This Has Been The Lynchpin Of My Blog...

George Jonas: I’m a man with one master

George Jonas says that his country, like his wife, Maya “entitled to my unhyphenated commitment.”

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Take the government-sponsored web site Multiculturalcanada.ca, which describes me as “another Hungarian-Canadian.” I don’t mind, but I’m not. I was born a Hungarian, lived to tell about it, and when the opportunity presented itself, I became a Canadian. That was half a century ago, and that’s what I’ve been ever since. Not a Hungarian-Canadian; a Canadian.
I consider a Hungarian-Canadian a dual citizen. If I wanted to be one, I’d apply for the papers. They would be available to me. Both countries permit, perhaps even encourage, dual citizenship. Canada has been permitting it since the 1970s, and Hungary since the early 1990s. My reason for not being a dual citizen is that I consider dual citizenship a contradiction in terms. I know it’s practised in a number of places, but so is polygamy — and dual citizenship makes about the same sense to me.
The debate has flared up recently because NDP leadership candidate Thomas Mulcair is a dual citizen. It’s totally legal and it’s his business — I just find it incongruous. Anyone who wants to derive his or her identity from, say, occupation or gender can do so without interfering with a parallel self-identification as a Canadian. It’s possible to be “a Canadian woman” or “a Canadian woman dentist” or even “a Canadian Catholic woman dentist.” But some identities cannot be hyphenated. It’s impossible to talk about a female Canadian male (even if you think you know someone who fits the definition) or a married Canadian single. Read More »