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1914-1945: Overview / War Years / Interwar Years / World War II / Changing Attitudes
Changing Attitudes
Despite the continued restrictive nature of Canadian policy, historians consider the war years as pivotal in changing public opinion towards many immigration issues. The war years hastened changes in popular understandings of the value of non-British ethnic minorities, the validity of older race theories, and appropriateness of assimilation as a guide to immigration policy. Some of these changes occurred within government. A Nationalities Branch of the wartime Bureau of Public Information, created in 1940, signalled a new era in which governments, for the first time, would establish on-going communication with ethnic
communities in Canada. The propaganda disseminated to ethnic minorities through such a government body failed to raise much ethnic support for the war, but likely helped establish unity within ethnic groups themselves. Historian Howard Palmer suggests that the government's liaison with ethnic communities fostered the development of organizations that tended to exclude radicals and bring together factions. The Nationalities Branch, then, helped encourage umbrella associations to form among Polish and Ukrainian groups, some of which thrive to the present day.
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Cultural Democracy, 1949. The Second World War resulted in changing attitudes towards immigration and immigrants. Although assimilationist and "melting pot" notions persisted, new ideas such as cultural democracy also emerged and gained adherents. The major tenet of cultural democracy was that "no one culture contains all the real values of life and that every group in our Canadian population has something worthwhile to contribute." |
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World War II