The rise and prosperity of Canada and the need for a strong labour force resulted in its open immigration policy.  What differed from the past is that Europeans have stopped becoming the major source of Canadian immigrants.  Increasingly, new immigrants are coming from Asian countries including China, Korea, India, Philippines.  With a diverse population mix, there is a need for tolerance, openness and understanding among different culture.

Our goal at the Canadian Immigrant Ezine is to help new immigrants integrate into the Canadian society.  We want to provide a social networking site for Canadians and new immigrants to connect, have fun, and share valuable information as well as amusing insights about life in Canada.   Our mission is to promote  cross-cultural understanding among all Canadians and to celebrate our richness in cultural diversity.

We thank you for visiting our site.  We encourage you to just have fun and browse through the pages.  Imagine yourself visiting a Canadian family and sitting by the kitchen table engaging in a conversation. This is the experience we want you to have when you visit. You are entering the hearth of Canada, nothing superficial or artificial.

We look for articles of interest to the new immigrant, inspiring stories that promote unity.  We provide a platform for dialogue through our VOICES (article submission), BLOG, and FORUM. 

Every little blog post or article is one kitchen table episode. The language is plain, extemporaneous, unpolished and unedited. The blog posts reflect the everyday life of Canadians, young and old, rich and poor, white collar, blue collar, pink collar, from all educational, economic or ethnic backgrounds. One big family, with many voices, speaking a common language of unity.


 

The Salad Bowl of Canada

source:  regents prep
The Salad Bowl Theory of Canada
versus the Melting Pot of America

1. Multicultural Canada- A Salad Bowl
The multicultural theory of Canada believes that new immigrants do not lose their unique culture. The unique characteristics of each culture should be encouraged to stay and be identifiable within the large Canadian society. This is likened to the ingredients in a salad bowl, each of them identifiable, yet contributing to the makeup of the total salad. Hence, immigrants are hyphenated in their identity, such as"Chinese-Canadian", "Croatian-Canadian", "Japanese-Canadian"....

2.  Assimilation theory - A Melting Pot
The melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture. It is particularly used to describe the assimilation of immigrants to the United States; the melting-together metaphor was in use by the 1780s. However, after 1970 the desirability of assimilation and the melting pot model was challenged by proponents of multiculturalism, who assert that cultural differences within society are valuable and should be preserved, proposing the alternative metaphor of the salad bowl – different cultures mix, but remain distinct.