Diversity Matters

Canada's Population

• “In 2002, almost one-quarter (23%) of Canada's population aged 15 and over, or 5.3 million people, were first generation, that is, they were born outside Canada”.  (Statistics Canada. 2003, September 29.  The Daily. Ethnic Diversity Survey. 2002. )
•  “Canadians listed more than 200 ethnic groups in answering the 2001 Census question on ethnic ancestry, reflecting a varied, rich cultural mosaic as the nation started the new millennium….Only in Australia is the proportion of population born outside the country higher than it is in Canada”. (Statistics Canada. 2003. 2001 Census Analysis. Canada's ethnocultural portrait: The changing mosaic.)
• In the 2006 census, over 900,000 Nova Scotians identified themselves as First Nations, Métis, or Inuit. (Statistics Canada. 2008. January 15. 2006 Census Data Products. Highlight Tables. Aboriginal People. )
• In 2001, over 90% of Blacks living in Halifax were Canadian-born, the highest proportion among census metropolitan areas.There were nearly 13,100 Blacks in Halifax in 2001, representing close to 4% of the population, the third largest proportion behind Toronto and Montreal.  (Statistics Canada. 2004, March 16. Spotlight: Black Population. Black Population in Canada. A portrait.)

Diverse Voices Speak

 Kofi Annan (1938 - )
(Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1997-2007. Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.)
“We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.”

 Maya Angelou (1928 - )
(Poet, speaker, and author of several best-selling autobiographies. Recipient of numerous honorary degrees. )
“We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.” 

 Rosemary Brown (1930 - 2003)
(First black woman to be elected to public office in Canada. She was elected to the B.C. legislature in 1972.)
“Until all of us have made it, none of us have made it.”

 Thérèse Casgrain (1896 - 1991)
(Led the women's suffrage movement in Quebec, and continued to work for child protection laws and women's rights.)
“The true liberation of women cannot take place without the liberation of men.”

 Tomothy Findlay (1930 - 2002)
(Canadian novelist and playwright.)
”Racism demeans both the hated and the hater, because racists, in denying full humanity to others, fail the humanity in themselves.”

 R. Buckminister Fuller (1895 - 1983)
(American architect; author; visionary; and inventor; and a president of Mensa, an organization for members with high- tested IQs.)
“We are not going to be able to operate our spaceship earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.”


 Mohandas Gandhi (1869 - 1948)
(Political and spiritual leader of the Indian Independence Movement from Britain.  Advocated and practised civil disobedience through non-violence.) 
“I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stiffled. I want all the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”

 Chief Dan George (1899 - 1991)
(Chief of the Tsleil-waututh Nation in Burrard Inlet; B.C, author; actor, and Officer of the Order of Canada.  He landed his first acting job at age 60.  He promoted better understanding of First Nations peoples. )
"We cannot allow some people to be left at the back of the human rights bus... We must ensure the rights of individual groups or people --be they indigenous peoples, or peoples of Asian or African or American descent, or Jews or Muslims-- are not sacrificed on an altar of progress for some while there are setbacks to others”


 Rick Hansen (1957 - )
(Canadian paraplegic athlete and activist for people with spinal cord injuries.)
“My disability is that I cannot use my legs. My handicap is your negative perception of that disability, and thus of me.”

Honourable Lincoln Alexander (1922 -)
(Canada' s first black member of parliament, elected to represent Hamilton West in 1968. Lieutenant - Governor of Ontario from 1985 to 1991. )
"She (my mother) knew that accepting defeat was easy, but success was possible, and education was the vehicle to take you there. She was right, and it has. " 

 Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)
(Civil rights activist in the United States. Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964  At age 35, he was the youngest man to recive the Nobel Peace Prize.)
”We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

Nellie McClung (1873 - 1951) 
(Leader in women's suffrage movement in Canada. Famous for her role in the Person's Case in 1929 when women were declared persons.)
"The woman who really loves her own children…is the woman that wants to see other peoples’ children get their chance too. "

Philip Riteman
(Holocaust Survivor. Survivor of Auschwitz. Liberated from  the camp at Bad Tölz in Bavaria in 1945. Now, a resident of Halifax.)
"You have to know what happened so it won't ever happen again."

 Morrie Schwartz (1916 - 1995)
(American educator and author. Schwartz was the son of a Russian immigrant who grew up in the Jewish tenements of New York. Known  best for his posthumous book, Tuesdays with Morrie.)
”Acceptance is not a talent you either have or don’t have. It’s a learned response.” 

 Bishop Desmond Tutu (1931 -)
(South African bishop and author,  opponent of aparthied.  Winner of the 1984 Peace Prize.)
“A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.”