Issue 28:

Questions of identity are central to Inroads 28. Political scientists Keith Banting, Richard Johnston, Will Kymlicka and Stuart Soroka ask whether diversity and multicultural policies can coexist with support for redistribution toward the poor and vulnerable groups. Their answer is a qualified yes. Linguistic identity underlies Charles Castonguay’s article about the relative vitality of French and English in Quebec and Ontario. Carefully analyzing 2001 and 2006 census data, he shows that French is losing ground in both provinces. Questions of identity play out in a different arena in an excerpt from Sharbari Ahmed’s novel-in-progress, Bombay Duck, which is set in Calcutta in the 1940s and brings the reader inside the communal violence that tore Calcutta apart in 1946.