Canadians and Their Pasts: The Survey Component

1. Canadians and Their Pasts: The Survey Component David Northrup Institute for Social Research, York University, Toronto, Ontario Peel Heritage Complex, February 11-12, 2010

2. Style of the Session • not a lecture • set of slides to facilitate conversation • if you require clarification, or have a question, please speak up • if you can add information or perspective, please share • have brought along the data file and can, when time permits, provide info other than what is presented in the slides

3. the survey

4. Survey Design • National Telephone Survey (3,119) • RDD sample & next birthday selection • Sample Components • national sample: 5 regions of 400 interviews (2,000) • major urban area sample, 1,000 interviews (Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver) • Supplemental Samples (100 each): • Aboriginals (Saskatoon and area), Acadians (Dieppe, Petit-Rocher, and Caraquet, NB), recent immigrants (Peel) • Data Collection • over 19 months at ISR and Jolicoeur • 54% response rate

5. Questionnaire • 75-80 questions, depending on answers to previous questions • took, on average, 23 minutes to complete • mostly closed-ended (forced choice) questions • 11 open-ended questions • more qualitative, more respondent-centred, no a priori list of answers • taped and transcribed • 91% of all respondents gave permission to tape their answers to the open-ended questions

6. Questionnaire Sections 1 general interest in the past 2 activities related to the past (engagement) 3 understanding the past (connectedness) 4 trustworthiness of sources on the past 5 importance of various pasts 6 sense of the past 7 biographical data

7. Looking at the Data • outline our major findings for Canada • special attention to what respondents said about museums • compare and contrast immigrants, including those in the Peel sample, to respondents from the rest of Canada • but also divide immigrants into two groups: recent immigrants as compared to settled immigrants

8. findings from the national sample

9. Engagement: 1 • section b of the questionnaire • close to the start of the questionnaire • longest section of the survey • example: • In the last 12 months have you looked at old photographs of buildings, places, family members, friends, and so on? • Can you please tell us about the last time you looked at these old photographs. Did you do this by yourself or with other people? What was the occasion?

10. Engagement: 2

11. Engagement 3 • almost all Canadians engage in activities where they encounter the past • 99% engage in at least one & 56% engage in 5+ activities • average number of activities = 6 (out of 13) • 44% engage in the three most common family-related activities (photos and heirlooms and scrapbooks, cookbook, diary, other family history) • 25% have read a book about the past and visited a museum and visited a historic site • very high participation rates for family activities • lower participation rates for public history activities

12. An Opening to the Past From Looking at Photographs My mother-in-law died, we were looking through photographs to gather up some pictures to have at the wake… my uncle did a family tree, and he wrote stories of the community and . . . stories about family members who moved away . . . We have an old heritage house . . . that I've inherited . . It is full of lots of antiques and . . . old family things . . . it's a sense of history that you're passing on to your family and . . . I think it's important to know . . . where you came from . . . the house is 160 years old and . . . it was built by my ancestors and of course, many, many generations have lived in that house, and [it] makes you feel, you know, connected, going through all the . . . old pictures and all the old clippings and old scrapbooks and things that were there. woman, mid-fifties, retail manager, small town in PEI (id 1400457)

13. An Opening to the Past From Visiting a Museum In 1986, I returned to the village where my maternal ancestor left in France, in Tourouvre, west of Paris… they were building a small museum, L’Immigration Percheronne . . . to commemorate the departure of 80 families from Tourouvre in 1624 for New France. And I went there and met with . . . museum staff. And I went and I saw the home, which is still standing, the home of . . . my maternal ancestor, and took lots of photographs and visited the museum. So it was my pilgrimage back to my source. (53 year old female from Ontario, id 1403313)

14. Participation, Understanding and Connectedness Percent Distributions

15. Connectedness: a moment of heritage* Well, you're right there, that's where it happened. There's an aura about that . . . I think a good example is in St. John’s, Newfoundland. They say at this point, the first explorers landed here, and it didn’t mean 100 yards down, it meant right there, right there, that’s where the trail was. And I thought, “that’s something!” . . . That stuff just puts hackles up my back. I think it's where the first explorers landed. It's an incredible feeling right there. I'm not sure if everybody feels that, but I did * Laurajane Smith, 2006, Uses of Heritage, New York, Routledge.

16. Interest in Various Pasts/Histories * The ‘not interested’ percent includes ‘not very interested,’ ‘not at all interested’ and those who did not answer the question

17. Importance of Various Pasts * ‘Not important’ % includes ‘not very important, not at all important’ and those who did not answer the question ** only asked if not born in Canada = 19% of respondents in the national sample

18. Most Important Past

19. Trustworthiness of each Information Source * Includes not very and not at all trustworthy as well as depends and did not answer

20. Most Trustworthy Source of Information

21. museums

22. Trust in Museums • other studies also find high trust in museums • limited relationship between sociodemographic characteristics and level of trust • no relationship between attendance and frequency of attendance and trust • respondents provide cogent reasons for why they trust museums • trust is bestowed as well as earned • abstract Delphin Muise & Lon Dubinsky’s work

