Facing up to a new identity
At five million and growing, visible minorities are maintaining ever stronger ties to their own culture
VANCOUVER — Gathered around a kitchen stove at the Dasmesh Punjabi School in Abbotsford, B.C., Gurbir Brar, 14, and his friends are arguing about whether the onions for their vegetarian lasagna are properly cooked. The pasta is boiling away on a second burner.
Gurbir said he enjoys cooking just as much he loves to mimic his favourite wrestling stars. The same goes for the other boys, he said, who make up about half of the home-economics class.
"It's fun. You get to try new things," the Grade 9 student said.
That's what gets Sulochana Chand, principal of the 500-student Sikh independent school, to smile. "If we were in India, boys would be running away from the kitchen. Here, there's a real balance in the two cultures."
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The scene at the Abbotsford school is being played out across urban Canada, as a clearer image of Canada's ever-diverse face emerged with newly released census data.
Visible minorities now number more than five million, growing at a rate five times that of the rest of the population. They make up a staggering 16.2 per cent of Canadians, and, if current trends continue, they could account for roughly one-fifth of the total population by 2017.
And for the first time, South Asians slipped past Chinese to become the country's largest visible minority group, with a population of 1,262,900. By comparison, about 1,216,600 people identified themselves as Chinese. Together, the two ethnic groups make up just under half of all visible minorities.
But at the same time, Canadians reported ties to more than 200 ethnic origins - everything from aboriginal to Zulu - confirming the nation's title as one of the most multicultural places in the world.
The numbers tell a new, dual-identity story of Canada, one that shows visible minorities integrating more easily into the mainstream while also maintaining strong ties to their own culture and language.
Visible-minority parents are especially eager to emphasize cultural tradition to their children, who make up a much larger swath of the overall population.
The census shows that 96 per cent of visible minorities live in urban areas, compared with 69 per cent of the overall population.
In Toronto and Vancouver, about half of visible minorities are under the age of 15; in Montreal, that figure is about a quarter. Nationally, 17.9 per cent of Canadians are in this age bracket.
In Brampton, Ont., outside Toronto, where South Asians make up 31.7 per cent of the population (the most in any community across Canada), entire shopping malls and community centres resonate with Punjabi, Gujarati and Hindi.
The city's newest hospital, the Brampton Civic Centre, was opened as a result of millions of dollars in donations from the region's South Asian population.
"We're living in a very diverse city, a very cosmopolitan and multicultural city, where we embrace our multiculturalism," said Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell.
"The census is just the statistical evidence of the profile of the city of Brampton. It's no surprise at all."
Nav Bhatia, a prominent Sikh businessman in Mississauga, hopes to see more of the same across the country, saying that the "onus" to make Canada welcome to immigrants is on the South Asian community now that it is the largest visible minority group.
"There's no more excuses. We need to intermingle so that the rest of Canadians know we all have the same interests at heart."
Mr. Bhatia, who owns a Hyundai dealership, said the cultural landscape for immigrants was very different as little as a decade ago.
"Ten, eleven years ago, the Indian movies only played at the third-grade theatres left behind by the mainstream. Now, we see women in shalwar-kameez and saris at AMC with everybody else. ... We might look different - I'm a turbaned Sikh - but we all like watching a quality movie in a quality theatre."
But in a delicate counterbalance to that very diversity, the census data also revealed a decrease in the number of individuals who self-identified as "Canadian."
An explanation as to why is a little more nuanced than simply attributing the downward trend to segregated communities or a lack of patriotism, said an analyst at Statistics Canada.
"It means different things to different people," said Jane Badets, adding that those who typically identify themselves as Canadian are third- or fourth-generation.
The majority of South Asians and Chinese are first- and second-generation.
But some who drop the hyphenated Canadian label from their identities say they do it because the Canadian identity is implied.
