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This essay examines Canada's "Highway of Heroes" as a citizen-oriented patriotism in response to Canada's war in Afghanistan. The paper advances the idea of the "Highway of Heroes" phenomenon as a "grassroots patriotism" where upon representations of the Canadian nation are performed and contested by citizens themselves. The central argument forwarded is that the "Highway of Heroes" represents a departure from -- and challenge to -- official state discourses of patriotism that have dominated Canada outside Quebec over the last half a century, which includes a patriotic narrative of Canada's military efforts and war heroes. Importantly, this version of patriotism has been more recently embraced by the Canadian state, thus demonstrating how grassroots patriotisms can influence and shape official state narratives of patriotism. Adapted from the source document.

This paper is about the ways that citizens perceive their place in the political world around them, through their political identities. Using a combination of comparative and quantitative methodologies, the study traces the pattern of citizens' political identifications in the European Union and Canada between 1981 and 2003 and explains the mechanisms that shape these political identifications. The results of the paper show that in the EU and Canada identity formation is a process that involves the participation of both individuals and political institutions yet between the two, individuals play a greater role in identity construction than do political institutions. The paper argues that the main agents of political identification in the EU and Canada are citizens themselves: individuals choose their own political identifications, rather than acquiring identities that are pre-determined by historical or cultural precedence. The paper makes the case that this phenomenon is characteristic of a rise of 'civic' identities in the EU and Canada. In the European Union, this overarching 'civic' identity is in its infancy compared to Canada, yet, both reveal a new form of political identification when compared to the historical and enduring forms of cultural identities firmly entrenched in Europe. The rise of civic identities in both the EU and Canada is attributed to the active role that citizens play in their own identity constructions as they base their identifications on rational assessments of how well political institutions function, and whether their memberships in the community will benefit them, rather than on emotional factors rooted in religion or race. In the absence of strongly held emotional identifications, in the EU and Canada political institutions play a passive role in identity construction by making the community appear more entitative to its citizens. These findings offer new theoretical scope to the concept of civic communities and the political identities that underpin them. The most important finding presented in the paper is that although civic communities and identities are manufactured by institutions and political elites (politicians and bureaucrats), they require thinking citizens, not feeling ones, to be sustained.

This paper is about the ways that citizens perceive their place in the political world around them, through their political identities. Using a combination of comparative and quantitative methodologies, the study traces the pattern of citizens' political identifications in the European Union and Canada between 1981 and 2003 and explains the mechanisms that shape these political identifications. The results of the paper show that in the EU and Canada identity formation is a process that involves the participation of both individuals and political institutions yet between the two, individuals play a greater role in identity construction than do political institutions. The paper argues that the main agents of political identification in the EU and Canada are citizens themselves: individuals choose their own political identifications, rather than acquiring identities that are pre-determined by historical or cultural precedence. The paper makes the case that this phenomenon is characteristic of a rise of 'civic' identities in the EU and Canada. In the European Union, this overarching 'civic' identity is in its infancy compared to Canada, yet, both reveal a new form of political identification when compared to the historical and enduring forms of cultural identities firmly entrenched in Europe. The rise of civic identities in both the EU and Canada is attributed to the active role that citizens play in their own identity constructions as they base their identifications on rational assessments of how well political institutions function, and whether their memberships in the community will benefit them, rather than on emotional factors rooted in religion or race. In the absence of strongly held emotional identifications, in the EU and Canada political institutions play a passive role in identity construction by making the community appear more entitative to its citizens. These findings offer new theoretical scope to the concept of civic communities and the political identities that underpin them. The most important finding presented in the paper is that although civic communities and identities are manufactured by institutions and political elites (politicians and bureaucrats), they require thinking citizens, not feeling ones, to be sustained. Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v2i4.179

AbstractThis article examines the symbolic construction of Canadian national identity by the 1993–2006 Liberal governments and the 2006–2015 Conservative governments. To do so, it employs the concept of a 'national symbolic order', which refers to the complex set of public symbols that invoke, transport, and define claims to a shared national identity. Within Canada's national symbolic order, we focus on the state's use of national symbols across two domains: Speeches from the Throne and banknotes. Our analysis shows that Canada's recent Conservative government has used both of these domains to reshape Canadian national identity in ways that accord with neo‐conservative values and ideology, and that it has done so in a coherent, consistent, and comprehensive fashion. This analysis highlights the symbolic strategies employed by state actors in linking particular ideologies to their nation‐building projects; these strategies span multiple political and policy spaces.

Abstract:In 2009, the Conservative government announced that its new citizenship guide, Discover Canada, would replace the previous guide that had been in place since 1995. Using a discourse analysis, this article assesses the nation-building strategies employed by the Conservative government in this new guide. The central argument is that Discover Canada advances a version of the Canadian nation tied to socially and economically conservative values as well as law and order issues. This neo-conservative national identity has important implications for national belonging and membership not only for prospective citizens to Canada, but also for Canada's historical national minorities, including Quebec and Aboriginal peoples.

Abstract.This paper explores how citizenship norms of duty to vote and to volunteer in one's community influence political participation, and the role of group identities in producing these norms. By showing how citizenship norms influence an array of political activities, and by drawing on social psychology literature that shows how citizenship norms are shaped by group identifications, the paper offers a more complete picture of the relationship between citizenship norms and political participation beyond traditional civic duty/federal vote models that currently dominate Canadian political research. The central argument forwarded is that not only do citizenship norms matter to political participation, but that group identities matter, too.Résumé.Cette étude explore les effets sur la participation politique des normes relatives au devoir du citoyen de voter et de contribuer à sa communauté, de même que le rôle des identités de groupe dans la production de ces normes. En montrant comment les normes de citoyenneté influencent une foule d'activités politiques et en puisant dans la littérature en psychologie sociale, qui montre comment ces normes sont formées par des identifications de groupe, cette étude aide à mieux comprendre la relation entre ces normes et la participation politique au-delà du cadre traditionnel devoir civique / vote fédéral qui domine actuellement la recherche en politique canadienne. La thèse avancée est que les normes de citoyenneté jouent effectivement un rôle important dans la participation politique, tout comme les identités de groupe.