphasis on the role of education in molding Canadian citizens.

Twentieth-Century Developments

The "Great Transformation" in Canadian society, as it was dubbed by Karl Polanyi in 1944, is very much a twentieth-century phenomena. Mass public education that was free and compulsory through high school had become the norm by the 1950s. Public education is provided free to all Canadian citizens and permanent residents until the end of secondary school, normally at eighteen. The ages for compulsory schooling vary from one jurisdiction to another, but generally it is required from age six or seven to age sixteen. As the federal government assumed more responsibility for funding university education from the mid-1950s and recognized the importance of human capital, so the systems of higher education expanded. Expansion of the university system and the development of parallel college systems changed the nature of higher education in Canada. By 1976 every province was operating a binary system of universities and colleges, and furthermore the number of universities offering graduate programs had risen to forty-seven from the 1960 level of twenty-eight.

As in other countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the baby boom generation flooded into the higher education system in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Enrollment continued to expand into the 1990s, but over the next decade it reached a plateau and then began to decline. Between 1991 - 1992 and 1999 - 2000, university full-time enrollment decreased from approximately 580,000 to 540,000, while part-time enrollment fell from 280,000 to 240,000. Between 1992 - 1993 and 1999 - 2000, full-time community college enrollment increased from approximately 360,000 to 400,000. Part-time community college enrollment declined from approximately 180,000 to 90,000. Furthermore, the gender balance has been reversed so that women are in the majority at the undergraduate level in both community colleges and universities and at parity with men at the graduate level.

The federal government had, through the incremental development of a science and technology policy, created an elaborate structure for funding and supporting research. In addition to the three national funding councils, which were established in the late 1970s and cover all the disciplines and fields represented in the academy, the government created other programs, such as the Networks of Centres of Excellence, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the Canada Research Chairs.

Education in Canada has traditionally been a public enterprise. Private or independent schools educate approximately 5 percent of the school-age population. Although these schools do generally follow the curriculum and diploma requirements of their jurisdiction, they function independently of the public system and charge fees. Five provinces - Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, and Saskatchewan - provide some form of financial assistance to these schools. Prior to the 1990s, higher education was almost totally a public enterprise. During that decade the number of private institutions offering vocational and degree programs increased dramatically. Four provinces - Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and New Brunswick - have passed legislation to allow for the establishment of private universities.

The Place of Education in the Society

As an institutional form, education occupies a unique place in Canadian society. By the late 1960s, education had become a central legitimating institution in the modern Canadian state. Between 1960 and 1995 - 1996, the cost of public education increased from $1.7 billion to almost $60 billion. One in fourteen employed Canadians work in education, and 25 percent of the total population is involved with education. Public education is a major industry involving approximately 16,000 elementary and secondary schools, 200 postsecondary colleges, 75 universities and university colleges, 300,000 teachers, and 60,000 instructors and professors.

Relative to other developed countries, Canada invests a substantial amount on education. At all levels of education, Canadian expenditure per student is second highest (after the United States) among the G-7 countries (the other G-7 members being France, Italy, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom) and is substantially above the OECD average. Canada's educational expenditure of 7 percent of gross domestic product is the highest level among the G-7 countries and is one of the highest in the OECD. Eighty percent of Canada's adult population has completed upper-secondary (referred to as high school in North America) or postsecondary education. This is much higher than the OECD average of 64 percent. Fifty-two percent of the adult population has completed postsecondary education. This rate is the highest in the OECD and double the OECD average. Yet it should be noted that this ranking is due to the very high proportion of the population that is enrolled in nonuniversity postsecondary education.

By the mid-1990s, Canadian governments had created a mass postsecondary system. With a participation rate of more than 40 percent for eighteen-to twenty-one-year-olds, Canada ranked first among OECD nations. The system can be characterized as soft federalism. While the federal government has since the 1950s shouldered a significant portion of the bill for universities, constitutionally the responsibility has remained with the provinces. The level of institutional autonomy enjoyed by universities is probably more pronounced in Canada than in any other OECD country. The public monopoly over the binary structure (colleges and universities) accounts for the limited competition and the perceived equivalence among credentials across the country. This state public system is relatively homogeneous and, as a vestige of its roots in the United Kingdom and France, is still committed to the ethos of liberal education rather than vocationalism.

Issues and Problems

The key issues and problems facing the Canadian education systems are as follows: deprofessionalization; the dominance of a political-economic imperative in the formulation of state educational policy (accountability, privatization, market, choice, and decentralization); multiculturalism and diversity; restructuring and retrenchment; and the demographic changes facing all industrialized nations.

As governments have limited the size of the "public space" in Canadian society, so necessarily the ideals of professionalism have come under attack. On the one hand, the creation of professional "colleges of teachers" in British Columbia (in 1986) and in Ontario (in 1996), as well as the current attempts for such undertakings in Quebec, are indicators of the professionalizing trend. Other such initiatives, also present in other provinces (namely, Alberta, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia), aim at raising the standards in teacher training and at better controlling its quality through the definition of standards for training and practice. Yet the discourse of professionalism has in some respects been co-opted by the state and transformed into government by norms. The substitution of credentials for professional practice, while intended to support professionalization, serves instead to undermine it. Credentialism becomes the overriding trend and the substitute for the promotion of professionalism.

In the 1990s, accountability replaced autonomy in discussions of roles within the state. Accountability has also come to mean recognition of the dominance of market ideology. Governments press educational institutions and systems to be more responsive to the economy and to create alliances with the private sector. The accountability models are embedded within the broader, ideological mechanisms - variously characterized as public-sector reform, new public management, and the "evaluative state" - that have accompanied the political-economic transition from welfare state to the global economy.

The severe limitations on public expenditures are linked to the general suspicion of public institutions and a belief in the greater efficiency of free-market forces. The key policy terms that are the symbols of both market and accountability are "choice" and "privatization." The battle against federal and provincial deficits and the adoption of neoliberal assumptions concerning the role of the state has led governments to inflict considerable budget cuts on educational systems while looking to maximize their services. Yet while the position of the provinces got worse, by 2000 the federal government had moved into surplus. Efforts to decentralize responsibility and increase the autonomy of school boards and school staffs has translated into a more significant role for parents, the development of an "in-service training" culture, and the elaboration of school programs that promote the acquisition of competencies required in the new knowledge society. A parent council structure was created in British Columbia in 2002 and was already in place in six other provinces, including Ontario and Quebec.

For a majority of teachers in urban settings, the combination of immigration policy, the longstanding commitment to diversity and multiculturalism and the new emphasis on "inclusion" has created schools very different from the ones that existed in the 1980s. Schools can contain students who speak as many as eighty different languages, a high proportion of ESL (English as a second language) students, and many students with special needs. The increasing cultural and linguistic diversity has become most evident in the three major urban centers, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. On the other hand, diversity and equality have been safeguarded and extended through the teaching of heritage languages, curriculum design, and the development of programs to combat racism. The development of French-language school boards across the country is a good indicator of this trend.