"If we're talking to someone in Canada, I just say I'm Punjabi," said Sharonveer Sandhu, a Grade 8 student at Dasmesh. "When you go to Germany, you add the 'Canadian.' "
BY THE NUMBERS
In the 2006 census, 5,068,090 Canadians identified themselves as non-Caucasian or non-white.
| Chinese | 24% | 1,216,565 |
| South Asian | 25% | 1,262,865 |
| Latin American | 6% | 304,245 |
| Filipino | 8% | 410,695 |
| Black | 15% | 783,795 |
| Other | 22% | 1,089,925 |
Note: Percentages may not add up to 100 due to rounding
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Visible minorities accounted for 16.2 per cent of Canada's population in 2006, up from 13.4 per cent in 2001. Most live in urban centres. Here are their proportions in relation to the total population of major cities:
Toronto 42.9 %
Vancouver 41.7 %
Calgary 22.2 %
Edmonton 17.1 %
Montreal 16.5 %
Ottawa 16 %
Winnipeg 15 %
Halifax 7.5 %
Regina 6.6 %
St. John's 1.9 %
Census 2006 up close
For a comprehensive look at Census 2006, go to our website. There, you'll discover a special section with a variety of stories and interactive graphics from census information released over the past year.
globeandmail.com/census2006
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Cities with a difference
In the 2006 census 16.2 per cent of the population described themselves as members of a visible minority group. By far the majority live in urban areas, with just two - Toronto and Vancouver - accounting for 60 per cent of the national total. These four census metropolitan areas were ranked highest by percentage of visible minority residents.
TORONTO: 42%
More than four in 10 of Canada's visible minorities live in greater Toronto, which includes the town of Markham, where 65.4 per cent of the population belonged to a visible minority group.
Visible minorities, % of population
South Asian: 13.5%
Chinese: 9.6%
Black: 6.9%
Filipino: 3.4%
Latin American: 2.0%
Ethnic origin, % of population
English: 15.9%
Canadian: 12.8%
Scottish: 11.1%
Chinese: 10.6%
Irish: 10.5%
East Indian: 9.6%
Italian: 9.2%
German: 5.1%
French: 4.8%
Polish: 4.1%
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VANCOUVER: 41.7%
Seven in 10 of greater Vancouver's visible minorities were born outside Canada. Despite its ethnic diversity, more than one-third of the population reported at least one element of British Isles ancestry.
Visible minorities, % of population
Chinese: 18.2%
South Asian: 9.9%
Filipino: 3.8%
Korean: 2.1%
Southeast Asian: 1.6%
Ethnic origin, % of population
English: 23.1%
Chinese: 19.2%
Scottish: 16.1%
Canadian: 13.3%
Irish: 12.0%
German: 9.7%
East Indian: 8.7%
French: 6.5%
Filipino: 4.0%
Ukrainian: 3.9%
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ABBOTSFORD: 22.8%
A fast-growing centre in B.C.'s Fraser Valley, Abbotsford claimed the third-largest proportion of visible minorities and the highest proportion of South Asians.
Visible minorities, % of population
South Asian: 16.3%
Chinese: 1.4%
Southeast Asian: 1.1%
Korean: 1.0%
Latin American: 0.8%
Ethnic origin, % of population
English: 26.9%
German: 20.8%
Canadian: 19.4%
Scottish: 18.3%
East Indian: 15.0%
Irish: 13.7%
Dutch*: 10.6%
French: 8.8%
Ukrainian: 5.2%
Russian: 4.7%
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CALGARY: 22.2%
Two-thirds of Calgary's visible minorities were born outside Canada. Among immigrants who arrived between 2001 and 2006, 78 per cent belonged to a visible minority group.
Visible minorities, % of population
Chinese: 6.2%
Southeast Asian: 5.4%
Filipino: 2.4%
Black: 2.0%
Southeast Asian: 1.5%
Ethnic origin, % of population
English: 27.2%
Scottish: 20.8%
Canadian: 19.4%
German: 17.1%
Irish: 16.4%
French: 10.2%
Ukrainian: 7.1%
Chinese: 7.0%
East Indian: 4.5%
Polish: 4.5%
SOURCES: CANADIAN PRESS, STATISTICS CANADA
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