23. Who Trust Museums • almost everyone • no difference: • by gender: men = 65% and women = 67% • by place of birth (or recent or settled immigrant) • by family status (having children or not) • by professing to have or not have a religion • by residence in biggest cities, or city versus rural areas • some variation in trust by age, income and education, but no real pattern

24. Age and Trust in Museums Percent saying very trustworthy

25. Education, Income and Trust in Museums Education Income Percent saying very trustworthy

26. Museum Attendance and Trust in Museums

27. Why Museums Are Trusted • artifacts • reverence for the artifact • faith that artifacts somehow stand on their own • gives a sense of connectedness • institutional nature of museums • authority of state or government • many engaged in the research • museums are critically constructive • fear of public censure: they cannot afford to be wrong

28. Who Visits Museums? • women more likely to visit than men (5% difference) • parents are no more likely to visit than non-parents • those under 30 and over 70 are less likely to visit but otherwise not much variation by age • little variation in attendance by city size and urban/rural • limited variance by ethnicity • no real difference in attendance by birthplace (born in Canada = 42% and born other country = 45%) • recent immigrants (in Canada 10 years or less) less likely to visit (39%) than settled immigrants (47%) • variation in attendance mostly relates to education and income

29. Income & Museum Attendance Statistically significant in a regression model

30. Museum, Historic Sites, Archives, and Education * Statistically significant in regression model

31. Family Activities and Education * Statistically significant in regression model

32. immigrants and the Peel sample

33. Immigrant Stories: 1 … immigration to Canada . . .I think there's some positive … and then there's some negative …. OK, so it's very positive to my children…. But for myself, maybe half and a half, maybe, you know, we lose our profession. Yeah we need to then to start a new career, and that is [a] dramatic change. woman, 41 years of age, works in health care, Peel sample and immigrated 8 years ago (id1601037)

34. Immigrants/New Canadians: 1 • in the national sample 19% of the respondents reported they immigrated to Canada • considerable variation between provinces • considerable variation within provinces • as a group, immigrants are very diverse • in terms of ethnicity and other sociodemographic characteristics • in terms of how long in the country (and current age) • divide immigrants into two groups: old/settled and new/recent • use 10 years as the dividing line • all of Peel sample are recent immigrants • survey limitation: interviewing completed only in English and French

35. Immigrants/New Canadians: 2 • Ethnicity • answered “Canadian” • Canadian born = 15%, all immigrants 3%, settled immigrants 4%, recent immigrants less than 1%, Peel sample 0% • listed a second ethnicity (other than Canadian) • Canadian born = 40%, all immigrants 12%, settled immigrants 11%, recent immigrants 12%, Peel 8%

36. Ethnicity: For Canada, Immigrants & Peel Respondents Percentage distributions

37. Immigrant Stories: 50 Years Ago That was 50 years ago, we came as refugees to Canada from Hungary where we escaped from the Revolution . . . 200,000 Hungarians escaped at that time and I had a five and a seven year old child . . . it was a very, very dramatic escape . . . We just celebrated the 50th anniversary . . . of the uprising of the revolution . . . A book [was] published and our family story is . . . in that book. This is most important event in my life . . . and it changed the whole future of the family . . . I mean, we never would come to Canada or leave the country if there was no revolution, the Russian repression. So I saw dramatic change in our lives . . . this is the most important . . . [it] changed my whole life. woman, senior, MA, professor of music living in Ontario (id 1403392)

38. Sociodemographics • education: limited differences between Canadian-born and settled immigrants, but recent immigrants have higher levels of education • highest income for Canadian-born, lowest for recent immigrants, and settled immigrants in between • recent immigrants are much younger (66% under 40), compared to settled immigrants (19%) and Canadian-born (29%) • no difference by gender, parental status, household size

39. Engagement & Immigration Status: 1

40. Engagement & Immigration Status: 2

41. Interest in Past/History by Immigration Status

42. Importance of Various Pasts by Immigration Status Percentage distributions

43. Immigrants Stories: 2 Canada is my home now, so … I feel very strongly about this country, but I still prefer [country of birth] over Canada. Unfortunately. This is my past, and I had … I lived there all my life before I came, so I have really strong attachment to my country. I shouldn't say my country, I live in Canada . . . woman, 30 years of age, “stay at home mum,” Peel sample and immigrated 6 years ago (id 1601731)

44. Most Important Past by Immigration Status

45. Trust by Immigration Status

46. Most Trustworthy Sourceby Immigration Status

47. Immigrant Stories: 3 . . . well, I don’t have kids, but I will have one day, and I’ll definitely want them to know where I come from, and where their grandparents are coming from, and I’d like them to know as much as possible about the country that I come from. woman, 31 years of age, marketing assistant, Peel sample and immigrated 4 years ago (id1602499)

48. ‘Very Interested’ in the Past: Generation & Immigrant Status

49. Pasts rated as ‘Very Important’by Generation & Immigrant Status

50. Immigrant Stories, Earlier Generations: 1 . . . mostly because the family have been in Canada for so many generations and I think it's important that we . . . that those of us that are alive today, are able to understand where we came from and what part we might have played in history - whether it was the fur trade or the Red River settlement and rebellions, and stuff like that. man, senior & retired and living in the Gulf Islands of BC (id 1407922)