A major retrenchment and restructuring has occurred throughout Canada as provincial ministries have drastically reduced the number of school boards through amalgamation. These changes have been accompanied by a tightening of control over expenditures at the local level.

Skills and knowledge have become central elements in economic policy as human resource policy has become the modern equivalent of human capital theory in the 1960s. In postsecondary education there has been a growing emphasis on technical and professional programs. Universities are developing closer links with business and industry. Since the late 1980s, the shift has been toward more private and less public expenditure on postsecondary education. Part of this shift is related to the increase in tuition fees, which have more than doubled, but this trend also includes the rise in nongovernmental sources of funding for research.

The most pressing need in Canadian education systems and the society at large is the expected shortfall in the supply of professional personnel. By 2010, Canada will need to replace 50 percent of its teachers, instructors, and professors.

Bibliography

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Fisher, Donald, and Edwards, Gail. 1999. "The Legitimation of Education in Canadian Universities: A Social History of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education/Société Canadienne pour l'étude de l'éducation." In A Challenge Met: The Definition and Recognition of the Field of Education, ed. Michel Allard, James Covert, Collette Dufresne-Tassé, Angela Hildyard, and Michael Jackson. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Society for the Study of Education and University of Toronto Press.

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Internet Resource

Centre of Education Research Information System. 2001. "Theme: Parents." www.schoolnet.ca/ceris/e/Parents1.html

— DONALD FISHER

Canada is a vast country touched by three oceans, and it holds within its boundaries prairies, hills, mountains, semidesert and desert country, rocky thin-soiled lands, a multitude of lakes, enormous forests, and Arctic tundra. While the terrain varies greatly, there is a commonality across Canada, and that is the severity of winter. Few European immigrants in Canada's early history were prepared for the cold, and from the beginning, Canadians struggled with the elements for their survival. This was a defining factor in the development of Canadian cuisine. But it is the people of Canada who, more than the land and weather, created Canada's cookery. From the First Nations people to the waves of immigrants from every country in the world, Canada's cuisine became distinctly regional.

Diversity has been a characteristic of Canadian cuisine from the beginning of settlement. In the seventeenth century, the first Europeans in Canada encountered a highly varied population of Native Peoples, for example, hunters and gatherers including the Inuit in the Arctic; agricultural people in parts of southern Quebec and Ontario; buffalo hunters on the plains; and fishermen on the West Coast among the nearly sedentary Pacific North Coastal people.

By the end of the eighteenth century, the dominant groups in Canada were British (particularly English and Scots), French, and American Loyalists. The cuisine that developed during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century reflected these influences. There were strong overtones of French cookery in Quebec, British influences in English-speaking Canada, and a strong import of culinary culture from the United States. While there were many ethnic groups in Canada by the end of World War II, British-American cookery dominated Canadian cookery. A partial exception to this generalization was the Chinese influence. Peasants from southern China immigrated to "Golden Mountain" (Canada or, more specifically, British Columbia) beginning in the 1850s. Many were employed in construction and the building of the railroad. As with other cultural groups, they were discriminated against, but they introduced Canadians to Chinese cuisine by opening Chinese restaurants in nearly every village and city across Canada.

In spite of the cultural dominance of English-speaking Canadians, other ethnic immigrant groups often settled in regional pockets where they maintained their language and their culinary traditions. Coming from different regions in their home countries, they melded traditions together. For example, in the Ukraine, women made pysanky (eggs decorated with ritualistic symbols) according to their local traditions, but in Canada, they drew designs from many regions of Ukraine. Northern and Southern Italian foods such as pasta and polenta, likewise, were simply "Italian" in Canada.

Until after World War II, ethnic foods were rarely written about in Canadian food magazines or cookbooks, and ethnic recipes were highly modified. In a 1920s community cookbook, for example, a chop suey recipe was a mixture of fried hamburger, rice, tomatoes, and onions, baked for an hour; and spaghetti was cooked meat, spaghetti, onion, butter, green pepper, and canned tomato soup, baked with buttered bread crumbs; both were seasoned only with salt and pepper. In the 1970s the milieu changed when, under the leadership of Pierre Trudeau, Canada adopted a policy of multiculturalism. It then became the fashion to share ethnicity, and the easiest way was through cookery. The foods that ethnic groups had eaten in the privacy of their homes became de rigueur.

After World War II, fast-food eateries and chain restaurants serving inexpensive, mass-produced foods swept across North America. Franchises on the U.S. model were adopted and Canadians quickly developed their own fast food restaurants for hamburgers, fried chicken, and pizza. A favorite fast-food chain is Tim Horton Donuts, a coffee and donut shop. Popular Canadian restaurant chains that developed were "road houses" serving grilled foods and pasta. The Americanization of Canadian foods and foodways was influenced also by food articles in American magazines and by television food shows.

Canadian cuisine is strongly regional in character with American influences. The eating pattern of three meals a day, the popularity of many foods, the importation of fresh produce and manufactured foods, and the eating of particular foods at the feasts of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter are common denominators of the cuisine of both the United States and Canada. The real difference is the highly visible regional cuisines of Canada, based on the available ingredients and the ethnic groups who settled in these regions. Canadian cuisine cannot be understood without examining these regional traditions.

Newfoundland: a Survival Cuisine

From the early sixteenth century, the huge and lucrative cod fisheries on the coasts surrounding this island province and the Grand Banks offshore attracted fishing vessels manned by Basque, Portuguese, French, and British sailors. Before settlement, these groups salted cod in summer fish-drying camps, and then dried it on "flakes." A product that could keep indefinitely, salt cod was eaten in Europe for centuries. Eventually the English settled in the north and west, followed by the Irish, in St. John's and the east coast, and French along the south shore. Newfoundland's environment is harsh and demanding with deceivingly warm but short summers. The cuisine that developed was simple and entrenched.

Only a few ingredients are needed to make ribsticking, hearty, and soul-satisfying meals. Fish (cod) and root vegetables form the basis of the Newfoundlanders' diet. There is little agriculture on the island, but root vegetables can be grown there, and tiny vegetable garden plots are often found along the roadside on the western coast. Potatoes, carrots, onions, turnips, parsnips, and cabbage are mainstays.

In 1992 the cod stocks crashed on the Grand Banks, and a moratorium was placed on commercial fishing in Canadian waters on the Banks. Although a way of life for Newfoundlanders seemed to have been lost, cod remains their favorite food. While the major cod fisheries are still closed, some fish is available on the southern coast, and local inhabitants are allowed to "jig" for cod two weekends a year. When a Newfoundlander says the word "fish," he or she means "cod," which, over the centuries, has been the preferred dish. A fresh cod dinner is Newfoundland comfort food. A thick piece of cod, usually grilled or poached, is served with mashed potatoes, mixed peas and carrots, coleslaw and fluffy white rolls. Delicacies are cod tongues and cheeks, either sautéed or deep-fried. Salt cod is prepared most commonly as fish 'n' brewis (also called "fisherman's brewis"). The salted fish is soaked, shredded, and cooked with dried bread chunks (hardtack) until thick, and schruncheons (fried diced salt pork) with its fat is poured over the mixture.

