It Seems We Really Care

On March 12, 2004, during a lecture at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Michael Ignatieff made a claim that would have been given long odds, judging by both Canadians’ view of themselves and a new book of essays. In Canada, he claimed, the state had created the nation.

Few of the Confederation delegates in 1864–65 conceived of federal union in nationalist terms, and few thought a Canadian nationalism was possible. In the early 1900s, Wilfrid Laurier, witnessing the surging ethnic nationalism in Europe and the United States, believed that only a muted “political nationality” was possible in Canada. And in our day, the House of Commons passed a motion to recognize the “Québécois as a nation within a united Canada.”

A new collection of 14 essays, Canadas of the Mind: The Making and Unmaking of Canadian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, edited by Norman Hillmer and Adam Chapnick, improves our understanding of Canadian nationalism in the...