Becoming Canadian: Memoirs of an Invisible Immigrant

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

Michiel Horn is a professor of Canadian history at York University. He
is also one of the many Dutch emigrants who settled in Canada shortly
after World War II. In this candid and wonderfully written memoir, based
in part on a diary he kept between 1939 and 1973, Horn reflects on his
immigrant experience—the process of his assimilation into Canadian
culture and the ambivalence he felt toward his new country.

Horn spent his childhood in Holland during World War II. In 1952, he
and his family fled Holland’s postwar economic stagnation for a new
life in Victoria, B.C., where he later found employment in the chartered
banking industry. His academic career began with undergraduate work at
the University of Victoria. While on an exchange scholarship in Europe
in 1961–62, Horn returned to Holland; it was during that visit that he
came to realize just how Canadian he had become.

In Becoming Canadian, Horn discusses what it means to be both Dutch and
Canadian, but not to belong fully to either country. He also uses his
immigrant experience to explore the broader issues of multiculturalism
in Canada.