Introduction
Canada is not alone in benefiting (and suffering) from certain founding myths. At least three myths of Canada, as it is known today, have had a significant impact on the reading of its cultural policy. The first myth is that Canada was discovered by European explorers and, ultimately, settled some four centuries ago. This myth ignores the Indigenous peoples, traditions, and cultures developed on the North American continent since time immemorial. The second myth is that the British (and French) colonies that now comprise Canada had little existence to speak ofâ and little in the way of public policy beyond war and basic subsistenceâ until 1867, when they became a federation under the narratives that better cooperation between the colonies was needed to expand eastâwest trade to resist American political, cultural, and economic encroachment. Like Australia before its federation (in 1901), British North America was previously characterized by self-governing colonies predating confederation. Finally, the third myth is that Canada, as a country, only truly began during the 1960s. Proponents of this view and their many unconscious adherents believe that Canada truly became the peaceful, tolerant country it seems to be today either during this periodâ understood as a time of increasing diversity and moral liberationâ or in the 1980s, when these achievements were constitutionally entrenched through the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Exaggerated watershed moments, misperceptions of civilization and savagery, fashionable self-hatred, and troubling ancient hatreds: all of these compete for the modern Canadian imagination, and structure the narratives and symbolism of our current debates. Why identify and take on these myths? The able reader will see through them, but it helps to know where to look, and to identify them in the discursive fabric of contemporary discourse on Canadian culture and identity.
In introducing the history of âCanadianâ cultural policy, our purpose is to trace the origins and development of todayâs official government programmes. These inevitably find their origins in colonization. The political entity now known as Canada has not yet hadâ in any significant measure (except for the MĂ©tis provisional government of Louis Riel et al.)â a government primarily originating from a tradition other than the French colony, the British colony (and later Dominion), or the contemporary Western constitutional democracy in the form of a federation with Westminster-style national and subnational legislatures, bureaucracies, and courts. In other words, Canada is rooted in the European legal and philosophical traditions of sovereignty (Macklem, 2001; Pratt, 2004; Barker, 2015). For many Europeans, Canada was, more or less, a terra nullius. This perspective on land occupation and ownership did little to favour Indigenous populations who had cared for the land for centuries. In fact, it should be said that Canadaâs existence and survival owes much to Indigenous traditions and mĂ©tissage (Saul, 2008). Canada owes a significant part of its exploration, economic, and trade heritage to Indigenous peoples, not the least of which is the fur trade. Yet, Indigenous peoples have suffered considerable human rights abuses at the hands of Canadaâs governmentsâ some of which have left profound and enduring trauma to this date. The residential school system is undoubtedly one of the darkest chapters of Canadaâs history. Under this system, the Canadian stateâ and its policeâ removed Indigenous children from their families to send them into a boarding school system, wherein they were humiliated and abused. The purpose of these schools was to instil Western language, ways, and habitsâ though many saw in this system an instrument for cultural genocide (MacDonald & Hudson, 2012; Woolford, 2013). Perhaps most surprisinglyâ in light of the progressive image Canada tries to convey to the world at largeâ the last residential schools in Canada only closed in the late 1990s. Today, this difficult past is a contemporary issue, an ethical and institutional challenge to Canadian policy.
Few would assert that the formal Canadian state has developed any dominant cultural policy of recognizably Indigenous inspiration. To this day, so much of Canadaâs policy suffers from a lack of conscious and subconscious representation of Indigenous traditions beyond the occasional symbolic gesture. Researching Canadian cultural policy in these conditions represents a unique intellectual and ethical challenge. From an intellectual and academic perspective, one may find Indigenous cultural policy in oral traditions, looking back at the normativity and cultural prescriptions that derive from these important narratives. These traditions could help us trace Indigenous ways of governing the arts and culture. An additional challenge to this path comes from the fact that Indigenous populations in Canada are extremely diverse in language, traditions, customs, and situations. There are, in other words, many Indigenous populations. Trying to synthesize an Indigenous cultural policy would amount to a terribly reductionist point of view on the subject. Additionally, trying to reconcile, in a single chapter, the rich diversity of Indigenous populations into the long history of Canadian cultural policy may prove to be ethically problematicâ especially in an era where many Indigenous populations articulate demands for self-governance. Are pre-colonization cultural governance practices âCanadianâ cultural policy? The delineation of our object of study, thus, requires caution. This chapter acknowledges dissenting views and will, respectfully, not force the integration of populations into the grand narrative of Canadian cultural policyâ a narrative that is subject to its own contentions and challenges. As a result, this chapter also acknowledges its limitation; its historical overview and the conversations on culture that arise from it are rooted in Canadaâs colonial histories.
Colonial Canada: From the French regime to United Canada
The French presence in Canada dates back to the colonial aspirations of King François the First. In 1534, French explorer Jacques Cartier set sails westbound on the Atlantic Ocean, explored the Gulf of Saint-Lawrence and anchored on the shores of GaspĂ© on July 24th 1534, where he claimed the land in the name of the king of France. After a number of exploratory voyages, a permanent settlementâ Port-Royalâ was established in 1605, and a second, in the territory that would become QuĂ©bec City, was established in 1608. French King Henri IV officialized the colony as la Nouvelle-France. The city of MontrĂ©al originates from a settlement that began in 1642. The French colony expanded its territory to encompass a large portion of contemporary Canada and the United States, including land ranging from Hudson Bay to the actual Louisiana (Desbarats & Greer, 2011).
