, resulting in the Canadian identity being British. Secondly, in the novel Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan, Canada's loyalty is still to England, the mother country, but due to World War I resentment created between the two countries, Canada starts to form a separate identity. Finally, in the novel Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, the novel illustrates the transition of Canada's national identity from being influenced by the United Kingdom to the United States. Therefore, Canada did not go from "colony to nation", but "empire to empire", meaning the British Empire to the American Empire. Therefore always remaining a margin to another country and never a centre in its own right. Definitely, the pivotal point in Canadian history where Canada cuts her imperial ties and leaves herself either open to the United States or starts to become a centre, is the Imperial Conference in 1936. Where Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minster at the time, declared that Canada would not follow Imperial policy, but that Canada would make its own policies. As history shows, Canada took the "American road" and not the national road due to Mackenzie King. However, Canada might have been able to transform from "colony to nation" and establish a true national identity, if the French Canadian and English Canadian conflict had been resolved at its earliest stages or never have began in the first place. Take the case of the conscription crisis in World War I, if only all French Canadian thought like Talbot Papineau" "we must rather seek to find points of contact and of common interest that point of friction and separation. We must make concessions and certain sacrifices of our distinct individuality if we mean to live on amicable terms with our fellow citizens or if we expect them to make similar concessions to us." Unquestionably, French Canadians would not have formed a resentment for the English Canadians for making them fight in World War I. Equally imp...