Pea soup (a thick potage of yellow split peas with diced turnips, carrots, and potatoes) can be traced back to the daily fare of sixteenth-century fishermen—with salt beef added on Sundays. Split peas are also used to make pease pudding by dropping a pudding bag of peas into Jigg's dinner, a boiled dinner of salt beef, onions, potatoes, carrots, and turnips.

To supplement and vary the fish and salt-beef diet, many men hunt partridge, ptarmigan, rabbits, turr (a seabird), moose, caribou, and deer. Moose is preferred only because it will fill the hunter's freezer—and his neighbors'—and last through the winter. A traditional wild-game dish is flipper pie made from seal flippers, carefully prepared and cooked in a pastry. The wilds also provide berries in abundance, eaten fresh and preserved for the long winter, either frozen for pies and other desserts or made into jams. Favorites are blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, partridgeberries (lignonberries), and yellow baking apples (cloud berries).

More than anything else, Newfoundlanders are known for fun: parties, Newfoundland fiddling, and rum. Screech, a dark rum, was named because American servicemen during World War II found it made them "screech." Those "from away" may undergo a Newfoundland initiation by tossing back Screech and reciting an intonation, always with good humor, and sometimes accompanied by kissing a cod.

The Maritime Provinces: an Entrenched Cuisine

The cuisine of the Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) is a bittersweet one—bitter because so many people were dislocated, either within the Maritimes or because they had to leave their homelands, sweet because the Maritime cuisine was a result. Early migration into the Atlantic provinces generally took place of necessity. Power struggles between France and England led to the forced displacement of the French Acadians in 1755, and American planters took over their rich farmlands. Scattered to many countries, some Acadians returned after 1763, not to their rich farmlands but to less desirable land, or they turned to fishing. Settling in parts of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, they developed a distinct cuisine in each area: buckwheat pancakes, poutine râpée (dumpling stuffed with salt pork), râpure (grated potato and chicken or seafood pie), fricots (stews), rabbit pies, and many other traditional dishes.

Later in the century, in 1783, United Empire Loyalists, scorned in the United States, made their way into the Maritimes. These American Loyalists brought New England food traditions, popularizing corn in many forms (corn-on-the-cob, johnnycakes, corn puddings, and Anadama or Yankee bread), and the Saturday night custom of baked beans and brown bread. Freed African loyalists and others of African descent also came north. Blacks settling in the Shelburne area brought Southern American cooking: deep-fat frying, barbecued meat, the use of corn meal and hominy, pork, rice, and fish. Germans left for Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, in 1753 and contributed Solomon Gundy (pickled herring), soused eels, and sauerkraut. Scots in Cape Breton brought oat cakes and porridge bread. These early settlers created distinct regional cuisines. But the one traditional meal common to the Maritimes is Dutch mess, also called hugger-in-buff, fish and schrunchions, or house bankin, depending upon where one lives. Salt cod is soaked, then cooked; potatoes are boiled in the fish broth; salt pork and onions are fried, vinegar and cream added and poured over the cod and potatoes. The next day, leftovers are mashed and made into fish cakes.

The abundant fish and shellfish were the key ingredients defining early Maritime cuisine, and they continue to do so today. These seafoods, along with root vegetables, dried peas, cabbage, and trade goods from Britain formed the basic components used in early eastern Canadian cookery. Early English colonists were dependent upon Great Britain for food, and these supplies grew into a thriving trade of tea, sugar, spices (ginger was a favorite), and dried fruits. The triangular trade between England, New England, and the Caribbean brought molasses, rum, and ginger from the Caribbean. Halifax, the early center of British social life, retains a distinct English character. Gaily signed pubs serve meat pies and fish and chips. British dishes linger—roast beef with York-shire pudding, trifle, and gingerbread.

Each Maritime province has vast coastal areas, and cod is common to all. Products of the sea vary somewhat in each province. Prince Edward Island is associated with lobster fisheries, aqua-cultured blue mussels, Malpeque oysters, and Irish moss. Nova Scotia is known for Digby scallops and dulse (a reddish seaweed). New Brunswick fishes for Fundy salmon, smelt, trout, and shad. Samphire greens (eaten locally) are harvested from the shores of each of these provinces. In countryside Nova Scotia, roadside "canteens," one-room buildings, sell some of the region's best seafood: lobster or clam rolls, fried scallops, or fried fish—all seafoods cooked fresh from the sea.

The harvest from the land is also regional. Nova Scotia is known for its Annapolis Valley apple orchards, New Brunswick for its maple syrup and wild chanterelles, and P.E.I. for its potatoes. New Brunswick fiddleheads from the Ostrich fern are a gourmet delicacy picked in early spring before the fronds open, and are cooked as a vegetable.

By the early 1800s, established food traditions had become associated with a way of life, and to a great extent, have remained impervious to change. Even the large migrations of ethnic groups after World War II were insufficient to displace these three-hundred-year-old culinary traditions.

Quebec: a Distinct Cuisine

Quebecois consider themselves a distinct society, and this is reflected in their cuisine. Restaurant menus are written in French, and the cuisine is distinctly French, but with a difference: most of all, the love of—even obsession with—good food and its celebration, the use of flavorful sauces, the elaboration of courses, the use of fresh ingredients, and the respect for their chefs. The first European settlers in Canada in the early seventeenth century were French. They maintained close ties with their mother country until after the English conquest in the mid-eighteenth century. At that time, communication with France was cut off.

Thus, many traditional Quebec dishes resemble those prepared in medieval and early Renaissance France. Well-known favorites across Quebec are cretons (a rich pork pâté), tourtière (meat pie), ragoût de pattes et de boulettes (pigs' feet and meatball stew), les cipaille or cipâte (baked casserole made by layering pastry with meat, poultry, and/or seafood), and galettes de sarrasin (buckwheat pancakes). A hearty fare, originally cooked for fishermen, farmers, and loggers, they are today reserved for family gatherings and holidays.

The abundance of wild game and the land available to provide forage for it probably influenced Quebec's cuisine more than any other factor. This provided ordinary settlers with meat and gave them an equality with royalty unknown to the seventeenth-century French peasant. Indeed, in France at that time, food was frequently scarce. It is not surprising that the Quebecois' diet was rich in meat, poultry, and fish and that regional dishes were made with these ingredients.

Although maintaining their French heritage, the Quebecois incorporated ingredients and dishes from other cultures. From the beginning, the French had close ties with aboriginal peoples whose culture dictated that they share game and fish with their friends. The Native Peoples showed them the edible wild flora and fauna, and the French were quick to incorporate wild game, berries, and maple sugar into their diet. It should be noted that corn, beans, and squash had already been introduced into France before Quebec was colonized, and potatoes are thought to have been introduced by the British. American Loyalists and British immigrants after 1755 also influenced Quebec cookery; the French especially liked sweet British desserts, many of them made with molasses. Cultural influences continue today as with the Middle Eastern innovation mechoui, a popular party at which a whole animal is barbecued, usually wild game like buffalo or wild boar. Quebec cities, like other Canadian centers, have a multicultural character. This is especially true of Montreal, where there are more French-speaking immigrants than in other major Canadian cities: Haitians, Lebanese, and Vietnamese have all influenced Quebec's cookery, particularly in their family-owned restaurants and their ingredients in small grocery stores. Moreover, Montreal's population contains a mix of people speaking a multitude of languages who have contributed their foodways to the cultural mix of this city.

