Talk:English Canadian

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Canada Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Canada and related WikiProjects, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles on Canada-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project member page, to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale.

Contents 1 Needed: List of Canadians of English ancestry 2 "Clippings" of new material on BC English-Canadians 3 Requested move 3.1 Survey 3.2 Discussion 4 Inane discussion 5 Heroes, heroines and national myths 6 Move 7 New requested move 8 Infobox 9 Delete Symbols section 10 Move article to English-speaking Canadian 11 Ethnic Composition

[edit] Needed: List of Canadians of English ancestry

...either as a section on this page or in its own right; since English-Canadian doesn't necessarily mean "Canadians of English ancestry". The Scots, Irish, Chinese, Ukrainians, Norwegians and nearly everybody else have such a list; it's only fitting that English should too. Once we figure out who they were (Scots, Irish/Anglo-Irish, Welsh and Cornish seem to be more visible/high-profile...or not?).Skookum1 07:47, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Clippings" of new material on BC English-Canadians

The following is a copy-paste of an extenuation of my new additions to the article, which I indulged in last night before bed at length, then realized I wasn't writing a history/demography of BC and thought better to post it here; if someone can condense some of this into the article, or if maybe there should be a Demography of British Columbia article (if there isn't already) where this could go, and stuff like it. I was actually trying to write it from the aspect of the types of spoken English you're likely to hear in almost any BC town, far away from the ethnic-enclave multiculturalism of the Lower Mainland; the idea is that "offshore accents", no matter where they were from, in addition to specifically British and also American accents, have always been more common in BC than anywhere else in the country; or were until the rest of Canada was multiculturalized, which it never used to be (the Prairies were multiethnic but assimilation/cooperation/cohesion oriented, other than the Hutterites, Mennonites and Doukhobours...who I forgot to mention in the article overleaf and should be...

Inline comment brackets I'd written I've changed to round brackets to make visible. Towards the end of paragraphs I was getting talk page-ish as I realized I'd be transferring all this over here. Main cite is the book mentioned in the edit comment previous; Strangers Entertained, 1971, BC Govt Centennial Publ, not sure which publisher (might be custom job), but standard resource for BC immigration history for "all groups", although not as detailed as could be; too compressed, but lots of stuff, for sure. That's all for tonoight; it's 1:58 am and I'm off to bed....

"Since colonial times, BC has also had the country's highest share of non-British Europeans (!--historically Germans, Scandinavians, and European French, Belgians included especially but I'm not sure how to word that without even more clutter--). After World War I, Italians and Yugoslavians came in large numbers, and after World War II, Germans, Dutch, Poles, Finns, Hungarians, and people from the Baltic countries, with newer migrations of Czechs post-1967 and Greeks in the early 1970s. This earlier wave of immigration, including the historical Chinese and Japanese populations, had become completely anglicized. In the 21st Century, a sizeable influx of Latin-Americans began, including many Mexicans, Hondurans, Colombians and Brazilians, as well as a new Eastern European influx, predominantly Russian and Polish. The result is that in almost any town or neighbourhood in British Columbia, historically and to this day, the spoken English one hears is likely accented in one way or another, even in families and communities where other languages are never used, .

"British Columbia retains some of its "British ethnic" flavour partly because it remain a favourite retirement area for expats from around the Empire, as it has been throughout its existence, and in areas like Rockland, Fairfield and Oak Bay, English and other British accents remain common. Although British identity in BC remains focussed on Victoria, it was also strong on the Mainland especially prior to the Great War, when Scottish accents in were the most commonly heard in Vancouver, from both working and upper classes. Some Canadian historians express a certain horror when they recount how it was easier in Vancouver to buy The Times of London, The Daily Telegraph and other British papers in the newsstands of Victoria, Vancouver, West and North Vancouver, New Westminster, as well as in the Okanagan, when Toronto and Montreal papers were rarely seen or bothered with. The English presence in the City of Vancouver was most noticeable in the Kerrisdale, South Granville and West End neighbourhoods, where shops catered to English tastes and style. In the Interior, the Okanagan in particular was British-settled, with a concentration of better-off upper and upper middle-class settlers enticed by realtors' visions of the genteel orcharding and ranching life, with British country and salon society transplanted whole to the homes and clubs of Kelowna and Penticton, as well as "hordes of remittance men" {!--that's a quote from somewhere; I'll cite it if I remember which article/essay/editorial--} and junior scions of "good family" who were reduced to working as doormen and waiters at country clubs; as with Vancouver and the towns of the Lower Mainland, British expat society - which had reached a peak in the Edwardian era - in BC was shattered by the Great War. The story of the empty town of Walhachin, an upper-crust orcharding colony complete with ballrooms, grand piano and literary readings, died when all the men went off to war, is symbolic of that vanished society, and Kelowna and Penticton have lost nearly all of their one-time British high-society/gentry manners and cultivated cricket-tennis-and-tea lifestyle (epitomized in the film My American Cousin by the khaki and near-jodhpurs worn by the heroine's father).

