The Racial Mosaic: A Prehistory of Canadian Multiculturalism by Daniel R. Meister

Reviewed by: The Racial Mosaic: A Prehistory of Canadian Multiculturalism by Daniel R. Meister Augie Fleras Daniel R. Meister. The Racial Mosaic: A Prehistory of Canadian Multiculturalism. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. 388 pp. Acknowledgements. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $39.95 sc. I used to dread the prospect of reviewing a book based on the author's doctoral thesis. My trepidation was well-founded. Too often the publication reflected the plodding formalities of a PhD thesis, the content often lacked intellectual maturity, and its polysyllabic (!) wordiness sought to impress rather than communicate. Fortunately for me and the reading public, Daniel Meister's The Racial Mosaic has proven a refreshing exception to this rule. The book is a model of scholarly insight and clarity as it takes the reader into a hitherto under-researched slice of Canadian history. He accomplishes this challenge by refracting a prehistory of multiculturalism through the lives and lens of three public intellectuals: Watson Kirkconnell (1895-1977), a university professor; Robert England (1894-1985), an immigration expert with the CNR; and John Murray Gibbon (1875-1952), a publicist for the CPR and author of Canadian Mosaic: The Making of a Northern Nation (1938). Collectively and individually, their speeches, activities, and publications in advancing the principle of cultural pluralism ('cultural' used in the sense of folklore or artistic instead of a total way of life) offered a new way of thinking about Canada as a racial(ized) mosaic of different European heritages. Through the narratives of these public intellectuals, especially during the interwar period, Meister explores the shifting interplay of race with pluralism and citizenship, not only in forging a prototype of official multiculturalism, but also in coaxing a national imaginary of Canada as diverse yet white. The book, which could easily have been entitled "An All-White Mosaic", is rich in biographical and historical details. For those readers more inclined toward impatience, the author provides excellent introductions and conclusions that capture the gist (content and argument) of each chapter. In terms of organization, the first three chapters examine the intellectual development of Kirkconnell/England/Gibbon with respect to their philosophies about cultural pluralism, in what contexts, and with the kind of limitations that promoted the inclusion of some cultures but the exclusion of Indigenous peoples and non-European cultures. The next two chapters address how initiatives and debates over cultural pluralism increasingly fell under the sway of federal jurisdiction as central authorities sought to manage immigrant diversity [End Page 153] in the hopes of fostering stability and homefront support as part of the War effort. The concluding chapter explores the fraught relationship between citizenship and cultural pluralism as mediated through a racial lens. An epilogue rounds out the biographical sketches of these private citizens as public intellectuals. Meister paints a nuanced picture of the politics at play in the in-between war years. The incipient phase of Canadian multiculturalism may have reflected a gradual acceptance of a properly managed cultural diversity as a positive benefit to Canada. Yet government authorities were initially leery of institutionalizing cultural pluralism for fear of eroding national interests and Canadian character. By contrast, in comparison to the British colonial mentality and xenophobia that permeated this period, Kirkconnell/England/Gibbon were relatively progressive in extolling the virtue of European cultural traditions as catalyst for a distinctive Canada-building. Nevertheless, despite sympathies that tended toward the non-discriminatory–at least for European immigrants and cultures–none of these pioneers of pluralism could be described as anti-discriminatory: an explicit white supremacy remained untouched. They were tethered to a conventional wisdom of a white superiority complex, insofar as their ideas about cultural pluralism were rooted in the fundaments of a settler colonialism, an elemental belief in race and hierarchy as fixed and unbridgeable, a commitment to Anglocentrism as the epitome of progress, and a tacit endorsement of eugenics to preserve Canada's purity and integrity. Assumptions of assimilation informed their notion of cultural pluralism in relation to Canadian society. Recognition and promotion of their cultural ("folkloric") contributions as rivalling those of the British and French, notwithstanding, European immigrants were expected to assimilate into an Anglocentric framework that, alone, was capable of uniting diverse races...

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