Quebec's cuisine is a highly regional one. The Institut de Tourisme et d'Hôtellerie du Québec has identified at least seventeen gastronomical regions within the province and has searched out more than 30,000 regional recipes. In the Gaspé, for instance, salt is used liberally and salmon layered with pastry is their version of cipâte. People from the Lac Saint-Jean area are called "les Bluets" (blueberries), and these berries are made into grandpères (dumplings cooked in blueberry sauce) or a blueberry cipaille. Gourgane beans brought from Europe are unique to this area and are often made into soupe aux gourganes, a filling bean, barley, and vegetable potage.

Today, young Quebec-trained chefs search out local ingredients, experiment with them, and to some extent are turning to France for inspiration. Artisanal breads, soft cheeses, goat cheeses, Normandy-style apple cider, local wines, organically grown vegetables, white asparagus, fresh herbs (especially summer savory), wild mushrooms, rabbits, caribou, and wild game birds are some of the ingredients finding their way onto the Quebec table. The Quebec diet is changing but the accent remains distinctly French Quebec.

Ontario: a Dynamic Cuisine

The French and then the British and, shortly thereafter, American Loyalist immigrants had close contact with members of the Iroquoian tribes. From these original farming inhabitants, the immigrants learned how to plant corn, beans, squash, Jerusalem artichokes, and sunflowers, and to tap the maple trees for their sweet sugar. In the early days of settlement, wild game and fresh fish from the streams and the many lakes in Ontario were plentiful. The French left little impact upon Ontario's cuisine, but the English foodways became dominant: their style of eating and especially their love of sweets, roasted beef and pork, cooked root vegetables, white bread, and tea. One of the first tasks the settlers had was to build grist mills to grind wheat for their cakes and breads. They found the farmland in southern Ontario to be fertile, and most of the crops from their homelands flourished. Dairy herds were established, which led in the nineteenth century to a significant trade in cheddar cheese with England and the popularity of this cheese in Ontario.

There were two influential groups who came north with the Loyalists at the end of the eighteenth century. The Iroquois under the leadership of Joseph Brant settled near Brandford to form the Six Nations. An agricultural people, they grew the "Three Sisters"—corn, beans, and squash—and reinforced the growth and use of these crops in Ontario. The other group was the Pennsylvania German Mennonites who took up farming in the Waterloo area. When the Ontario Mennonites chose their food preparations from the Pennsylvania German recipe repertoire, a difference appeared. While the recipes they loved best were still distinctly Mennonite, the choices of foods changed. In Ontario, they are known for summer sausages, Nusschinken (cool-smoked ham), smoked pork chops, Koch Käse (a runny cooked whey cheese flavored with caraway seed, smeared on bread with apple butter), shoofly pie made with maple syrup, Dutch apple pie, doughnuts, and mint tea.

In the nineteenth century, southern Ontario was the terminus of the "underground railroad," offering shelter to American blacks escaping slavery. They brought Southern American cookery to Ontario. Irish, Scots, English, and other groups streamed into Ontario during this century, reinforcing British cuisine. Rutabagas (called turnips) were standard winter fare. Steamed carrot pudding became a Christmas tradition. China tea cups were given to brides, and the prescribed wedding cake was a dark fruit cake.

Some ethnic groups entering Ontario in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries formed communities around Ontario: the Poles in Wilno, the Portuguese in Strathroy, the Italians in Guelph, the Scots in the Renfrew valley near Ottawa, the Finns in Thunder Bay, and Ukrainians and Eastern Europeans in Hamilton. This is not to say that myriad cultural groups are not found in these areas; the point is that in these areas, the home cuisine and the language of these settlers was maintained.

Coming primarily from politically troubled parts of the world, approximately 175,000 immigrants annually enter Canada. Of these, about half locate in Ontario, the majority moving into the Toronto area. Immediately after World War II came Italians, Eastern Europeans, British war brides, and many others. In the 1970s, after Canada's newly entrenched multicultural policy, immigrants streamed in from Hong Kong, Vietnam, Somalia, Ethiopia, Croatia, Serbia, India, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, and other countries. Ontario had long served up a meat, potato, and root vegetable table, but the influx of new people and their culinary traditions meant a developing and rapidly changing gastronomy in Ontario, led by Toronto.

Toronto, the most culturally diverse city in Canada, is a reflection of Canadian multiculturalism in the makeup of its population and in its cuisine. There are five Chinatowns in the Toronto area, most recently settled by affluent Chinese from Hong Kong, and Chinese restaurants represent every region in China. Upscale restaurants serve Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Indian, Lebanese, Caribbean, and American cuisine, but the neighborhood dining spots are the best places to find the comfort food of nearly every nation in the world and at a reasonable price.

As a result of this diversity, Ontario is somewhat fragmented in its cuisine, but people in Ontario pride themselves on a receptivity to the flavors of the world. Hoisin sauce, garam masala, baba ghanoush, phyllo pastry, flat breads, tzatziki, pierogies, rice and beans, Jamaican meat patties, and espresso are, if not daily fare, part of Ontario's food repertoire.

The Prairies: Bread and Beef

Traveling west through the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, seemingly endless fields of wheat dominate the landscape. The wheat belt runs through all three prairie provinces, and wheat is an important economic export. Canadian cuisine has been affected by this bountiful crop since it was first planted on the Prairies in the last half of the nineteenth century. Canadians have a history of baking. In 1913 Five Roses Flour Company published a cookbook of recipes collected from women across Canada. By 1915 this book was found in 950,000 or nearly half of the homes in Canada. In addition to bread and pastry flours, durum wheat that is made into semolina flour for making pastas is grown here.

Prairie history, however, was not one of farming. Native Americans who dominated the plains lived primarily on buffalo, which they preserved by drying and mixing it with buffalo fat and berries, usually Saskatoon berries, and storing the mixture, known as pemmican, in containers made of buffalo skin. French and Scottish voyagers of the fur trade were provisioned with pemmican by Native People, and early settlers relied upon it. When overhunting led to the demise of the huge buffalo herds, beef took its place. A favored method of beef cookery is grilling, and some cook it outdoors year round. For community barbecues, a hole is dug with a backhoe large enough for several cords of wood and an entire beef animal. After twelve hours of underground cooking, the beef is sliced and served with baked beans, fresh breads, salads, pickles and relishes, pies and cakes. Calgary, the home of the Canadian cowboy, glorifies the chuck wagon at "stampede," the annual rodeo. Chuck wagon races are an awaited event; the wagons dash pell-mell around a circle and at the finish line the cowboy "cook" must be the first to light the campfire. Chuck wagon expressions humorously included "baked wind pills" (baked beans), "CPR (Canadian Pacific Railroad) strawberries" (prunes), "dough-gods" (dumplings), "paperweights" (hot biscuits), and "yesterday, today and forever" (hash).

