Around the world, sectarian tensions divide societies, sometimes erupting into violent confrontation. Some pundits argue that similar convulsions will shake Canada’s multicultural foundations. But Michael Adams argues that Canadians don’t see this as inevitable. Far from being disabused of their naïveté by the world’s conflicts and bloodshed, Adams believes Canadians suspect that the world might just be disabused of its “realism” by the success of the Canadian multicultural experiment. By focusing on the more mundane task of helping people of all kinds get along—both materially and socially—Canada may prove to be the “experiment” that worked.

Michael Adams is the founding president of the Environics group of research and communications consulting companies, and the author of six books on public attitudes and social values in Canada and the United States. He is a respected commentator on public affairs and the founder of the Environics Institute, a nonprofit organization that works collaboratively to conduct relevant and original research on issues of public importance in Canada. His most popular book to date, Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values, won the Donner Prize for best book on Canadian public policy in 2004 and was named by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the 100 most important books ever published in Canada.

Michael Adams' profile page