In developing a framework for the identification of sites of outstanding universal value in Canada, it is necessary to incorporate not only the anthropological approach of the World Heritage thematic framework but also the defining characteristics of Canada’s temporal, geographical, and spiritual diversity. The broad lines of the thematic framework of the National Historic Sites of Canada System Plan (2000), which is persuasively national in scope, are, overall, consistent with the directions of the framework adopted by the World Heritage Committee in 1994 and its two principal themes: “Human Coexistence with the Land” and “Human Beings in Society”. Its anthropological orientation to societies rather than monuments complements the System Plan’s focus on commemoration of places associated with the core aspects of the lives of Canadians and its attachment of meanings to places representing this history. In Canada, even though geographical determinism is no longer accepted as a valid interpretation of the country’s past evolution, the relationship of peoples to the land and the seas remains a fundamental theme of its history.
The System Plan framework looks at peoples, their economic activities, their political and social facilities, and their creativity. “Building Social and Community Life”, with its sub-themes of “Community Organization”, “Education and Social Well-Being”, and “Social Movements”, is well accommodated within the Global Strategy theme of “Cultural Coexistence”. The System Plan, like the World Heritage framework, embodies intangible heritage as well as the more conventional tangible heritage. Sub-themes of “Expressing Intellectual and Cultural Life”, such as “Learning and the Arts”, “Architecture and Design”, and “Philosophy and Spirituality”, clearly relate to the Global Strategy theme “Spirituality and Creative Expression”. The country’s culture diversity is also well incorporated. Canada’s diverse cultural communities are included through their arrival (immigration) and settlement, their subsequent economies, their institutions and cultural life, which fit readily within the framework.
Reflective of the Global Strategy’s concern for representing diverse cultures, Aboriginal peoples are visibly included in the System Plan through such sub-themes as Canada’s earliest inhabitants, people and the natural environment, hunting and gathering economies, and spirituality. The widespread movements of Canada’s earliest inhabitants and their descendants - in the North until very recently - fit directly within the Global Strategy sub-theme of “Nomadism”. Patterns of diffusion that distinguish Aboriginal occupation of traditional territories may be considered “Settlement”, and their hunting and gathering livelihood based in the natural environment represents “Modes of Subsistence”. “Human interaction” incorporates the extensive trading patterns, cultural exchanges, and kinship relationships that prevailed among Aboriginal societies occupying present-day Canada before contact as well as long after. After contact, as French missionaries and voyageurs and later British traders and colonizers travelled within their traditional territories, these interactions extended to Europeans and later Americans, reflecting aspects of “Cultural Coexistence”. As an integral part of a holistic and living landscape, they belong to the land and are at one in it with animals, plants, and ancestors whose spirits inhabit it. This world view, in which many consider the land sacred, relates to the sub-theme of “Spirituality”.
Migration - a sub-theme of both the Global Strategy framework and the System Plan - has been a defining theme in Canadian history. Beringia, in unglaciated areas of northern Yukon, marks the earliest known arrival of peoples. The United Empire Loyalists, fleeing American republicanism, settled Upper Canada and the Maritimes in the late 18th century. Throngs of Irish, Scots, and English, fleeing Enclosure Acts and industrialization in Britain, followed in the 19th century. The deliberate immigration policy of attracting Eastern Europeans from 1896 to 1914 to open the Western Prairies was formative in shaping the country we know today. The arrival of an immense diversity of Europeans in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and of Asians from many different countries, especially since 1967, has reshaped the demographic character of Canada and has given it the strongly multicultural population which characterizes all parts of the country today. Although their arrival is very recent, its extent - and the country’s responsiveness through evidences of “human interaction” and “cultural coexistence” like government policies of multiculturalism - may warrant attention in the identified temporal under-representation of the 20th century in the World Heritage List.
“Settlement” - also a sub-theme of both the
Global Strategy framework and the
System Plan - may be the strongest theme in the last four centuries of Canadian history. Setlement patterns on the land vary widely across the country and reflect different human relationships with the land. Climate, topography, soils, water, and natural vegetation influenced settlers’ perceptions of the land and their adaptation to it. French-Canadian seigneuries stretched in long, narrow lots back from the St. Lawrence River transportation corridor. The Mennonites were the first to move from the wooded edges of the Prairies out onto the open flat land and adapt their traditional ways of life to the new environment. Cultural traditions equally influenced the shape of settlements, as the distinctiveness of the French-Canadian seigneuries of
Île d’Orléans (Quebec), the Acadians’ distinct settlement and land use pattern of dyked salt marshlands adapted from the 17th-century French dyking pratice in
Grand-Pré (Nova Scotia), the Mennonite street village of Neuebergthal (Manitoba), the Ukrainian four corners at Gardenton (Manitoba), the Métis riverlots at Batoche (Saskatchewan), and the Mormon town plat at Stirling (Alberta), all National Historic Sites, still illustrate. The depth, wealth, complexity, and diverse relationships with the environment which characterize living settlements, and which were identified as a principal gap in analysis for the
Global Strategy, are illustrated by such continuing communities. Four of Canada’s five cultural World Heritage Sites may already be seen to represent - in part - the theme of settlement. Given its significance, the distinctions of other settlements - coastal, inland, urban, and northern - also warrant consideration in assessing potential cultural World Heritage Sites. Distinct patterns of diffusion, dispersed rural settlement, and nucleated settlement patterns, whether hamlets and villages or towns and cities, already comprise an accepted settlement pattern framework (Heritage Research Associates, 1997:32-37). Identifying the continuity of cultural traditions, such as social organization, beliefs, and rituals, is also needed to position such cultural landscapes effectively within the
Global Strategy framework. “Modes of subsistence”, including fishing and whaling, agriculture and ranching, mining, trade/commerce, and industry, and their technologies and traditions, may be closely associated with settlements.
All of these themes in Canada’s historical evolution are appropriately represented in the new types of cultural heritage that the World Heritage Committee has recognized, most specifically cultural landscapes, which centre on the interaction between people and the natural environment and which illustrate “the evolution of human society and settlement over time” (Operational Guidelines 1999, para.36-37). The associative values of places emphasize the contextual environment of political, social, and spiritual aspects of Canadian life. As the place may thus become the symbol rather than the object, there may be a tendency to limit the scale of the identified cultural site. This direction would be inconsistent with the ICOMOS studies for World Heritage, which have moved to larger intelligible identifications which encompass the full extent of broader values. While some Canadian sites have potential to be identified as cultural routes/itineraries, this type of heritage has not been widely recognized in Canada, though it was the theme for ICOMOS Canada’s 2002 annual meeting.