Until the 1950s, British settlers strongly influenced prairie cuisine. Stews, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, and cakes named after British royalty (Prince of Wales, Prince Albert, King George and King Edward cakes) were popular. Today, Alberta is dotted with English tea houses, in as unlikely locations as a grain elevator.

While British cookery dominated the great wave of immigration (over a million) in the early part of the twentieth century, immigrant groups did not sacrifice their culinary traditions. Russian Mennonites settling in Manitoba, Icelandic immigrants in Grimli, Manitoba, Hutterites in Alberta, and the French who came early in settlement, particularly in Winnipeg, continued to cook their favorite recipes, as had their families before them.

Ukrainians, however, influenced prairie cookery. From the time they arrived at the end of the nineteenth century, they brought with them a tradition of wheat farming and cuisine. Mothers taught daughters the ancient art of making traditional breads and pysanky. They introduced varenyky or pierogies (flour-based rounds of dough stuffed with a unique Canadian potato and cheddar cheese mixture), stuffed cabbage rolls, psyrizhky (baked stuffed buns), and paska (Easter bread).

Newer immigration waves have made their mark on Prairie cuisine, particularly in the cities. In Winnipeg there is the largest Philippine population outside of that country. West Indian roti shops, Middle Eastern foods, and other ethnic foods add to the culinary flavors of Winnipeg, Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Calgary.

British Columbia: Aboriginal, English, Chinese, and California Fusion

Because of settlement patterns in British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province, its cuisine is different from the rest of Canada. The aboriginal people included many bands of North Coastal and Interior Coastal Peoples living in small villages along the Pacific Ocean and in the interior mountainous areas. By the 1860s there was a genteel English colony on Vancouver Island enjoying garden parties and afternoon tea. Chinese laborers arrived in the last half of the nineteenth century, and in addition to opening restaurants, frequently became cooks in English homes. In the twentieth century, the Californian free-spirited cookery spread up the coast, espousing the use of fresh local ingredients and healthy cooking, including vegetarianism. Many other cultural groups added to this mix but the dominant cuisine is Aboriginal, English, Chinese, and Californian.

As the cuisine in British Columbia developed, locally grown or harvested ingredients from land and sea respectively were adopted by all groups and each modified them according to their backgrounds. The Pacific harvest focuses on salmon: coho, chinook, pink, chum, and red sockeye salmon. Halibut, black cod, lingcod, tuna, rockfish, and eulachon are also favored fish. Shellfish include crabs (especially Dungeness) oysters, scallops, shrimp, prawns, abalone, and many varieties of clams. Agricultural areas in the beginning were developed in the Fraser River delta, supplying produce for Victoria and Chinese vegetables for early Chinese immigrants. Further inland, microclimates characterize the agricultural areas of the Okanagan and Similkimen Valleys, the fruit-growing regions of British Columbia. This climate is ideal for viticulture, and some grapes left on the vine until January are made into Eiswein. Soapberries, thimble-berries, salmonberries, huckleberries, and many other berries are harvested from the wild, as are pine mushrooms growing in evergreen forests.

The first inhabitants who influenced British Columbian cookery were the North Coast Native Peoples. Salmon was and continues to be their primary foodstuff: it is baked, poached, barbecued, and smoked. Family smokehouses are common in the coastal villages. Women also preserve salmon by canning for times when it is not in season. Eulachon oil and herring eggs are prized foods. Eulachon, a small oily fish (also called "candle fish" because when dried it can be lighted), can be eaten fried or baked, but is prized more for its oil, used as a dip for foods and as a seasoning. Spruce boughs are placed in the ocean water and become a spawning site for herring. The branches are harvested with the eggs still clinging to them and are then dried. It is not uncommon to see these boughs drying on the sides of houses. Roots were gathered in the past but are not as commonly used today with the exception of roasted camas bulbs. Indian ice cream is made by whipping the indigenous soapberries into a froth. These local ingredients still dominate aboriginal cooking, particularly since food must be brought to many native villages by ferry. However, the overall cuisine of the Native Peoples has been affected by Canadian culinary culture and their daily menus are as likely to include pizza, burgers, donuts and coffee, stews, pies and cakes as that of any other Canadian. But they value their distinct culinary traditions.

Victoria on Vancouver Island, more than any other Canadian city, has a decidedly English character. Afternoon tea is still a tradition, and locally brewed ales can be found at English-style pubs. In the warm climate (by Canadian standards), growers around Victoria are able to successfully harvest such fruits as kiwi and figs. Their small farms are often organic, and herbs are grown year-round.

Vancouver, the largest city in British Columbia, although multicultural, has a character all its own. Here there are English, Chinese, Pacific Coast Native, Italian, and Japanese, as well as Californian influences. The Chinese influence is strongest in Vancouver. The Chinese community demands fresh produce and fish—evident in Vancouver food stores. Chinese vegetables such as gai lohn have long been grown in the Fraser River delta. Live fish and shellfish from the Pacific are kept in tanks (goe-duck clams, Dungeness crabs, and rockfish). Recent wealthy immigrants from Hong Kong created a demand for imported Chinese foods and medicines such as ginseng (grown commercially in British Columbia and Ontario), dried abalone, shark's fin, and bird's nest.

Young, well-trained chefs are combining this cooking in various adaptations, creating a fusion cuisine. These young people revere local ingredients, ethnic ideas and styles, organically grown foods, herbs, edible flowers, whole grains, and enjoy the good life.

The North: Finding Food for Survival

Canada's agricultural belt as well as its population is concentrated in approximately the lower one-third of its land mass. The "North" includes the territories of the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and the newest territory, Nunavut. For purposes of describing the regional cuisines of Canada, the forest land south of the tundra and north of the agricultural belt are also included, as are parts of the Prairie provinces, Ontario, Quebec and Labrador.

Indigenous ingredients distinguish the cuisine of northern Canada from other regions. Because food supplies are difficult to transport, there is more of an emphasis upon local foods than in southern Canada. Caribou, muskoxen, moose, deer, ptarmigan, and arctic char are hunted or fished. Today aboriginal people supply wild game to restaurants and the luxury market, particularly caribou, muskoxen, and arctic char. Migratory ducks and geese provide variety to the larder in the fall. Berries grow profusely—blueberries, partridge berries, cranberries, and black currants are made into pies, preserves, jellies, and sauces. These foods all have local habitats—not all are found in every part of Canada's north.

