PRIDE IN COUNTRY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 124, 30 May 1927, Page 9

PRIDE IN COUNTRY

GROWING PATRIOTISM

CANADIANS TAKE A STAND

' (From "The Post's" Representative.) \. VANCOUVER, 3rd May. What is a. Canadian f What is an Australian!. What is' a New Zealandert If one hundred porsons set out to answer this question, they are likely to discover .that their answer does not coincide -with the official definition. When the American goes abroad, he uses the national adaptation of the famous dictum of Paul, of Tarsus, and proudly announces, "I am an American; citizen." Of. other nationalities, relatively to the numbers of population, the Australian voices this native sentiment perhaps more than others, "I'm an Australian," "I'm an Aussie, "he gays." The Canadian, likes to "say he'is a Canadian, although more /than a third of the people might say they are French-Canadians. - Yet, when these people find their naorigin; chronicled in the Census, and the multiplicity of ethnologic and economic productions that literature about them expounds, they find themselves described, not as Australians, ICanadians, or New Zealaiiders but as English, Scottish. Irish, Welsh, French, or; Jiuthenian, although their mothers ;aiid'fathers might have the same eountryj of birth as they. RESTIVE UNDER EMBARGO. Canadians are" becoming restive under this embargo. Especially is this the case nowadays, when critics assert that" Canada' is losing her nationalism, " trailing it at the heels of the United States," as one noted writer: says. Born in Canada, of Canadianborn parents, they are, perforce, described as of the: same racial origin as their father's grandfather. The official explanation is that it is desired to keep t a record of the raciai lineage of the Canadian people. To do this, Canadians are forbidden to use the term, "Canadian" in the Census returns). Objections raised by most of the provinces have been given sympathetic consideration at Ottawa, where the. whole subject was thrashed out on the Census and statistics section of the Estimates recently. Members urged the Minister to permit of the use of the word, "Canadian," and assured him that such privileges need not interfere in the slightest degree with the computations and deductions hitherto indulged in by the Census officials. From the reply given by the Minister, : it would; appear likely that, when t;he next Census is taken, Canadians may be permitted, for the first time in their . history, to.call themselves Canadians.