The Mosaic Myth : The Social Integration of Newcomers to Canada

The Mosaic Myth shows how Canada’s 1971 adoption of the cultural mosaic model was doomed by false assumptions. Author Domenic Diamante explains Canada’s immigration history and analyzes key questions that informed the country’s multiculturalism policy.

Canada’s official model for integrating newcomers, the cultural mosaic, is based on false assumptions and fails to meet immigrants’ new social and cultural needs.

Canada’s government delivered its official policy on multiculturalism in 1971, adopting a model called the cultural mosaic. While on the surface the policy and model seemed benign, they were based on false assumptions. The Mosaic Myth deconstructs the theory of the cultural mosaic to expose those flaws and warn how its implementation will be at best useless and at worst harmful.

Author Domenic Diamante, himself an immigrant from Italy, was skeptical from the start. After studying the evidence, he drafted this book, now forty years ago. Today, with the mosaic model having failed, Diamante brings his work to the public stage in its original form to show what was wrong with the mosaic and why it matters.