The aboriginal population comprises about twothirds of the northern population. Before European settlement, the Inuit occupied the Arctic, that is, the tundra beyond the tree line that encompasses the northern third of Canada's land mass. The aboriginal tribes of the Mackenzie and Yukon River basins and the Northern Cree occupy the northern wooded areas. Before contact with Europeans, these Peoples of the First Nations were self-sufficient and lived seasonally, either following herds of caribou or moving from place to place where food could be found. Their diet was rich in protein, with plant materials making up an estimated five percent of their food. This diet was healthy and supplied all their nutritional needs. In the twentieth century, attempts to assimilate Native Peoples into white society changed the native culture dramatically. Many were moved to permanent settlements (especially the Inuit) and were no longer able to resume their migratory food patterns. They began to live on foods that could be transported into their villages, usually by plane. These foods were much different from their traditional diet. Carbohydrates were introduced, particularly white flour and refined sugar. Manufactured foods like potato chips and soft drinks became popular, especially because the traditional pattern was to eat when hungry rather than at set mealtimes. Rich in fat and starch, these new foods were detrimental to the health of Native Peoples, leading to diabetes and other dietary diseases. While there is a trend among Native Peoples to return to their traditional diet, permanent settlements make this difficult.

The largest white settlements in the north are in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Dawson and Whitehorse were settled during the gold rush, and Yellowknife was established as the capital of the Northwest Territories. The Yukon today has predominately British roots. The center of the gold rush beginning in 1897, Dawson drew miners, honky-tonk girls, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). To prevent starvation, miners were required to pack in a year's supply of food before they were allowed into the territory. Provisions were basic and affected the cuisine of the territory: beans, flour, dried fruit, sugar, bacon, and tea were common items. Wild game supplemented their plain diets, but if they struck it rich they could buy luxury foods such as chocolate, champagne, and fresh eggs. Prospectors became known as "sour-doughs" because they craved white bread so much they baked it in their camps. Legend has it that they kept the yeast starter alive by carrying it in their armpits when traveling in the bitter cold.

Today procurement of food for the north still requires a great deal of planning. Winter is unpredictable, and even where there are logging trails or water access to northern communities, food supplies are sometimes delayed. Nearly any food can be shipped in by air, but that option is expensive. With modern communications with the rest of the world, there is demand for many more food products, especially in increasingly popular luxury fly-in hunting and fishing lodges. Overall, diets in the North are simpler than elsewhere, but definitely Canadian in style.

From coast to coast, diverse regional cuisines dominate Canadian cooking. Canadians today value their ethnic origins highly and take pride in preserving their culture, particularly their cuisine. Overlying these regional cuisines is a dominant North American influence, which is not surprising since there was American immigration into Canada early in its history, the language is understood by most Canadians, and the cultural influence of the media has brought trends and new foods to Canada. Canadians also take advantage of fruits and vegetables grown south of the border that lend variety to winter meals. One cannot say that there is a national cuisine, as there is in Mexico, but one must experience and enjoy the diverse regional cuisines of Canada, which together create a diversity of foodways that reflect Canadian society.

The Order of Good Cheer

The small band of French explorers at Port Royal, Nova Scotia, anticipated the winter of 1606 with dread. The previous winter many of their men had died from a mysterious "land-sickness." The illness was thought to be caused by ill-temper, idleness, and discontent. Samuel de Champlain, a member of the band, founded L'ordre de bon temps (the Order of Good Cheer) to prevent the illness. The object of the society was to go hunting and fishing for wild game and seafood that could be served up in a series of feasts held throughout the winter.

The feasting was met with great enthusiasm by Chief Henri Membertou and his Mi'kmaq followers, who joined the hunting forays and were invited to the grand dinners. It was the custom of the Mi'kmaq to share their food with whoever was in the vicinity, and the French reciprocated this generosity. The variety of raw ingredients for their meals was extensive—venison, moose, beaver, ducks and geese, salmon and trout caught through the ice, scallops, cockles, sea urchin, crabs, and lobster. In addition to these foods, there was plenty of wine and provisions from France.

Although we do not know the dishes prepared for the feasts, the gentlemen in the group were accustomed to sophisticated food. Champlain had been a visitor to the court of Henry IV; one of the men wrote in his diary that their food was as good as roastmeats from the cook shops of Paris. As well, Champlain kept stocked fish ponds near the Habitation.

The Order did help to fend off the illness (scurvy) during the winter. More than anything else, however, the lasting benefit of the dinners was an enduring friendship between the Mi'kmaq and the French. As others have found, the dining table is much better than a negotiating table for mediating conflicts between cultures. The spirit of the Order of Good Cheer is a culinary legacy to Canadians.

Poor Man's Fare

Pâté à la râpure (or rappie pie, the English name) is a traditional Acadian dish with its roots in the frugality of French women. After the British victory in Nova Scotia in the late eighteenth century, some families who had been expelled from the fertile Annapolis Valley returned, but to fishing or to farming marginal land. Times were extremely hard, but they were able to cultivate potatoes—and the men liked their white shirts starched. The women made starch by grating potatoes, squeezing out the starch, and boiling the white shirts in the extract. Since they couldn't waste the potato gratings, they put them into a pan with lobster or fish and baked this mixture. The result, distinctly different from sliced and baked potatoes, was a gelatinous, translucent mixture flavored with seafood, called râpure. Today the tradition continues and, although they still squeeze out the starch to give râpure its distinct character, the starch is seldom used for stiffening white shirts.

Cabin Au Sucre

Where the sugar maples grow in Quebec, there will be "sugar shacks." From the beginning of settlement, colonists tapped the clear maple sap to produce sugar for the year's use as a sweetener. "Spiles," originally wooden tubes with sharpened ends and now metal tubes with hooks for buckets or tubing, were placed in holes drilled into the sugar maple trees. When the nights were cold and days warm, the sap flowed. In the old days, horses hauled tubs of the clear liquid to a covered shed where the sap was boiled down day and night. It took thirty to forty buckets of sap to produce one bucket of golden maple syrup. Men and boys stayed for weeks in the bush tending the fires and watching the syrup so that it would not burn. Today, when one drives through Quebec in the early spring before the snow melts, buckets adorning maple trees and smoke billowing from the bush are a common sight. From this, today's cabin au sucre, or sugar shack, has become a Quebec feature that anyone can enjoy. City folk today flock to the cabins au sucre to feast on maple-drenched dishes, to dance, and to drink. Outdoors, children are treated to la tire, syrup boiled down to a taffy and hardened on snow, and horses draw wagons of fun-seekers into the bush to view the miles of plastic tubing collecting the clear sap—Quebec "gold."

Bibliography

Aitken, Julia, and Anita Stewart. The Ontario Harvest Cookbook: An Exploration of Feasts and Flavours. Toronto: Macmillan, 1996.

Armstrong, Julian. A Taste of Quebec. Toronto: Macmillan, 1990.

Barer-Stein, Thelma. You Eat What You Are: People, Culture and Food Traditions. 2nd ed. Toronto: Firefly Books, 1999.

Canadian Historical Association. Canada's Ethnic Groups, series of booklets. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1982–1991.

Driver, Elizabeth. A Bibliography of Canadian Cookbooks (1825–1949). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming.

Ferguson, Carol, and Margaret Fraser. A Century of Canadian Home Cooking: 1900 through the '90s. Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice Hall, 1992.

Five Roses Cook Book. Montreal: Lake of the Woods Milling Co., 1913.

Institut de Tourisme et d'Hôtellerie du Québec. Cuisine du Québec. Montreal: Les Éditions TransMo, 1985.

Lafrance, Marc, and Yvon Desloges. A Taste of History: The Origins of Québec's Gastronomy. Montreal: Les Éditions de la Chenelière, 1989.

Nightingale, Marie. Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens. New York: Scribners, 1971.

Ontario Historical Society. Consuming Passions: Eating and Drinking Traditions in Ontario. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1990.

Powers, Jo Marie, ed. Buon appetito! Italian Foodways in Ontario. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 2000.

Powers, Jo Marie, ed. From Cathay to Canada: Chinese Cuisine in Transition. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1998.

Powers, Jo Marie, and Anita Stewart, eds. Northern Bounty: A Celebration of Canadian Cuisine. Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1995.

Stechishin, Savella. Traditional Ukrainian Cookery. Winnipeg: Trident Press, 1957.

Stewart, Anita. The Flavours of Canada: A Celebration of the Finest Regional Foods. Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2000.

Turner, Nancy J. Food Plants of Interior First Peoples. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997.

—Jo Marie Powers

Nation in northern North America, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Pacific Ocean and Alaska to the west, and the United States to the south. Its capital is Ottawa, and its largest city is Toronto. In area, Canada is the second largest nation in the world, behind Russia.

• A French explorer founded Quebec in 1608.
• It is an ally of the United States, though conflict has arisen over environmental and trade issues. Each country is the other's leading partner in world trade (see North American Free Trade Agreement).
• The border between Canada and the United States is the longest unguarded border in the world.
• Canada has experienced recurring tension arising from a separatist movement in French-speaking Quebec province. In 1995, separatists were narrowly defeated in a referendum.

The international dialing code for Canada is:   1

Recipes

Sauteed Fiddleheads
Canadian Bacon with Maple Glaze
Sweet Corn Pancakes
Canada Day Cake
Nanaimo Bars
Maple Sundae
Fish and Brewis
Maple Syrup Upside-Down Cake

Geographic Setting and Environment

Canada is the world's second-largest country (after Russia), and is the largest country in North America. The eastern provinces, known as the Maritimes, are separated from the rest of the country by low mountain ranges. Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island are island provinces in the Atlantic Ocean.

Along the border with the United States in the center of Canada is a fertile plain bounded by the Saint Lawrence River, Lake Ontario, and the Hudson Bay. Also along the U.S. border further to the west are farms and ranches. Extending through western Alberta to the Pacific Ocean is the northern portion of the Rocky Mountain range. Mount Logan, at 19,524 feet (5,915 meters) the highest peak in Canada, is near the Alaska border. The climate varies across the vast Canadian territory. The west coast gets about 60–120 inches (150–300 centimeters) of rain each year; the center part of the country gets less that 20 inches (50 centimeters), and the Maritime provinces 45–60 inches (115–150 centimeters). In British Columbia, there are 252 rainy days each year, but in the center of the country, there are just 100.

History and Food

France and England battled over who would colonize the territory of Canada in the late 1400s. The English explorer John Cabot arrived in Newfoundland in 1497. About 40 years later in 1534, Jacques Cartier began his exploration of Canada on behalf of France. By the early 1600s, there were permanent French colonies, and in 1663, New France was established as a territory of France. French fur traders competed with the traders of the Hudson's Bay Company, run by British merchants. Wars in North America, known as the French and Indian wars, were waged in the 1700s. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended the armed fighting and established British rule over all of the territory formerly called New France.

In 1846 conflict over the western portion of the United States–Canada border was resolved, and the border was set at 49°north latitude. This border has been undisputed every since.

Food and other customs in Canada still carry hints of the colonial influences of England and France. Canadians speak English except in Quebec, where the language is French, reflecting the influence of French settlers. But there are other regional differences in food and customs, too.

Food in the provinces of Eastern Canada shows signs of English heritage, except in Quebec where the influence is French. In the provinces of Western Canada, the cuisine reflects the explorers and settlers, who, like their southern neighbors in the United States, made simple, hearty meals from available ingredients. In northern Canada—Northwest, Yukon, and Nunavut territories—the diet is limited by the short growing season, dominated by preserved food ingredients, and influenced by the native Inuit diet. And along the west coast in British Columbia, immigrants from Asian nations influence food and cultural practices. In Vancouver in the west and Toronto in the east (and in many places elsewhere in Canada), Lunar New Year celebrations were inspired by the citizens of Asian heritage living there, but are enjoyed by many other Canadians as well.

Foods of the Canadians

The favorite foods of Canadians vary slightly from region to region, and are strongly influenced by their family heritage, especially in relation to holiday celebrations. Along the Atlantic coast, seafood and dishes derived from English traditions (except in Quebec) are common. In Quebec, favorite foods come from the area's French heritage. Throughout Canada, maple syrup and maple products are popular, reflecting the significance of the maple tree, whose leaf adorns the flag of Canada. Many families enjoy a visit in early spring to a maple sugar "shack," the special rustic building where sap from maple trees is boiled in a large open pan to make maple syrup.

Later in the spring, many people in Eastern Canada visit a wooded area to harvest fiddleheads. Fiddleheads, named because they look like the coiled end of a violin ("fiddle"), are the tasty new sprouts of woodland ferns, picked before they develop into large lacy fronds. They are a fragile spring specialty, usually available for just a few weeks in the spring. Grocery stores in Canada may stock frozen fiddleheads alongside other frozen vegetables.

See Sauteed Fiddleheads recipe.

See Canadian Bacon with Maple Glaze recipe.

See Sweet Corn Pancakes recipe.

Food for Religious and Holiday Celebrations

Canadian Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday in October. A typical menu for Thanksgiving is similar to that served in the country's neighbor to the south, the United States.

Burns Day is celebrated January 25 to commemorate the birthday of poet Robert Burns (1759–96). It is especially significant for people of Scottish descent worldwide, and Scots Canadians are no exception. On Burns Day, the menu includes such Scottish favorites as haggis, cockaleekie soup (chicken-based leek soup), and Dundee cake (a rich fruitcake).

See Canada Day Cake recipe.

See Nanaimo Bars recipe.

Mealtime Customs

Most Canadians eat three meals each day, with breakfast featuring cold cereal, pastries, fruit juices, and hot beverages such as coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. At around noon, Canadians may enjoy a sandwich or soup; students may carry a ham and cheese sandwich, chips or pretzels, and fruit to eat a noon during the school lunch break.

For dinner, depending on where they live, Canadians may have seafood (west coast or Maritime east coast provinces), beef (western Canada, especially Alberta), or chicken or pork. Many Canadians enjoy gravy, serving it frequently with potatoes prepared in many different ways. A traditional Newfoundland dish, Fish and Brewis, features ingredients that may be stored through the long winter months. Desserts featuring maple syrup, such as Maple Syrup Upside-Down Cake or a simple Maple Sundae, are popular treats.

See Maple Sundae recipe.

See Fish and Brewis recipe.

See Maple Syrup Upside-Down Cake recipe.

Politics, Economics, and Nutrition

Only about 5 percent of Canada's land is considered arable (able to grow crops), and agriculture contributes about 2 percent to the country's gross domestic product. The trend is toward larger farms. Canadian farms produce grains such as wheat, barley, corn, and oats. Canada ranks third in the world in grain exports. Canadian farmers and ranchers also raise livestock for export, especially in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

Further Study

Books

Barbolet, Herb. Farm Folk, City Folk: Stories, Tips, and Recipes Celebrating Local Food for Food Lovers of All Stripes. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998.

Barer-Stein, Thelma. You Eat What You Are: People, Culture, and Food Traditions. 2nd ed. Toronto, Ont.: Firefly Books, 1999.

Chavich, Cinda. The Wild West Cookbook. Don Mills, Ont.: R. Rose, 1998.

Claman, Marcy. Rise & Dine Canada: Savory Secrets from Canada's Bed & Breakfast Inns. 2nd ed. Montreal, Quebec: Callawind Publications, 1999.

London, Jonathan. The Sugaring-Off Party. New York: Dutton, 1994. [Picture-book account of maple sugaring in Canada.]

Stewart, Anita. Great Canadian Cuisine: The Contemporary Flavours of Canadian Pacific Hotels. Vancouver, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 1999.

Web Sites

Canada Day Cake Recipe. [Online] Available http://www.mochasofa.com/apps/recipes/RecipeDetail.asp?RecipeId=975 (accessed June 1, 2001).

Liboiron, Henri and Bob St-Cyr. "Making Pemmican." [Online] Available http://collections.ic.gc.ca/notukeu/pemmican_e.htm (accessed April 17, 2001).

Root, Lorna. "Food and More: Canadian Cuisine." [Online] Available http://www.geocities.com/lorna_lynne/recipes/recipe1.html (accessed April 17, 2001).

Source for Special Ingredients

Always Canadian. [Online] Available http://www.alwayscanadian.com (accessed August 17, 2001).

Canada is not a large wine producer and, in fact, consumes almost seven times what it produces. The cold climate severely limits the areas in which grapes can be grown successfully. However, Canada is making a serious effort to produce excellent wines. The province of ontario is the leader in this effort, followed by british columbia and, to a much smaller degree, Nova Scotia and Quebec. Bodies of water play a critical role in successful Canadian wine production, especially in the emerging quality-wine areas of southern Ontario and the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. The climate of both areas is tempered by the surrounding lakes (see lake effect). Southern Ontario produces about 80 percent of Canada's wines and has three quality growing areas-Pelee Island, Lake Erie North Shore, and the Niagara Peninsula (see ontario, for more detail). Quebec, with over thirty wineries, produces hardy hybrids that can withstand the cold weather and the short growing season. Nova Scotia also has a small evolving wine industry. Ontario was the first to implement the vintners quality alliance (vqa), an appellation-regulating system. British Columbia has since adopted the VQA, Quebec and Nova Scotia are about to accept it, and there is a move to implement it on a national scale. VQA is important because it distinguishes quality wines made with Canadian grapes from wines labeled simply "Product of Canada," which can comprise up to 75 percent imported grapes or wine. For many decades grapes grown in Canada were mainly hybrids (like baco noir, de chaunac, maréchal foch, seyval blanc and vidal blanc) or North American varieties (like catawba, concord, Elvira, and niagara). Until the late 1980s, Canada grew limited amounts of vitis vinifera grapes-since then, increased plantings have produced a significant amount of these varieties. The quality growing areas now cultivate increasing amounts of cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, gamay noir, gewürztraminer, merlot, pinot gris, pinot noir, riesling, and sauvignon blanc. Needless to say, cool weather varieties do best in Canada's climate. One advantage that Canada's cold weather provides is the ability to produce consistently superior icewine (see eiswein).

O Canada!
Our home and
native land!
True patriot love in all thy
sons command.

With glowing
hearts we see
thee rise,
The True
North strong
and free!
From far and
wide, O Canada,we stand on guard for thee.

God keep our
land glorious
and free!
O Canada, we
stand on guard
for thee.

O Canada, we
stand on guard for thee.

French Version

O Canada!
O Canada! Terre de nos aïeux,
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!

Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,
Il sait porter la croix!

Ton histoire est une épopée
Des plus brillants exploits.

Et ta valeur, de foi trempée,
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.

Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.

Country in North America that joined the war against Germany just one week after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Despite the fact that Canada fought resolutely for the Allied cause, the country did very little to help rescue European Jewry during the Holocaust.

Canada closed its doors to Jews long before the Nazis rose to power. During the early 1920s the farmlands of western Canada attracted many Europeans, including Jews. This provoked many Canadians to oppose an open immigration policy, and in 1923 the Canadian government restricted its immigration quotas for all Eastern Europeans. Particularly strict rules limited the immigration of Jews to Canada, except those from Great Britain or the United States. After 1923, only Jews who had very close relatives in Canada or could convince the authorities to give them an entry permit---which almost never happened---were admitted into the country.

The Great Depression of the 1930s made matters even worse. Despite the rise of Antisemitism in Europe, especially in Germany, Canada's conditions for immigration were further restricted. Canada's small Jewish community---which made up less than 1.5 percent of the country's entire population---responded to the immigration restrictions by lobbying the government for change. Their national Jewish organization, the Canadian Jewish Congress, also responded to the Nazi threat by arranging a national boycott of goods manufactured in Germany (see also Boycotts, Anti-Nazi). The boycott may have been somewhat successful, but the lobbying accomplished nothing. Canadian delegates attended the international Evian Conference on Refugees in July 1938, but not to offer their country's support in helping the Jews desperately seeking a safe haven from the Nazis. Rather, totally unaffected by the Jews' plight and the lobbying efforts of Canada's own Jews, the delegates were present at the conference in order to ensure that other delegates did not suggest Canada as a possibility for some Jewish refugee resettlement plan.

When World War II broke out in September 1939, Canada's Jewish community both completely supported the war effort, and continued trying to convince the Canadian government to allow in European Jews who could still be saved. On a very few occasions, the Canadian Jewish Congress did manage to persuade the authorities to admit into Canada small groups of Jews. In late 1941 the government agreed to accept 1,000 Jewish children from Vichy France whose parents had already been deported to Extermination Camps in Poland. However, their hard-won efforts came too late to actually save those children: before the children could leave for Canada, the Nazis took control of Vichy France, and the orphans were deported to their deaths. Later on in the war, the Canadian authorities allowed into Canada several hundred Jewish refugees who had made their way to Spain and Switzerland.

A third group of Jewish refugees arrived in Canada during the war, but not due to the efforts of the Jewish community or by the good graces of the Canadian government. These refugees came from England, where they had already found a safe haven from the Nazis. After France was vanquished by the Germans in mid-1940, the British started to fear an invasion of their island. They began to believe that German and Austrian refugees in Britain---including Jews who were simply trying to escape with their lives---were a danger, and might aid the enemy from within. Thus, the British began deporting such refugees to Australia and Canada. Only after two years of pressure from the Canadian Jewish community were the Jewish refugees among the group finally released.

After the war, Canada still refused to change its immigration regulations, even with its recognition of the atrocities that had occurred in Europe. Only during the late 1940s did the Canadian government open its doors wide to Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust.