TEN YEARS LATER…
CANADIANS ARE STILL DOING IT IN THE SNOW

When Sex in the Snow first appeared 10 years ago, it broke new ground by boldly sketching the changing psychological landscape of Canada. It showed that values can be even more important than demographic traits when it comes to how people behave as citizens, consumers, employees, parents, friends, and spiritual beings. Rather than being defined by their religion, age, gender, and ethnic background, Canadians were embracing postmodern values that cut across those categories. Using data from his extensive, innovative polls, Adams argued that the changing postures of Canadians had been shaped by three major quests: for personal autonomy, for pleasure, and for spiritual fulfillment.

A decade later, Adams finds that, remarkably, Canadians still pursue those same values in ever-greater numbers. Our attitudes about gender and family, once informed by rigid religious codes, are ever more heavily driven by values of autonomy and fulfillment—the belief that people should be able to choose the family arrangements that work best for them in both practical and emotional terms. Flexibility and openness to diversity have also persisted in ethno-cultural matters, as 1.5 million immigrants arrived in Canada since 1997. Canadians continue to endorse the coexistence of people of diverse backgrounds and cultural fusion that seeks to savour and explore—not eliminate—differences across races and heritages. Ten years later, Sex in the Snow remains a unique portrait of what it means to be Canadian.

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.

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