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Hayward’s concept was then adopted by the Canadian Kate Foster in her 1926 publication, Our Canadian Mosaic. Indigenous “Madonna of the Kootenays” from Victoria Hayward’s Romantic Canada From Hayward’s American point of view, Canada’s population had distinctively “old world” characteristics, but incorporated smaller groups of Asians and Aboriginal peoples to create an exotic landscape, which she referred to as a mosaic. She uses the term to refer to both the variance in European church architecture found in the Prairie provinces and to the Japanese fishermen of the Fraser River in British Columbia who had “stepped out of the Far East to serve this river of the Far West.” She painted a rather patronizing portrait of Canada, focusing on the welcoming Gaelic housewives of the Maritimes, the fusion of French and indigenous culture found in Huron villages, and the Swedish music carried on the winds of the Prairies.

In 1922 the travel writer Victoria Hayward published Romantic Canada, a piece of travel literature detailing her journey from the Maritimes to British Columbia. Many Canadians would likely be astonished to find that the first person to use the term “mosaic” to discuss the national character of Canada was in fact an American. Yet Canadians rarely question where the term comes from.

Canadians hold great pride in this idea, placing it on the progressive end of a spectrum opposite to the American melting pot. Though used in different contexts and with different goals, the mosaic almost always describes Canada as a multicultural landscape and symbolizes a national ideology of inclusion and diversity. John Murray Gibbon’s image of a Czechoslovakian immigrant in his Canadian MosaicĬanadians often describe their country as a “mosaic.” This idea is present on government websites and in many contemporary articles in the media (on outlets such as The Globe and Mail, Macleans, and the Huffington Post), and most importantly in the minds of people across the country.