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Until the 1970s, the vast majority of immigrants to Canada were from Europe and hence were predominantly white and Christian, in part because there were racially discriminatory rules limiting the immigration of non-Europeans. Today, however, the majority of immigrants to Canada are not of European descent and in many cases are not Christian. This is literally changing the face of Canadian society, particularly in urban areas like Montreal, and raising concerns about whether immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East are “integrating” into our society and about the extent to which we should “accommodate” their different cultures and traditions.

But as the rich store of NFB documentaries about earlier waves of European immigration makes clear, these concerns are not new. For example, the film Xénofolies (1991) explores the mutual misunderstandings and stereotypes in a Quebec high school between the children of Italian immigrants and the children of old-stock Québécois. Here we see many of the same debates as arise regarding today’s non-European immigrants. The old-stock Québécois youth express a number of anxieties about the Italian immigrant community, including questions of loyalty and national identity (Why do Italian Canadians wave the Italian flag when they should only wave the Quebec flag?), questions of language (Why do Italian Canadians speak Italian on the bus when they should be using French, at least in “public” spaces?), and questions of dress and gender roles (Why do Italian mothers attempt to impose traditional ideas of modesty and virtue on their daughters when they now live in a free and modern Quebec?). All of these practices are seen as evidence of a refusal to truly integrate.

The Italian-Canadian youth respond that they are integrated Рthey are active and contributing members of the larger Quebec society, fulfilling their duties as citizens, and seek only mutual respect and fair treatment from the Qu̩b̩cois. In the attached clip, teenagers from the school present their opposing views on these questions.

The Italians were part of a large wave of immigration from southern and eastern Europe after World War II, and today we often view the integration of these groups as a great success story. Indeed, in much of Canada, these white European immigrant groups are now treated as part of the “mainstream” into which newer non-European immigrants are supposed to integrate. But as Xénofolies shows, this process has not been without its struggles and anxieties, and this is worth remembering when discussing today’s headlines about immigrant integration and accommodation. We have lived through these debates before, have survived and learned how to live together.

An earlier NFB film, Our Street was Paved with Gold (1973), provides a moving testament to the continuities of these stories of immigrant adaptation and integration. In the film, a second-generation Hungarian Canadian, Albert Kish, returns to the neighbourhood in Montreal where his parents first settled in the 1950s, on St. Laurent Boulevard. When he was growing up, the neighbourhood had a tight-knit Hungarian-Canadian community, along with sizeable Polish and Jewish immigrant communities. As a child, he experienced the same pulls and tensions as many second-generation immigrant children, drawn to the familiar comforts of his Hungarian community, while eager to embrace the foods, movies, clothes (and girls!) of the larger society.

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