The Man Behind Multiculturalism

If you've come to the conclusion, as I have, that multiculturalism requires cultural relativism and that this, in turn, poses a threat to our rights and freedoms as defined by the Magna Carta, English Bill of Rights, English Common Law, British Parliamentary Procedure, and the Canadian Constitution, then you'll be interested to learn where the idea started, who proposed it and whether he thought what he was doing would eventually threaten the very country that had provided his people with peace, prosperity and hope. In short, did he realize he was the one who would cause the Canadian political train to leave the rails, careen down the bank and fall into the river?

The Man Behind Multiculturalism
By Frank Hilliard

Isydore Hlynka is described by Wikipedia as a pioneer in the concept of multiculturalism. It would be fairer to say he was the originator, prime mover and principle spokesperson for multiculturalism on behalf of the Ukrainian community in Canada. He worked tirelessly to promote the concept in letters, speeches and a newspaper column in The Ukrainian Voice under the pseudonym of Ivan Harmata. Most importantly, Dr. Hlynka presented the Ukrainian Canadian Committee's submission to the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. This said, to condense it to one sentence, that Canada was a multilingual and multicultural country and that the very concept of bi-culturalism—the subject of the Royal Commission—was an insult to one third of Canadians.

Dr. Hlynka died in 1983 so we can't ask him what he thought then about the relationship between the culture he was promoting and the culture he was attacking, but fortunately his writings provide an insight into how his mind worked on this crucial question. Specifically, his book The Other Canadians, a compilation of his newspaper columns, shows what he believed the word 'culture' meant and what he wanted it to mean for members of his community.

Before I analyze what Dr. Hlynka wrote, let's discuss the relationship between culture and law, starting with Christmas.

Christmas is a holy day of the Christian church, but it is also a legal holiday in Canada. It has this status because it is a statutory holiday for federally regulated employees. The holiday comes to us from England, as does the vast majority of our law, where it was adopted because England was Christian and Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ. To put this sequence into the correct order, one can say that the people first adopted the practice, which became their culture, and the law followed the culture, codified it and made it mandatory.

This is the standard relationship between culture and law. Law is simply codified culture, practices written down and made into statutes in order to make them more universal. It is our luck as Canadians that the English over a thousand years, through the creation of a rival Christian church, through a brutal civil war, an experiment with fundamentalism and dictatorship, through the development of a body of law based on precedent, through the development of Parliamentary government and universal suffrage, though all this created a culture that provided safety, personal freedom and the fullest flowering of Democracy. The fact that the English also developed an inclusive language, a capitalist monetary system, a dominating navy, literature, music and the arts was a parallel, but not crucial, addition. To put this another way, it was because of English rights and freedoms, as defined by English law, developed from English culture, that all else followed. You would not have seen the Union Jack on the shores of the New World if Englishmen were not free men, able to own property, invest in business and avail themselves of even-handed justice. Slaves do not, as a rule, become explorers.

So far I haven't said anything terribly controversial; so let me change that. When General Wolfe won the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and Britain conquered New France, it imposed English criminal law on the defeated colony and allowed it to keep its civil law (code). For the rest of what became Upper Canada, and then Canada itself, English Common Law was the law of the land, as it is, in large part, today. So regarding the basics -- the law, the Parliamentary system, and the individual rights of Canadians -- we are all riding on the same train going in the same direction, as too are the citizens of the United States, all inheritors of this same wonderful English 'liberal democratic' construction.

Language, food, music, religion and uncodified social practices continued in Quebec and the rest of Canada, but underneath it all, the giant engine of English legal and Parliamentary traditions rumbled on, as in the bowels of an ocean liner, driving the country forward towards a prosperous future.

Did Dr. Hlynka see this relationship? The evidence in The Other Canadians is that he did not. He writes on numerous occasions of the contributions of Ukrainian Canadians to the development of Canada, on the land, in the mines and industries and later in politics and business. But he gives all the credit to his people not to the new laws, practices and institutions which provided the structure for their relations with each other and earlier settlers.

If you look at The Ukrainian Canadians: A Community Profile 1891-1999 by Oleh W. Gerus of the University of Manitoba, you'll see the principle reason for the first wave of Ukrainian migration to Canada was economic, but that the two subsequent waves were primarily political; the second to get away from Polish and Russian overseers and the third to escape Soviet Communism. It should be remembered that Ukraine is the 'breadbasket' of eastern Europe with soil so rich it has its own name, Chernozem. There was never a problem with the land; it was a fertile as any place on earth. Nor was there a problem with the hard-working, family-oriented people of Ukraine. The problem was with the government, the laws, the political infrastructure that was largely imposed from abroad.

This brings us, via a long sea journey, to The Other Canadians and the views of Isydore Hlynka. In an article on April 25, 1979 he wrote:

The roots of French Canadians--their language, their religious traditions, their civil law, and indeed their character--trace back to France. Similarly, those of British ancestry trace their roots--their language, their literary traditions, the parliamentary system, the system of jurisprudence, and the entire complex of their life's philosophy--to Britain. It should, therefore, surprise no one that Ukrainian Canadians share and identify with the historic roots of their forefathers in their ancestral land of Ukraine--their language, their church, their distinctive cultural tradition, and their struggle for freedom.

