Anthony Stewart writes that, from childhood, he has seen himself as a visitor to his home and native land—yes, this one—because he is black. Left out of the national conversation, not represented in national culture, not part of the baseline perception of what a member of his country looks like. A visitor, not a member.
“All you need to do,” he writes in Visitor: My Life in Canada, “is spend some time in a room of black scholars in Canada and bring up the word ‘multiculturalism’ and listen for the ensuing derisive laughter.”
Stewart, one of those black scholars, a 50-year-old Canadian-born son of Jamaican immigrants who is now a professor of English at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, is of course right. The claim that Canada is a country of full-blown, successful multiculturalism is, while not hollow...
Michael Valpy is a journalist and author. Through a long career at The Globe and Mail, he served as foreign correspondent, national political columnist, member of the editorial board, and deputy managing editor before leaving to teach in 2010.
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