I could have gone on, but stopped after completing various bits within ot as I'd realized it's more a propos for another article, or for condensation; these are matters which relate to the character and composition of the "English-Canadian" population of BC, however, so should be included in some way if condensable. It strikes me that there maybe should be an article on British immigratioh to British Columbia, as it is a very distinct (and citable) history and culture/society from the British element in the rest of the country; although British immigration to Canada and the aforementioned Canadians of English ancestry seem like necessary articles as well.Skookum1 10:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I admit it's a tricky article to do because of the indeterminate boundaries of what can be meant by 'English Canadian'. At its very broadest it's a convenient (albeit sloppy and inaccurate) catch-all for Canadians who aren't of aboriginal ancestry or don't speak French or another language as their first language. But many of those persons would not self-identify as 'English-Canadian' so the broadest definition doesn't do. I think some people may put themselves in two or more categories simultaneously, depending on context, so I didn't want the article to be unreasonably exclusivist either. As my parents were born in Ireland, I tend to consider myself 'Irish-Canadian' from a purely 'ethnic' perspective and retain some cultural ties to that background; but on the other hand, linguistically and culturally I would class myself with the 'English-Canadians' even though in my case any actual ethnic 'English' ancestry is a long long time ago. I know that is some of the other Wikipedia articles on ethnic groups and peoples there have been some pretty heated discussions and nasty disagreements about issues of ethnicity.

Not always ethnic articles either; individual bios can go that way, with lots of fire and thunder; see Talk:Nikola Tesla. On the other hand Talk:Chinese Canadian gets a bit creepy...Skookum1 21:10, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Funny you should mention 'Strangers Entertained' as I'm sure we have a copy around the house and I was looking for it the other day and all I could find was another BC Centennial publication "It Happened in British Columbia" which had nothing useful.Corlyon 21:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)Corlyon

I used to have that too, maybe still do. Yes, quite useless, along with a lot of other similar publications.Skookum1 21:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

The consensus seems to be that separate, inter-linked, articles are required for Canadian of English descent and English Canadian (or, perhaps English-Canadian). Since this is bound to require copying and pasting between articles, no explicit page moves are necessary, since each page will effectively be re-written.

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. --Stemonitis 09:45, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inane discussion

I can't believe we decided not to rename the article. The entire article, with the possible exception of a couple of lines at the beginning on Newfoundland, is about English Canadians, an extremely important concept here, based on English as a language, not an ethnicity. Canadians of English descent (thus, ethnicity) is a marginal notion in comparison. Sure, historically, we can look at Canadians who were born or whose ancestors were born in England, but even that is less important than, for example, Canadians of British descent. And now we have to wait for someone to write an article of marginal interest, at best, on the Canadians whose ancestors happen to be from England, because someone made a mistake (and admitted it) and changed the name in the first place. It's sad, really. --SteveMtl 20:23, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

That was perhaps a little negative. A positive proposal: re-rename the article to English-Canadians (there's almost nothing to split) and someone who has an interest in Canadians of English descent can write an article on that very different topic.--SteveMtl 20:37, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I was also baffled at first because the lead clearly talks about English Canadians (no hyphen; see French Canadian and all those other X Canadian articles). I think the problem is the History section, which deals with people coming over from the United Kingdom as well as Ireland for some reason (Canadians of Irish descent already exists). Who has been planning to do the split into two coherent articles, so that we don't have to push for a move to English Canadian in the meanwhile? –Pomte 23:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I contributed much of the history section to this article when it was titled "English Canadians" and not "Canadians of English Descent", which is why the article deals with a broader spectrum of people than just Canadians who can trace their ancestry to England itself. The text of the article was subsequently moved to "Canadians of English Descent" and I requested that it be moved back to its original home, which would necessitate the creation of the separate article.Corlyon 19:54, 27 March 2007 (UTC)Corlyon

It's obvious that what is ordinarily meant by English Canadian is an English-speaking Canadian, not a Canadian of English descent. Would anybody say that Daniel Johnson, Jr is an English Canadian? Obviously there will be a large amount of overlap because most Canadians who are not of English descent but speak English natively have adopted the culture of those Canadians who are of British descent. There really is no need for an article on Canadians of English descent because little can be said about them that cannot, now, be said about English Canadians in general. (For example, if your great-grandparents were Ukrainian, and you're a Manitoban, you may well eat pierogies, but you probably also eat pancakes and Canadian-style sliced bread. On the other hand, you probably don't eat tourtière like French Canadians. That makes you an English Canadian.) At most, a list of famous people could be given. Everything like culture, food, sports, etc., would belong under English Canadian. Joeldl 06:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

