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In Canadian English, the term "ethnic" has been used to designate those immigrants who do not belong to Canada's founding European cultures: the Catholic French and the Protestant Anglo-Celtic.

An ethnic group is often a distinct category of the population in a larger society with a (generally) different culture. Distinct ethnic and cultural groups were recorded by Herodotus 2500 years ago.

The Feast of the Dead was held by the Huron whenever a large village shifted location, about every 10-15 years. The bodies of all those who had not died violent deaths were removed from their temporary tombs and buried in a common ossuary - a deep pit lined with beaver robes.

According to the 2016 census, more Canadians are reporting a mother tongue or language spoken at home other than English or French than in previous years. This is mostly due to the increase in immigrant languages. According to Statistics Canada, immigrant languages are languages “whose presence is initially due to immigration after English and French colonization.”

Marxism was brought to Canada by British worker intellectuals in the first years of the 20th century. It was the dominant ideology in the earliest socialist parties of Canada and was fully adopted by the COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA when it formed in 1921.

Canadian society can be described, at one level, as a complex network of relations among ethnic groups which occupy unequal economic, political and social positions in Canadian society.

Culture, a term used by social scientists, is also widely used in popular speech. It apparently arose first in the Old French of the Middle Ages to indicate a religious cult, or religious worship or ceremony. The verb culturer meant "working the soil."

This movement of loose alliances flourished in the 1900-20 period, a response to the drift to cities and to the perceived loss of rural values. It was fed by the exuberance of the settlement of the Prairie West and by the importance that the Great War lent to farmers.

Contraception, see BIRTH CONTROL.

Family and relationships are important to most people, yet because they seem "natural" or are taken for granted, many people rarely think of them as an area of study and professional practice.

Homosexuality can be characterized as sexual attraction or "sexual orientation" towards others of one's own sex. Homosexuals may be male ("gay") or female ("lesbian"). Like heterosexual behaviour, homosexual behaviour ranges from anonymous sex, promiscuity and prostitution to romantic affairs and lifelong faithful relationships.

Unique to French-speaking Canada, the collège classique (classical college) has over the centuries prepared Québec's social and intellectual elite for higher education. The first classical college was COLLÈGE DES JÉSUITES, established in New France by Jesuit missionaries in 1635.

Migration is defined restrictively as a regular movement between alternate sites, one of which is usually a breeding location.

Prostitution is the practice of exchanging sexual services for money, or for other needs. Although prostitution itself has never been a crime in Canada, communicating and other activities relating to the exchange have been prohibited.

As used every day, elite is an adjective referring to the upper echelon of any activity - eg, elite athletes or elite soldiers. Used more analytically as a noun, elites are those who hold the uppermost decision-making positions in important activities organized in a definite hierarchy.

An annual festival of traditional and contemporary Indigenous music, featuring hunters and musicians from Québec.

Ethnic studies are concerned with the study of groups who share a sense of peoplehood, based on a belief in a common origin, culture or physical traits. These studies embrace a wide range of disciplines, eg, history, SOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, other SOCIAL SCIENCES, EDUCATION and the humanities.

A genealogical study begins with the researcher recording everything one knows about one's immediate family. This information can be supplemented by oral tradition from elderly relatives. Family papers such as letters, deeds and diaries can help verify these recollections, as can old photographs.

Valérie (1969), the first of a group of erotic films now known as "maple-syrup porno," launched the career of director Denis HÉROUX.