National Cultures in the Age of Globalization: The Case of Canada‪.‬

RICK SALUTIN is a freelance writer. He has written plays and novels and is media columnist for The Globe and Mail. This article is adapted from an address to the German Association for Canadian Studies. Let me begin by explaining what I mean when I use the term "globalization" - and what I do not mean. I do not mean globalization in the sense of the communications revolution, the information highway, the Internet, and other breathless coinages. Every advance in communications technology over the past 200 years has been hailed as unprecedented, transformative, inaugurating a new version of human nature, extending democracy and so forth. During the French Revolution, the introduction of semaphore, for heaven's sake, was hailed in this way. It was going to make the nation state obsolete and lead to the integration of all humanity. Similar claims were made for the telegraph, film, radio, television - and of course the Internet.