NB Daniel Johnson's name is actually Irish (not English). The rest of his ancestry, and his family, is pretty much francophone Québécois.--SteveMtl 17:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Good. There seems now to be a consensus that the subject of this article is English Canadians. So, what do we do? Can we ingore the discussion above and simply rename it? I'm not a regular on English wikipedia, so i don't know what the solution is, but i would suggest simply renaming it, without further discussion. --SteveMtl 17:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll leave it for another day or so to see if anyone really objects to the move before I try it. (English Canadian reserve, of course) I think, reading some of the comments from people who objected above, that they may have thought that this would eliminate the opportunity for an article on 'Canadians of English Descent' if that was felt necessary. I myself have no real interest in doing so, but someone may want to tackle it. I've noticed that the link to this article from "English Canada" has been broken in the last couple of days as well, so that "English Canadians" just takes you back to "English Canada" in a Groundhog Day loop. I've never seen that before in Wikipedia.Corlyon 05:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)Corlyon

Many of the people who opposed the move said that they thought these were different notions, and I don't disagree with that. None of them, as far as I can tell, actually said that the current article, which spent virtually its entire history as English Canadian, more closely reflected the content that would be appropriate for Canadian of English descent. Somebody said that some things should be copied and pasted. But it seems to me that that should be done from English Canadian to Canadian of English descent, if at all, not vice versa. Joeldl 06:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Heroes, heroines and national myths

Just read through this, expecting to find Vimy and Dieppe, which the CBC regularly inflicts us with annual documentaries and talkshows and other puffpieces about. Definitely part of the national mythology and so far there's only one mention of Vimy, in a previous section; not sure abot Dieppe. Haven't quite read the whole section in detail yet, only done a scan, but the peacekeeping mythology (recently extinguished by our government/brass) is part of the national myth, also. Or more like "international good guy", which is certainly our conceit (despite being in some ways as domestically corrupt as Mexico....). An old professor/teacher of mine opined years ago that national myths were always a lie, and that includes of course the national self-image; conciliation, cooperation and moderation is the myth, likewise "peace, ordeer and good government", so much so that got enshrined in teh 1982 Cosntitution; but really this place isn't about that; it's about near-absolute authority, (ab)use of official power (legislative, juridicial or outright violence or threat of it, quite commonly in fact...) and poitical extremes (esp. in BC....).Skookum1 05:10, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Go ahead and add those if there are reliable sources (or not, as the article is largely unsourced). –Pomte 00:42, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move

Have copied and pasted the material to English-Canadian from "Canadian of English Descent" as the English Canadian article deals with people in the broader linguistic/cultural context rather than narrower ethnic one. Canadians of English Descent can be used for material focussing exclusively on Canadians of English ancestry. I see no point in continuing the existence of the "Canadian of English Descent" article.Corlyon 00:07, 10 April 2007 (UTC)Corlyon

Please do not perform cut and paste moves, which disrupt the edit history. That is what Wikipedia:Requested moves is for; even if it takes a while, it will get the job done. –Pomte 00:40, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New requested move

There seems to be a big mess surrounding these articles. It might have been better to combine those that needed combining in advance, to make it clearer which article belongs where. Currently, English Canada and English Canadians both redirect to English Canadian, while English-Canadian is different, with Canadian of English descent as a third article, although Canadians of English descent redirects not there, but to List of Canadians of English descent. I hope that someone has got a plan on how all this should be sorted out. In the meanwhile, I have replaced the redirect at English Canadian with a simple redirect, so that this article can be moved there by anyone. Other redirects that need to be deleted can be tagged with {{db-move}}, or ask me directly. --Stemonitis 09:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox

Somebody has decided to exclude Quebec from the infobox. There are 600,000 English Canadians in Quebec, which is more than PEI, New Brunswick or Newfoundland, unless I'm mistaken. In the population, they may also have included many non-English Canadians who live outside Quebec. The "place" should be Canada, and the population should probably be mother-tongue speakers of English in Canada. I will make the changes. Joeldl 03:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

It depends what the "significant" in "Regions with significant populations" means. It may exclude a province with a high number of English Canadians because the ratio of English to other is low. I think the section should be removed altogether to avoid subjectivity and being misleading. It's pretty obvious that the English population is significant in most populated regions of Canada, and the article should reflect this in prose. –Pomte 03:14, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I skimmed your suggestion and misunderstood. What about "Most of Canada"? –Pomte 03:25, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

