" Everything connects. Canadian culture, the imaginative expression of our shared lives and aspirations, is the heartbeat of our people. Its networks of influence are society's arteries. It is in the broad arena of our pluralistic culture that the stories that speak of Canada's distinctiveness are told. In the defiant imaginations of our artists we see the possibilities for our future; in the clamour of their voices we hear the sound of our unfolding identity. Our artists supply the raw materials of the imagination, the foundations on which wisdom and hope are built, for our young people and for Canadians everywhere. The stories we tell each other - in our plays, our books, our films - affirm the importance of the human, the local, the specific: they are the crackly bits that give society texture in the face of the blender forces of globalization."

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" Cultural nationalism and cultural freedom are different animals. The key to a flourishing creative identity for Canada lies in the freedom of our artists to create in whatever ways they think fit - and it is this freedom that should be protected by our legislators. Canadian creativity is an integral ingredient of our identity, an anchor of self-knowledge in a fluid world. But its Canadianness lies only in the fact that it is the creativity of Canadians; and that is the only prerequisite that can legitimately be imposed. Beyond that, all options are open. Canadian music is music made by Canadians. Canadian books are books written by Canadians - displaying what George Woodcock called "the restless variegation of a mature literature." The Life of Pi - a story of a young Indian male shipwrecked en route to Canada and cast adrift in a lifeboat with only a Bengal tiger for company - is as much a Canadian novel as Who Has Seen the Wind? To properly protect our culture, it is excellence in creativity that should be supported, not nationalism. Take care of the creators, and the culture takes care of itself."(Our Public AirWaves |The Defiant Imagination)

:: note :: . . . when in Vancouver had mixed feelings about critic Max Wyman . . . the defiant imagination changes everything . . . adds a new dimension to the educated imagination . . .

audblog:arts today:why culture matters to Canadians