Epilogue: Citizenship, Memory, and the Curious Case of Canada

Abstract

Given its increasingly multiethnic composition Canada does not fit traditional models of collective memory that imply a fixed relationship between what is remembered and the mnemonic community doing the remembering. This essay draws out some of the particularities of Canadian memory culture in order to show how it exemplifies in vitro a general principle that is emerging in scholarship; namely, that collective memory is not fixed once and for all, but is continuously emerging through the transfer of models of remembrance across groups and through the multidirectional interplay between narratives as they enter the public arena. From the perspective of this generative model, memory is not an inalienable inheritance, but an active ingredient in renegotiating the cultural boundaries between citizens in local, national, and transnational contexts.