Dual citizenship in the Canadian Mosaic

By Asjad Bukhari, CFO of Canadian Cultural Mosaic Foundation

Holding two nationalities is a unique experience for people living in multicultural societies like Canada. If you hold a dual citizenship of Pakistan and Canada, truly you can say - I belong to Bronze Age Indus Civilization (3300-1300 BCE) and I am a citizen of a high tech and multicultural nation, Canada. Proudly, I am one of them too.

You can look at these two extreme cultural timelines and wonder how it’s possible to make a balance between the two, and how can you divide your love for two homelands? I think love gets more strength and energy when we spread it. Regarding the cultural timeline, I need to clarify what culture is and how it progresses. Culture consists of the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. In other words, everything relating to living is part of culture. With this scope of culture, it is clear that culture is not something stagnant and static. Culture always evolves with the passage of time and growth of collective human wisdom from a particular region. In some societies it is fast and in some it is slow in pace. This progress in culture doesn’t mean that it changes the shape entirely; it actually evolves similar to human life with age. The person is the same but with learning and experience our personality progresses and matures with the passage of time. Sometime societies resist change. That is a part of a cultural dilemma, and it is also a matter of marking the fundamental principles and essentials of a particular culture, but more or less evolution is inevitable. 

With these understandings about the culture in mind, we established Pakistani Canadian Cultural Association of Alberta (PCCA). On this platform we celebrate Canadian and as well Pakistani national and cultural festivals and days. Most recently PCCA organized a Pakistani Flag Hoisting Ceremony at City Hall, Calgary on the occasion of 68th Independence Day of Pakistan on Friday, August 14, 2015. The celebration brought a large crowd of Pakistani Canadians and other ethnicities from all ages with excitement and smiles. The event was also attended by dignities from governments and politicians. We, as Pakistani Canadians, really appreciate the fact that Canada is truly a multicultural country. The fact that we are able to celebrate the fact that we are both Canadians and Pakistanis, shows that we are truly a multicultural country - and for that - Thank You Canada!