Group Maintenance and Ethnic Commitment

While Australians and Canadians share English as an official language, Australian English (Strine) has its own pronunciation and vernacular, which has both puzzled and delighted Canadians. Generalizing about cultural attributes runs the risk of crude cultural stereotyping, a problem that Canadian journalist Burton Taylor Richardson noted in the early 1940s when he related this anecdote: “I remarked of the Australians that they had apparently dropped the letter ‘a’ from their language, as it was known in Canada. ‘Too right,’ remarked some Australians in Canada, agreeing with me. Others voiced indignant disagreement. Still the accent sounded to me as if, when remarking that the train was late today, the average Australian in good standing with his ancestral traditions, said ‘The trine is lite to-die.’” Of course accent, intonation, and vernacular are a function not only of national distinctiveness but also of class, ethnicity, region, and even age and gender. A Queensland sugarcane cutter would typically have a very different accent and vocabulary from an Adelaide businessman, and a child in Melbourne would wear bathers at the beach while her counterpart in Sydney would wear a bathing costume or “cozzie.” In the absence of many other outwardly distinguishing characteristics, it is language and pronunciation that distinguish Australian migrants to Canada, and it is a bone of contention for many of them that Canadians often confuse them with New Zealanders, South Africans, or Britons.

Another reason why Australians tend to acculturate or assimilate quickly to Canadian life is that many of them are living in Canada because they have a Canadian spouse. In these Australian-Canadian matches, as well as in marriages between two Australians living in Canada, there tends to be little sense of a need to pass on “Australian culture” to the children. Apart from trying to teach their offspring about Australia in general (and about Australian marsupials in particular), instilling a sense of knowledge and pride in their heritage, and when possible travelling to Australia to visit family friends and relatives, most Australians in Canada do not express a strong desire to inculcate their children in Australian ways.

Australians in Canada do not generally observe or celebrate many of Australia’s national holidays. For a time, ANZAC Day was commemorated in various cities in western Canada where there were pockets of Australians or branches of the Vancouver-based ANZA Club. ANZAC Day celebrations began on 25 April 1916 to mark the anniversary of the landing of Allied forces, mainly Australians, New Zealanders, and British, at Gallipoli in 1915. It later became a day to remember Australian participation in all wars. In a nation that does not generally define itself in terms of high idealism, ANZAC Day is imbued not just with the remembrance of war but also with Australian myths and values such as mateship, stoicism, and sacrifice. As the numbers of Australian war veterans living in Canada declined, however, ANZAC Day was no longer publicly commemorated. The one holiday that most Australians in Canada seem to observe and celebrate is Australia Day (26 January), which commemorates the landing of the First Fleet of convicts at Sydney Cove in New South Wales in 1788. Although it is meant to celebrate the founding of Australia and was feted with the Australian bicentennial in 1988, it poses a moral dilemma for Australian aborigines, along with some non-aboriginal Australians, who do not believe that the European “invasion” of Australia is an appropriate day to mark with a national holiday.

Sports, outdoor pursuits of all descriptions, and gambling not only feature prominently in Australian-Canadian popular culture but tend to reinforce a distinctiveness from the rest of Canada. The lack of Australian sports in Canada – especially cricket, rugby league football, and Australian Rules Football – is a source of some frustration. Cable pay-television has meant that some Australian sports are now telecast in Canada and many Australians are able to watch Australian Rules Football game highlights. One Australian rite of passage that seems to have survived is the tradition of celebrating a twenty-first birthday with a large party given by the parents. Australians in Canada remember their young friends and relatives on their twenty-first birthdays and continue to mark the event as a special occasion.

Prior to changes in the Canadian electoral act in the early 1980s, Australians in Canada (along with landed immigrants from other commonwealth countries that still had the queen as their head of state) were eligible to vote in Canadian elections. Changes in the act, however, have meant that Australians who have not taken out Canadian citizenship are now disenfranchised, which can be a source of annoyance and frustration. Many Australians are reluctant to become Canadian citizens, because in most cases they would automatically lose their Australian citizenship as a result (while Canada recognizes dual citizenship, the present Australian law effectively revokes the citizenship status of Australian-born persons who become citizens of another country). This state of affairs poses a paradox for many couples where the Canadian-born spouse is eligible for dual Australian and Canadian citizenship while the Australian-born spouse is forced to choose between one or the other. Apart from feelings of national pride, some Australians are reluctant to take out Canadian citizenship because they hope to retire to Australia when their working lives in Canada have ended.

To observe that Australians fit easily into Canadian society is not to imply that they somehow lose their sense of identity. By contrast, the experience of many is that, in leaving their homeland, they gain a greater sense of what it means to be Australian. In 1971 one of the most prominent Australian expatriates, Janette Turner Hospital, came to Canada, where she established her literary career. When asked whether she regarded herself as an Australian writer who happened to live in Canada, or a Canadian writer who happened to be Australian, she explained, “My gut sense of identity has always been Australian . . . I have lived for a long time in Canada and so, of course, I have enormous feelings of affection for Canada . . . but I always feel that there is a sort of tacit requirement for me not to acknowledge my Australianness in Canada – which I find increasingly difficult.”