Imagined Communities

Canada has a population of just over 34.5 billion people; the likeliness that most of these people will even meet in their lifetime is slim to none, and yet Canadians choose to connect themselves to Benedict Anderson’s notion of an imagined community. This connection, although arbitrarily, speaks volumes about the socially constructed understanding of the community they live in. As a response, the building of Canadian communities have been both created and resisted for centuries. This paper will explore how Canada has been branded and how that branding has consumed the ideals of the country, in addition to the national image of the North and of Canadian immigration policies to understand the building of Canadianness.

“You’re Home”, the slogan found in the entrances of Tim Hortons restaurants, serves as a consumer branded business being increasingly marketed as a “cultural site for the articulation of Canadian values” (Cormack and Cosgrove 62). Its establishment in 1964, with a small shop in Hamilton, Ontario has since become a nationwide staple, with more than 3,000 stores. Tim Hortons has been seen as a Canadian icon and social institution although the process of its rise lacks analysis. The brand has been built upon “a decades-long [standing] marketing campaign that touches on the most celebrated of Canadian values” (Cormack and Cosgrove 68). The appeal of Tim Hortons encompasses far more than just the selling of coffee, doughnuts and other various goods, it fosters the building and development of community through the sponsoring of sports, predominantly hockey, at the grassroots and amateur levels, as well as supporting the professional league (Cormack and Cosgrove 80). They also capitalize on TV ads that link immigration, fami...

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...d the ideal of a perfect Canadian – who belongs to the nation and where do the boundaries lie? There are individuals who still subscribe to the Eurocentric understanding of the country, where the British nation with a French and English presence clearly divided that state. Those who share that view often see multiculturalism as a change that challenges their conception of Canada, themselves and the nations identity. From this perspective, the changes Canadians have experienced make the country seem like it has fallen apart. Racialized minorities have been contingent to this idea of what a model setter once was and what is now considered best for the nation. In reality Canada’s national identity is a lot more complex than both views explain, with a contemporary Canadian perspective included. It has been interestingly portrayed to the Canadian public in various ways.