No, I think "Canada" is appropriate. I particularly object to "except Quebec and Nunavut" (I understand that you didn't put that there). As I said, 600,000 anglophones live in Quebec. Over a quarter of Nunavut residents are Anglophone, and it's likely that most of them are non-Aboriginal. Joeldl 04:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll point out that number is actually closer to 1 000 000. My mother tongue is not English, but I speak it home. There are more English-speaking Canadians in Quebec than all of the Maritimes. --Soulscanner (talk) 00:41, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Delete Symbols section

If English Canadians have no symbols specific to themselves, why is there a section on this in the article? Should this not go under Canadian identity or some other article on pan-Canadian identity? --Soulscanner 11:35, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move article to English-speaking Canadian

The article should be moved to English-speaking Canadian, English Canadian should be moved to a disambiguation page containing the dictionary definition and links to the relevant articles. This would be consistent with articles on English-speaking Quebecer or Swedish-speaking Finn, which have made similar moves to emphasize that these are linguistic and not ethnic groups. --Soulscanner 11:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

One also needs to take into account the content of the page. If you look at the demographic statistics on this page, they all generally refer to people that are English-speaking (i.e. anglophone). Hence, although there are occasional, mostly uncited claims about identity on this page, I think the main topic here is that of a linguistic group. "English-speaking Canadian" is more precise and consistent with the subject here. Literate Canadians (sociologists, government agencies, journalists, linquists, etc.) use the term English and French-speaking Canadian to distinguish Canada's two linguistic communities in the context discussed on this page. The term "English Canadian" as it refers to a person is more a question of identity, as it would be with Italian or Japanese Canadian. In that sense, most people in Canada identify with ethnicity as opposed to language. We would call David Suzuki Japanese-Canadian (I think he'd refer to himself that way too), and that make sense considering the history of most Japanese Canadians is somewhat distinct from that of other Canadians. It would be less common to thing of him as English Canadian, unless we were talking in a linguistic context. It is Canadians of old Anglo-Celtic stock (English, Scots, and Irish) that have forged cohesive identity early in the 20th century and hence are referred to as English Canadian. Someone like Don Cherry could not be mistaken for anything but English Canadian. Therefore, an article named "English Canadian" should focus more on those who identify English Canadian as opposed to someone who speaks English. --Soulscanner (talk) 02:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

• Move - for reasons stated above--Soulscanner 11:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
• Move Kevlar67 14:00, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. English Canadian is the common name for English-speaking Canadians. It's not our fault if the term sounds like an ethnic group. We should reflect the way things are, not what is convenient. Cop 663 02:47, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

True but is it also the common name for ethnically English people is Canada, hence the need for disambiguation. Basically the opening paragraph is fine, but then all the subsquent material should be moved to Anglophone Canadians. "Anglophone" and "Anglo" are common terms in Canada too. Either that or it should all be moved to Spoken languages of Canada or a new Language demographics of Canada to match Language demographics of Quebec. Kevlar67 (talk) 16:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Just split to English Canadian (ethnic group) and English Canadian (linguistic group). That would solve the problem and reflect how people actually talk. Cop 663 (talk) 19:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a better arrangement than the current one. But the linguistic group is generally referred to as English-speaking, not English in the academic literature; we keep track of language in Canada far more than we keep track of ethnicity. Our constitution is base in part on French/English language duality. Also, the ethnic group is not of English ethnicity exclusively; it is English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. The problem here is that English Canadian is largely a historical term. It describes the identity of Loyalist, British, and Irish immigrants who forged a common identity in the 19th and early 20th century based on British culture and loyalty to the British Crown. It is really more of an identity than a ethnic one. --Soulscanner (talk) 03:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose People in Canada use the term English Canadian all the time, and it's clear they don't mean to exclude people of Scottish or Irish descent, at the very least. And I'd go as far as to say nobody would give a second thought to calling David Suzuki "English Canadian". This is the reason: the term exists because it can be opposed to "French Canadian", and David Suzuki speaks English, not French. And to a language group is attached a certain culture, which must be described. That includes literature, food, pop culture, a collective perspective on history, etc. Having the article at English-speaking Canadian or English Canadian (linguistic group) would trivialize that reality. "English Canadians" are the cultural group in question. "English-speaking Canadians" is just a convenient way of defining them, not their name. Joeldl (talk) 13:37, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ethnic Composition

That ethnic composition table ios very wrong!!! There are 1.1 million Ukrainians, 0.9 million Polish, 1.3 million Italians. Just check Statcan Ehtnic groups Canada 2001. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.150.154.247 (talk) 22:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

You may be referring to the number of Canadians of Italian ethnic origin, etc., not the number of English-speaking Canadians (in the sense of having English as one's mother tongue) of Italian ethnic origin. Many Italian Canadians have Italian or French, not English, as their mother tongue, and they are not counted in the table. Joeldl (talk) 09:03, 3 May 2008 (UTC)