4.3.2 A Changing Society

Over more than fifty years, Canadian values shifted. Society became more open and more flexible. Education was a large part of this change. High schools, colleges and universities offered more places, and many people took them. Work changed too. Women entered professional jobs in growing numbers. These shifts touched families, workplaces and public life. By the end of this period, daily life in Canada looked very different from how it had looked at the beginning.

The right to vote also widened. For a long time most Canadians of Asian descent were kept out of federal and provincial elections. Japanese-Canadians were the last group still excluded. They won the vote in 1948. Aboriginal people received the vote in 1960. The rule today is simple and applies to everyone. Any Canadian citizen who is 18 or older may cast a ballot.

Canada opened its doors to people escaping Communist rule. In 1956 roughly 37,000 Hungarians fled Soviet tyranny and were welcomed here. In 1975 the Communists won the Vietnam War. Large numbers of Vietnamese left their homeland after that. More than 50,000 of them found refuge in Canada. Thousands of other refugees arrived from countries under Communist control. These arrivals became part of Canadian society and helped shape it.

Immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries had already mixed the population. In the postwar years the idea of multiculturalism gained fresh strength. By the 1960s, a third of Canadians traced their family roots to neither Britain nor France. These families were proud to keep their own culture alive while belonging to Canada. That mix still makes life here richer. It is easiest to see in the country's larger cities.