Canada's population of 33.5 million people is growing faster than that of any other G8 nation — fuelled primarily by immigration — while the booming West continues to reshape this country's demographic landscape, a new census has revealed. Photograph by: Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia News files, National Post

When I was a child it was seldom that a face not appearing Caucasian would appear among the throngs of people I might encounter in downtown Toronto, where my family lived as immigrants; by that time my parents having been several decades in the country. I do recall when I became a teen and my parents owned their first house, they rented out a room to a mixed-race couple, a Chinese man and a white woman. They had no regard for scandal, and felt it the right thing to do.

I was taught by my parents that we were are all equal, no matter what we looked like, regardless of origin, ethnicity, language or customary heritage. Equal respect was due all. They were progressive in their outlook and socialist to the core. My mother made it a point to march in peace protests, away back then, long before the Hippies popularized that kind of protest movement. Later, she didn't feel out of place marching alongside Hippies, either.

The face of Canada no longer resembles what I became familiar with as a child, even throughout my growing years to maturity. Now, in my neighbourhood, live families who come from all points of the Globe, representing a myriad of ethnic groups, languages, customs, and religions. And Canada, for the most part, has done a fairly good job of welcoming these immigrants, of encouraging them to find their place in this society.

But not necessarily of stimulating them to become fully assimilated rather than gather in social clusters, finding comfort in the close company of others of the same origin. That, to the exclusion of gradually joining the mainstream and adapting to their values, is a fairly recent phenomenon, much post-dating my own much earlier experiences as a child of immigrants, familiar with other children of other immigrants who came from disparate countries of the world, but who were not necessarily 'visible minorities'.

Statistics Canada's recent release of population figures for the country gives us a total population of 33.5 million - representing those who were enumerated, in any event. The raw data show population increases from before the turn of the century to the present. Canada grew, from the year of my birth, from roughly ten million people to the current figure of 33.5 million in 2011. That's a considerable population spurt, but the vast majority of it does not represent a 'natural' increase.

Canadians, native-born or long settled as citizens in the country are not reproducing at a rate to grow the country 'naturally'. Rather, we are dependent on the migration of people from various parts of the world to make Canada their home, for our steady growth. Canada is now accommodating a quarter-million emigrants leaving their countries of origin, to settle as permanent residents in this country.

Two-thirds of population growth has resulted from Canada's open and welcome immigration system. We are a multifaceted, multilingual, multicultural country, at a time in world affairs where few countries that are considered economically and socially advanced can claim to be homogeneous in their population base - with the possible continuing exception of Japan.