page_title: Culture of Canada
section_title: Influences
hierarchical_section_title: Culture of Canada / Cultural components / Influences
caption_attribution_description: "Keep All Canadians Busy Buy 1918 Victory Bonds"; poster depicts a industrious beaver preparing to topple a tree.
context_page_description: The culture of Canada embodies the artistic, culinary, literary, humour, musical, political and social elements that are representative of Canada and Canadians. Throughout Canada's history, its culture has been influenced by European culture and traditions, mostly by the British and French, and by its own indigenous cultures. Over time, elements of the cultures of Canada's immigrant populations have become incorporated to form a Canadian cultural mosaic. The population has also been influenced by American culture because of a shared language, proximity, television and migration between the two countries.
  Canada is often characterized as being "very progressive, diverse, and multicultural". Canada's federal government has often been described as the instigator of multicultural ideology because of its public emphasis on the social importance of immigration. Canada's culture draws from its broad range of constituent nationalities, and policies that promote a just society are constitutionally protected.
context_section_description: For thousands of years Canada has been inhabited by indigenous peoples from a variety of different cultures and of several major linguistic groupings. Although not without conflict and bloodshed, early European interactions with First Nations and Inuit populations in what is now Canada were arguably peaceful.  First Nations and Métis peoples played a critical part in the development of European colonies in Canada, particularly for their role in assisting European coureur des bois and voyageurs in the exploration of the continent during the North American fur trade. Combined with late economic development in many regions, this comparably nonbelligerent early history allowed indigenous Canadians to have a lasting influence on the national culture (see: The Canadian Crown and Aboriginal peoples). Over the course of three centuries, countless North American Indigenous words, inventions, concepts, and games have become an everyday part of Canadian language and use. Many places in Canada, both natural features and human habitations, use indigenous names. The name "Canada" itself derives from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word meaning "village" or "settlement". The name of Canada's capital city Ottawa comes from the Algonquin language term "adawe" meaning "to trade".
  The French originally settled New France along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and Saint Lawrence River during the early part of the 17th century. The British conquest of New France during the mid-18th century brought 70,000 Francophones under British rule, creating a need for compromise and accommodation. The migration of 40,000 to 50,000  United Empire Loyalists from the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution (1775–1783) brought American colonial influences. Following the War of 1812, a large wave of Irish, Scottish and English settlers arrived in Upper Canada and Lower Canada.
  The Canadian Forces and overall civilian participation in the First World War and Second World War helped to foster Canadian nationalism; however, in 1917 and 1944, conscription crises highlighted the considerable rift along ethnic lines between Anglophones and Francophones. As a result of the First and Second World Wars, the Government of Canada became more assertive and less deferential to British authority. Canada until the 1940s saw itself in terms of English and French cultural, linguistic and political identities, and to some extent aboriginal.
  Legislative restrictions on immigration (such as the Continuous journey regulation and Chinese Immigration Act) that had favoured British, American and other European immigrants (such as Dutch, German, Italian, Polish, Swedish and Ukrainian) were amended during the 1960s, resulting in an influx of diverse people from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. By the end of the 20th century, immigrants were increasingly Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, Jamaican, Filipino, Lebanese and Haitian.  As of 2006, Canada has grown to have thirty four ethnic groups with at least one hundred thousand members each, of which eleven have over 1,000,000 people and numerous others are represented in smaller numbers. 16.2% of the population self identify as a visible minority. The Canadian public as-well as the major political parties support  immigration.
caption: A Canadian war bond poster that depicts an industrious beaver a national symbol of Canada
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