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The problem with opposition to cultural appropriation is that it’s the very basis of Canada’s existence. This is a multicultural society. We grow and thrive by admitting enormous numbers of immigrants every year. We stress tolerance and diversity. Outside First Nations (and even within, if you go back far enough) all of us originate in families that came from somewhere else.

The Canada that exists today is the sum of those parts. We’ve been appropriating from one another ever since the first coureur de bois started traipsing through the forests in search of furs, and discovered the natives had some excellent ways to stay warm and feed one’s self in a vast refrigerator of a country. There was a lengthy period during which the appropriating was largely limited to Europeans appropriating from one another, producing a rather dull, uptight country where attending Sunday service was the highlight of the week. Fortunately that began to fade in the decades following the baby boom, when large numbers of people from more exotic locales began arriving, and took to intermingling, so that now it’s hard to be sure precisely what culture we’re borrowing from, since any given Canadian could claim relatives from half-a-dozen cultures.

The effects of the appropriating are everywhere: in food, fashion, faiths, architecture, art, clothing, music, design, tastes and even politics. Or yoga. The reason you can go out for a meal and enjoy a choice beyond meat and veg is due to large-scale appropriation of the tasty stuff other cultures introduced. When I was a kid there was one kind of lettuce – iceberg — and one kind of dressing – French. The introduction of shrimp was a major step into an exotic new world of culinary adventure. Foreign food meant spaghetti. Vegetables meant peas. Bread was white.