Historians made a number of observations about cultural life and its regulation under the French regime. Culture was then inextricably linked to religious orders and their missions, and to the military. The first French-language play in North America was performed in Port-Royal on November 14th 1606. The ThĂ©Ăątre de Neptune en la Nouvelle-France was written by Marc Lescarbot, performed by and for colonial administrators and militaries; it was meant to cheer up and galvanize the soldiers stationed in the colony (BibliothĂšque nationale et archives du QuĂ©bec, 2020). The 243-verse play is also said to have been written to honour the King and Franceâs colonial project in the Americas (Wright, 2013).
Plays were an important part of the cultural life under the French regime. Jesuit and Ursuline religious orders introduced theatre and plays into the religious education they offered in the colony as early as 1640. By the mid-1640s, there was a growing cultural life in the colony, in an increasing amount of ballets and plays performed by French artistic companies. French tragedian Pierre Corneilleâs plays were amongst the most popular at the time. On December 31st 1646, Corneilleâs most famous playâ The Cidâ was performed in QuĂ©bec City (Bourassa, 2003, p. 148). Some of Corneilleâs other plays were frequently performed in the late 1640s and early 1650s. In general, religious plays were favoured; and, while most were made and performed in French, others were performed in Latin or in Huron and Algonquin languages (pp. 148â149). Theatre thrived in the French colony until a certain clash occurred between religious authorities and the governor. In 1694, Governor Frontenac promoted the production of MoliĂšreâs Tartuffe in QuĂ©bec City. MoliĂšreâs comedy was extremely critical of religious and political authorities; it was not well received by the French royal court. Performances were banned in France in 1672, and it is said that Frontenac was well aware of the ban. The colonyâs Bishop, Saint-Vallier, exerted important pressures on Frontenac to stop the production, and was successful in his efforts to halt Frontenacâs project (p. 150). This was probably the first act of censorship in the French colony, and it speaks to the weight of the religious orders in the social and cultural life of the colony (Belmessous, 2004). The controversy surrounding the performance of MoliĂšreâs comedy slowed the steady progress that theatre had made over the previous 50 years in la Nouvelle-France.
Similarly, silverworkâ for household items or for objects of devotionâ as well as bronze sculpting, was first introduced by the military to the French colonies. French soldiers were the first craftsmen to bring European sculpture to the colony. QuĂ©becâs rich tradition of silverwork and bronze work takes its roots from this era. As for other visual arts, in addition to collecting and commissioning works from European artists, priests also engaged in their practice (Morisset, 1933). Religious orders were also the first to develop natural history and art collections in the colony.
The history of Nouvelle-France ends in two acts. The first is related to the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, signed in the aftermath of the Spanish Succession War, pursuant to which Port-Royal and portions of Acadiaâ a French colony on the Atlantic coastâ were handed over to the British. Decades later, as of 1755, on the orders of Lieutenant-Governor Charles Lawrence, the British troops began to expel the French-speaking population from the territory that corresponds to todayâs New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. French-speaking inhabitantsâ Acadiansâ were deported to the British colonies in America or to France (many ultimately settled in Louisiana). Houses and churches were burned and the resistance was brutally crushed. The second act which sealed the fate of the French colony in North America is linked to the Seven Years War. In 1758, the British troops began their invasion of Nouvelle-France (Allaire, 2007; VeyssiĂšres & Fonck, 2012). In 1763, the Treaty of Paris formalized the end of the First French Empire, the end of Nouvelle-France, and the handover of the colony to the British crown.
Ultimately, the end of the American Independence War in 1783 provoked a dramatic shift in the demographics of the former French colony. British subjects who sided or fought with the British crownâ known as Loyalistsâ were offered to resettle in the recently conquered Province of QuĂ©bec and in Nova Scotia. The loyalist notion has served to shape, and is probably still shaping, the narratives supporting English-Canadian identity. Canada, it is sometimes argued, was after all created by a determination to resist becoming American; it was driven by a desire to maintain roots with Britain.
Until 1780s, the Province of Québec was predominantly populated by French and Indigenous peoples, and the British presence was limited to military troops, colonial administrators, and to a number of British merchants. The migration of Loyalists drastically altered the make-up of the population, leading to frictions. As a result, the territory of the Province of Québec was divided into two self-governing colonies through the Constitutional Act of 1791: the predominantly Anglophone Upper Canada (later Ontario) and the predominantly Francophone Lower Canada (Québec).
Under the French regime, libraries belonged to the scholars from religious orders. The libraries that developed after the British Conquest were developed on the model of paid memberships (Bruce, 2018). Merchant Germain Langlois developed QuĂ©bec Cityâs first âcirculating libraryâ in 1764, and was followed decades later by Thomas Cary in 1797 (Gallichan, 1991, p. 35). These libraries were strictly private operations, requiring pay for usage. In 1779, Governor Frederick Haldimand created QuĂ©bec Cityâs Library, a system that was more of a club than a commercial operation (p. 37). The Library of the Parliament of QuĂ©bec, reserved to the Members of the Parliament, is thought to have sustained the importance of libraries, and to have popularized the idea amongst the elite in ways that would later facilitate the development of a public library system.
As of the 1820s, both Upper and Lower Canada began to experiment with new approaches to public culture, art, and heritage. This is the era in which the idea of a museum germinated in the Canadian society and psyche. The first museums were largely inspired by private âcabinets of curiosityâ. The very first museum experiences in Canada can be ordered in two distinct logics (Gagnon, 1996). The first logic has to do with amusement, wonder, and leisure. In 1824, in MontrĂ©al, the Italian Museum openedâ a small institution with 130 items managed by innkeeper, Thomas Delvecchio (Poulot,...
