English Canada

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (November 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

English Canada is a term used to describe one of the following:

English Canadians, a term usually meaning English-speaking Canadians, as opposed to French-speaking Canadian. It is employed when comparing English- and French-language literature, media, or art. The 20% of Canadians whose native language is neither English nor French are generally lumped into one of the two groups according to their knowledge and usage of the official languages.
The Canadian provinces which have an anglophone majority. This excludes only the francophone province of Quebec. Consequently, usage is usually in the context of geopolitical discussions involving Quebec. Among supporters of the two-nations theory, English-Canada is one of two founding nations, the other being French-Canada or Quebec. In avoidance of the two-nations theory, English-Canada is often referred to as the "ROC" (Rest of Canada).
English Canadian, in some historical contexts, refers to Canadians who have origins in England (in contrast to Scottish-Canadians, Irish-Canadians etc.).

According to the 2006 Census of Canada, the population of English Canada is between 17,882,775 and 24,423,375 using the first meaning (depending on how non-official native speakers are attributed); 23,805,130 using the second; and a ballpark 5,978,875 using the third. (A precise number of Canadians of English origin is difficult to estimate for several reasons. It is possibly much higher than the nearly 6 million who reported as much since another 6.7 million people reported their sole ethnicity as "Canadian", without further specification. Presumably, this would include an admixture of multiple ethnicities long present in Canada such as French, Irish, English, and Scottish. On the other hand, historically, there have also been numerous Canadians who have hidden their true ancestry for different political reasons to join the dominant English group; e.g. Overt discrimination against Irish or other immigrants, such as the reported German origin population, which nearly dropped by half after the First World War with a commensurate rise in reports of English origins.)