Preface - Canadian Culture: Key To Canada's Future Development

This is a monograph about Canadian culture. It is designed to examine six questions of fundamental importance to Canada and Canadians. These questions are: What is Canadian culture? What is its scope and subject matter? How is it known? How important is it? How is it developed? And what is its future? A separate chapter has been devoted to each of these questions.

This is a fitting time to be delving into Canadian culture. Not only is the country going through a period of pronounced cultural transformation and change, due largely to the communications revolution, the changing nature of the Canadian population, the Quebec situation, the constitutional crisis, the impact of the free trade agreement and globalization, but also culture is becoming a more and more powerful force in municipal, regional, provincial, national and international affairs.

If one overriding conclusion emerges from this intensive examination of the country’s cultural life, it is that Canadian culture should become the centrepiece of Canadian development in the future. In order to achieve this, it will be necessary to visualize and define Canadian culture in holistic rather than partial terms and give it the highest priority in public and private policy and decision-making.

Like other monographs in the World Culture Project series, the present monograph is intended to be illustrative and exploratory rather than authoritative or definitive in nature. Its purpose is to sketch out the main contours and principal features of Canadian culture and put enough flesh on them so that this particular perception of the country’s development can stand alongside other perceptions of Canadian development as a guide to political, governmental, corporate and educational action in the future.

I would like the express my gratitude to Jill Humphries, Steven Campbell, Ron Evans, R. Murray Schafer, Rosemary Nault and the members of the Canadian Advisory Council (see appendix) for their valuable contributions to this monograph. While recognizing these contributions, I nevertheless accept full responsibility for everything contained in the text.