The American and the Canadian do not possess the same meaning for melting pot. The American melting pot, a greatly misunderstood image, is one where you disappear as you are thrown in. As you melt and join its contents, you become unrecognizable from the whole; as it becomes you, you become it. The process is bilateral and not exclusively contributive. The Canadian understanding of the melting pot is much more like a stew, with its constituents visible. The American melting pot is homogeneous, as the American culture inevitably replaces and dissolves all else. The Canadian stew on the other hand keeps its parts visible despite remaining the same meal, the potatoes, beef and gravy separable. Yet the division of elements coheres and the mixture unmistakably a stew, with any parts removed turning it into not-a-stew, into something else that isn’t Canada.
This, in one way, explains the difficulty of the Canadian identity. One looks to being Canadian as one understands being American, but it that is in error as it isn’t the same. The foundation of American culture rests on how it seeps into you as you give yourself to it. Becoming part of the whole of the country is becoming American. Contrariwise, the foundation of Canadian culture rests on the participation of the citizen in the confederation without regard for the division of its parts and in full recognition of them. The person that promises his stewardship of the cold northern lands of the country becomes Canadian, not because of his adoption of the Canadian culture but because of his pursuit of the Canadian project. The one that tells himself “I will see this country prosper despite the differences of its people and my own” while leaving the problems of their old society behind has undeniably become Canadian.
Canada is best understood as a patchwork of cultures rather than a culture itself. It is more proper to ask “Which Canadian culture are you?” than “What is Canadian culture?”. Most of Canadian culture is in fact French Québécois culture, a product of French immigrants living in the east subjugated under British rule for centuries. The remainder is British, Scottish, Irish and American, followed by the typical variety of African and Caribbean cultures as is often found in colonial nations, with Indian and Asian following in the footsteps of modern immigration. This is not to say that there is only uncommon between the differing Canadian peoples, that nothing is ever shared. We do share in the cold, that much is common, as we only know of great latitudes in Canada. But the divergences are so profound from one Canadian culture to the other that it becomes hard to pin down a single Canadian identity.
This is evidently not ideal. I wish Canadian culture meant more than what it means today, that an identity could be reliably shared across its peoples. Yet, I know that the profound difference is not new. Canada is founded upon this principle. In its roots we find divergence, with the French and the British opposed as early as the 18th century, and then the British and the Americans in the next. Our unity exists as a political and geographical dimension, but seldom in culture. We may have, in time, a Canadian culture, and it may look far distant from its founding stock, but it began in difference and will most likely persist in difference for its continued existence.