Group Maintenance and Ethnic Commitment

Since the Dutch have felt themselves to be part of Canadian society and have generally been accepted by other Canadians almost from the moment of their arrival, they have largely abandoned their ethnic identity. Their invisibility is a matter of choice, not chance. Accommodation, integration, and even assimilation have been desired by most immigrants and their children. Certain elements of “Dutchness” have been preserved, particularly among the first generation, but these characteristics have not been seen to be in conflict with the dominant culture. Pragmatism has been the overriding factor in the keeping or discarding of things Dutch. Family loyalty and solidarity were considered worthy of preservation, as were expressions of Dutch Calvinism. Religious beliefs were regarded as ultimately beneficial not only to the immigrants but also to Canadian society, even if at times they were in conflict with it. Those who seek to preserve such ideas are, however, increasingly in the minority, and they exert less influence on the larger group. Its distinctiveness becomes less and less as the Dutch Canadians cease to have an ethnic identity.

Some members of the community and even outside observers have expressed the hope that the more educated immigrants of the sixties, seventies, and eighties would give expression to the uniqueness of the Dutch experience in Canada; this wish has not been realized. The Canadian Association for the Advancement of Netherlandic Studies has encouraged study of the Dutch role in world and Canadian events, but the larger community seems to place little value on its undertakings. As economic growth and individual opportunity have become increasingly limited in a highly bureaucratized Netherlands, there has been a revived interest in emigration. The new arrivals, however, blend in easily with the dominant society, and beyond social contacts, they have had little impact on the Dutch-Canadian community. As the culture of the Netherlands increasingly resembles that of North America, the difference between immigrants and the receiving society is reduced to one of language. Under such conditions, emigration is a less momentous event, and the ethnic community in Canada seems largely irrelevant in the lives of the newcomers.

Some might regard the loss of ethnic identity in the community as regretable, but such is not the opinion of the vast majority of Dutch Canadians. They are not prepared to exert any significant effort to maintain what they regard as a disappearing community. Their view is that they or their parents or grandparents left the Netherlands for the opportunities of a new country and that they were rewarded with economic security. Nostalgia for things Dutch is natural for the first generation, but its members would not trade their life in Canada for one in the Netherlands. The commitment to the new homeland and the new language draws immigrants farther and farther from their roots. Though their children and grandchildren may be curious about those roots, they do not regard them as essential to their identity.

Full assimilation into Canadian society is a fact for second- and third-generation Dutch Canadians since there is no aspect of Canadian life from which they have been barred. The great majority, while aware of their ethnic origins, clearly regard themselves as Canadians rather than Dutch Canadians and see ethnicity as largely irrelevant. The extinguishing of their ethnic identity is a natural process in the formation of a distinct Canadian society of which they and their children are an important part.