Provincialism, Rurality and Canadian Masculinity

• Main Author: Thomas Dunk
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: professionaldreamers 2016-09-01
• Series: lo Squaderno
• Subjects: Provincial Lives; lo Squaderno No. 41
• Online Access: http://www.losquaderno.professionaldreamers.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/losquaderno41.pdf#page=37

Images of provincial rural life are often key symbols in the construction of national identities, even in highly urbanized wealthy nations. Some 60 percent of the Canadian population lives in just four urban concentrations around Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and the Calgary-Edmonton corridor and a very significant proportion consists of immigrants, many of them from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and South America. Canada is still a dominion within the British Commonwealth but everyday metropolitan life in Canada is far more diverse and international than the historic connections to Britain, or France, might suggest. Nonetheless, it is the provincial hinterlands and rural regions that are most often used to imagine Canada and Canadians.