A Matter of Nations and Identity

By Volodymyr Kish

 Like the vast majority of Canadians, I spent this past July 1 celebrating Canada Day, our nation’s official birthday.  On July 1, 1867 the British North America Act united three British colonies into the country we now call Canada.  I would hazard a guess that few Canadians could today correctly come up with the names of those three colonies (for the record – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Province of Canada, which was at that time the union of Upper and Lower Canada).  Nonetheless, I have no doubt that there are very few Canadians who would disagree that Canada is one of the finest countries in the world in which to live.

This past month for me has certainly been one to prompt reflections on just what a country or nation is, since Canada is not the only one that has figured prominently in my life, my values and my priorities in life.  As most of you know, the Historical Train of Ukrainian Pioneers pilgrimage between Halifax and Edmonton which started some two weeks ago, marked the real beginning of the commemoration of the 120^th Anniversary this year of the first Ukrainian immigrants to Canada.  These were people who staked their lives and their future on a country few of them knew much about.  They were following their dreams, since the country that they most clearly identified with, Ukraine, officially did not exist, and had not done so for centuries.  They were not leaving their home country, but rather they were leaving poverty, oppression, bigotry, endless historical conflict, and above all a lack of hope that anything would conceivably change in their lifetime.

What is interesting though is that over the past 120 years, all those different waves of Ukrainian immigrants still managed to instil in their descendants and the Ukrainian community in Canada a very strong and vivid image of the Ukrainian “nation” and its primary component, Ukrainian culture.  In a sense, in the absence of a concrete political entity, they created a virtual country or nation built out of a synthesis of a thousand years of history, mythology, religion, art, music and tradition. 

In a way, such virtual “nations” can often be more real and lasting than concrete geopolitical entities.  The classic example of course is the Jewish nation which has existed for thousands of years, though having no real physical home until the past half century.  The same holds true for Ukraine and Ukrainians – though we have existed as a “free” nation for only a few generations in the past 800 years, few except perhaps the Russians would question that Ukrainians are a distinct “nationality”.

All of which has brought me to the realization that in today’s world, there are two distinct categories of countries or nations. The first is the traditional historical concept of a country made up of a distinct, relatively homogenous race of peoples within a defined geographical space.  This is the way most nations were formed over the course of the past few thousand years.  Most countries in the world currently conform to this model, i.e. France, Sweden, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Japan, and countless other countries exemplify this concept of a geographic entity where the majority of the population is of one dominant ethnicity.

Over the past several centuries however, a new concept in nation states has emerged which is challenging the established status quo, and here I am referring to the so-called “New World” countries such as the U.S., Canada or Australia which have been built on the basis of absorbing a large variety of immigrant newcomers from all corners of the world and creating multi-cultural and multi-racial entities not based on any one specific ethnic core.  The resulting “culture” if we can call it that, is often hard to characterize.  When we speak of Ukrainian culture or Japanese culture or Italian culture, lots of things immediately come to mind in terms of music, art, cuisine, traditions, religion, values, etc.  However, ask someone to describe Canadian or American culture and those categories seem to lose relevance.  The things that make us Canadian or American lie more in the realms of values and principles than in those characteristics that we normally associate with “culture”.

I think that this is probably why there is so little conflict in my identifying myself as both Ukrainian and Canadian.  There is no tension between the two - they are complementary and symbiotic aspects of my identity.  Much as the union of husband and wife creates a mutually supportive and creative new entity in the form of a married couple, so does the union of the Ukrainian and Canadian aspects of my heritage create in me a composite identity that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I am immensely grateful in being both Ukrainian and Canadian.