Do you see the problem here? Dr. Hlynka mentions French civil law and English jurisprudence, their 'roots' in his words, but denies these have any application to the Ukrainian community which, he says, has its own 'distinctive cultural traditions.' Indeed in this passage, he separates his community from the very laws and governmental structure they found in Canada and under which they prospered. It's no wonder he didn't mention Ukrainian laws because over the three waves of immigration they were either feudalistic laws administered by the Russians or Poles, or more latterly, socialist laws administered by their Soviet bosses. For the moment, let's just call this a bit of a blind spot and move on.

In an essay on March 27, 1974 he defines the concept of ethnic identity as made up of "a number of different elements including physical, linguistic, cultural, social, organizational and religious identity." One would think 'organizational' means the laws the community lives under, however when he goes on to elaborate on the word, it turns out he means 'organizations', such as student groups, associations of professionals, and political groups, not the organization of society as a whole. The issue of laws is omitted, again.

In a column on May 11, 1977, Dr. Hlynka reminds his readers of a line Trudeau used when he introduced the Fourth Report of the B&B Commission, that "although there are two official languages, there are no official cultures in Canada." Clearly, again, he is not making the connection between culture and law I described earlier. Both he and Prime Minister Trudeau were wrong--Canada was running on English Common Law, English Parliamentary Procedure, English Rule of Law--all part of English culture. Canada did have, and still has, this as its underlying framework. Dr. Hlynka repeats this line because he agrees with Trudeau and disagrees with the concept I've advanced of English laws and traditions being the cultural framework of the nation.

And yet, he does realize it's there, underneath everything else, but in a way that annoys him greatly. In an essay Nov. 15, 1972 he quotes Bohdan Hawrylyshyn in an address to the national convention of the Ukrainian Professional and Business Men's Clubs in Toronto.

Canada's mistake, according to Hawrylyshyn, is that the cultural mosaic has at best been tolerated in a nice, benevolent, paternalistic fashion. Our cultural and linguistic reservoir is considered as rather harmless hobbies that cannot do much damage. After all, Ukrainians and other so-called ethnics will work a little more happily if you let them sing their songs and kick their boots in performing those wonderful folkloristic dances. Occasionally the 'official' English and French Canadians might even enjoy it.

The key phrase in this angry outburst is 'cannot do much damage.' Cannot do much damage to what? Well, it's not said, but the 'what' in that phrase is the Parliamentary system, the legal system, and the capitalist business system, the whole bundle of English customs that make Canada work. And indeed, he's right. Most Canadians who went to Expo 67, and later applauded the Multiculturalism Act, thought it would mean more pavilions at folkfest, not a change in our basic law, system of governance and our freedoms.

All of which brings me to what Dr. Hlynka thought of Human Rights Commissions, the institutions created to preserve and enhance the multiculturalism he fought so hard, and so successfully, to achieve. He discusses them in an article entitled, The Non-Visible Minorities, published May 30, 1973.

At first thought, the visible minorities might be considered to be the disadvantaged group. But strangely enough, even though they may be only recent Canadians, or even visitors, they have considerable advantages. The reason for the advantaged positions of the visible vis-a-vis the non-visible minority grups are the aggressiveness of the former and the considerable assistance they receive from the 'do-gooder' gorups of various kinds. An example of the important part played by the 'do-gooders' is the Elkin Report, issued not very long ago and, as I understand it, sponsored by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. This extensive study inquired into the question of whether actors, musicians, and models belonging to the visible minority groups wer discriminated against on television commercials, in advertising, photography, etc. Accordingly, advertising in magazine and TV commercials and even manikins in store windows include the visible minorities.

Can we say the Ukrainians enjoy proportional exposure on these same media? Have there been similar studies commissioned by the proliferating 'do-gooders' government commissions or private bodies? We have seen very little evidence of this, even though the Ukrainians have been in Canada now approaching a full century. It seems the rule is 'out of sight, out of mind'. The non-visible minorities appear to have become the invisible minorities.

Although Dr. Dr. Hlynka knocks the idea of the study as the work of 'do-gooders' he is really bemoaning the fact that Ukrainians have fully assimilated into the Canadian melting pot and thus cannot be given special treatment--quotas--as he would wish. This is nothing more nor less than the politics of identity being criticized because the group in question has no visible identity!

On October 13, 1976, Dr. Hlynka said this about the merits of multiculturalism:

It is by celebrating and preserving a nation's variety and diversity that tolerance and brotherhood are taught. Uniformity does not create tolerance. It fosters intolerance for anything different.

Is not the truth the exact opposite? Is it not the work of the Human Rights Commission in promoting visible minorities which Dr. Hlynka deplores, exactly functioning as he wishes? Is it not preserving diversity? Is this not creating intolerance, at least in Dr. Hlynka? Indeed is it not the great achievement of the Ukrainian community in integrating into Canadian society one of its strengths, not its weaknesses?

We can't ask the good Dr. for his thoughts on this, or on the relationship between culture and law, or on the new attack on our freedoms from supporters of Sharia Law. Who knew that multiculturalism would be the entry point through which enemies of Western Liberal democracies would enter them and try to destroy them from within? Certainly not Dr. Hlynka who, as far as I can see, doesn't mention Islam once in his writings.

It is often said the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Dr. Hlynka certainly had good intentions; he was a good man, honoured by his community, and his country. Only later, perhaps not even in our lifetime, will we see if his greatest achievement may be the beginning of the end of this great land of ours.