A Few Acres Of Snow Summary

To a minor degree can Canada boast about its tolerance for ethnic diversity. In Chapter 12 of "A Few Acres of Snow," Britain preferred to populate its new colonies, including Canada, with citizens from the British Isles. This policy held distinct advantage because it made British North America more British than French. The Whites during the period were known as the superior race. When politics, religion, a population explosion, and famine conspired in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, many Irish came to Canada in search for a new life. Before sighting the new world, many migrants died due to the overwhelming influx of immigrants and an ill-prepared Canadian setup. The Canadians did not felt sympathetic to the Irish Plight. Disease, started
to waft from immigrant ships to land, striking with no effective medicinal remedies. Locals came to fear and hate on the diseased Irish, shunning them, and forcing them out of range. This attitude was not new, as Canadians stereotypically characterizes Irishman as a drunken, brawling, lazy, stupid, papist "Paddy." Those who did survive, picked up thought labouring jobs on the canals.
For most of these immigrants, the land of opportunity to boast its tolerance for ethnic diversity was a sick joke. Furthermore, in Chapter 14 of "A Few Acres of Snow," when the Blacks immigrated to Canada, many Upper Canadian Whites feared the Black presence and reacted by ostracizing Black newcomers. This was considered perfectly legal and normal behaviour according to Canadians. Many Canadians did not wish their children educated with the Blacks. In some regions, parents successfully lobbied for legislation to create separate schools for Black children. Blacks in Canada never amounted to more than one percent of the population. In addition, in Matthew MacFie's account of British Columbia's recent arrivals in 1865, it also showed how Chinese immigrants weren't allowed to work or interfere with the superior race. Chinese immigrants were only allowed to cook, hawk tea, and keep laundries. This further shows Canada did not tolerate for ethnic-diversity. Despite all these controversies, Canadians were not really any less racist than others in the mid-nineteenth
century. In the United States, it got as worse as racism and slavery. It even got worse when the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in the United States. It was Britain who slowly gained momentum in abolishing slavery near the end of the eighteenth century, by passing the 1833 Emancipation Bill. Going a step further in 1793, John Graves Simcoe, the governor of Upper Canada, convinced the assembly to outlaw slavery. But it still doesn't change the fact, the damage that has been caused in tolerating ethnic-diversity. Since multiculturalism is an ideal that most Canadians seem to take pride in, I believe we should remind ourselves about the less attractive features of our history and further understand and to prevent it from happening in the future. If we were only told from one perspective, then were missing out the importance of the other perspective and also causes a huge bias and lead to false information. In history, we learn to examine from both sides of the argument. This further strengthens our understandings, our cultural identities, and create a better multiculturalism.