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In the 1960s, Canada embarked on a vast social experiment to find a way to coexistence and tolerance. Long before the first European settlers arrived, Canada was a multicultural society. The country was home to hundreds of different tribes of Aboriginal people speaking many different languages. Some tribes got along with each other well, some were at each other's throats. Whatever the state of their relationships, Canada was certainly multicultural and multilingual. However, many centuries passed before it was felt necessary to enshrine multiculturalism in the law. At the start of the 20th century, Canada was overwhelmingly peopled by members of its three founding cultures -- Native (First Nations), French, and English. As waves of immigrants from other cultures began to arrive, Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier outlined the idea of multiculturalism that was to come much later. He described visiting a magnificent cathedral in England that was "made of marble, oak, and granite. It is the image of the nation I would like to see Canada become. For here, I want the marble to remain the marble; the granite to remain the granite; the oak to remain the oak; and out of all these elements I would build a nation great among the nations of the world." Fifty years later, another Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, used different imagery to express a similar idea. He said that Canada is not "a melting pot in which the individuality of each element is destroyed in order to produce a new and totally different element. It is rather a garden into which have been transplanted the hardiest and brightest flowers from many lands, each retaining in its new environment the best of the qualities for which it was loved and prized in its native land." During the time that Lester Pearson was Prime Minister (1963-68), Canadians were as preoccupied as ever with a debate over national unity. In 1963, Mr. Pearson set up the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism...