I have been asking one question again and again during the 2024 Model Parliament Debate in Ottawa: “Tell me, what is the Canadian identity to your perception and understanding?” My respondents ranged from taxi drivers, classmates, professors, all the way to a Supreme Court judge.
Most answers mentioned diversity. But no one spoke about the unity behind that diversity.
In material science, doping is a normal laboratory practice: we add different additions—elements, compounds—into a given crystal, hoping to create a new material with a unique physical, chemical, or electrical property, to make the existing material better, more superior.
Immigration is almost like a national, cultural, racial doping social experiment—can we say that? (Here, I hope there is no offending.) If the structure of the base crystal—the fundamental structure—gets lost or untied, the doping might leave deformation, or even cause the entire feature to collapse. So, in addition to diversity, I urge for unity—the unity that actually holds the fundamental nature of the social structure together.
But what is that unity?
Christ is the unity, without any doubt.
But what is the unity? Christ is the unity without any doubt.
for through him God created everything
in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see
and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through him and for him.
He existed before anything else,
and he holds all creation together.
(Colossians 1:16-17 NLT)
He can, and only He can, hold all things—all creation, all nations, all races, all colors of skin—and even bridge the open chasms of culture, tradition, religious belief, harm, wrongdoing, and the crimes one group committed against another in the past. He crosses all of these, and He is the glue that binds us.
I am deeply intrigued by location and geography, so I often ask myself: Where is “here”? I know how determinative geography is in shaping a country and its people. Canada, in many ways, is like Dongbei, the three Northeastern provinces of China, compared to the rest of the country—similar in climate, weather, natural resources, population, and also in the underdevelopment of business, technology, and innovation.
Canada lies behind the U.S., yet Canadians call themselves Canadian instead of American. The integration with their neighbor—in trade, energy, natural resources, capital investment—is so high that Americans might look at Canada the same way many Chinese look at the three Northeastern provinces: Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Jilin.
Yet to many immigrants from other parts of the world, Canada reflects the radiance of the United States. Toronto’s skyscrapers at night resemble the glamour of NYC. But Canadians take pride in their big government, while Americans hate the idea of government handling everything.
Just share a brief reflection, I will continue to write my thinking, experiencing, observation in following post. Hope this trigger our conversation and discussion.
Blessings,
Qiang
