Pride in Canada

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.

Life Expectancy, see POPULATION.

FOR MANY PEOPLE, where and how they live is code for so much more. Say, for example, you live alone - or in the precise language of the statistician, you comprise a "single-person household.

IN PARIS'S GRAND OLD Musée de l'Homme, near the Eiffel Tower, the flow of fascinated visitors these days is steady.

"WHY DON'T YOU just go out and play?" Now what kind of mother or father would suggest that to their young kids? Good parents, we hear, play with their children, or take them to a play group, or sign them up for skating lessons or computer camp or ballet or T-ball.

The mayor of Winnipeg is calling on his cellphone from Toronto's drab airport en route to sun-drenched Rio. He's slated to be a keynote speaker on urban policy at a Forum of Federations meeting in Brazil - and he isn't going to chat about sewers.

In a comprehensive analysis of Canadian birth records from 1881 to 1989, it was discovered that there had been a shift in the seasonal distribution of births.

It’s one thing Canadians love to hate about Americans - how they talk about Canada (when they think about it at all) with such dismissive flair. "I love it," actress Loni Anderson once said of Canada. "It reminds me of Minnesota." Or this entry in U.S. writer R. W.

At times, the surroundings must seem grim. The white walls are devoid of decoration, except for a home-made Valentine addressed to "Maman" on the refrigerator, and twin beds are pushed together in the dining-room to create more space.

Nick Workman's favorite program is The X-Men, a cartoon featuring mutant superheroes with names like Gambit, Rogue and Wolverine - the latter a misanthropic man-beast whose razor-sharp claws have a hair trigger. "I like the action," says Nick. "I like it when they use their powers.

Foundations are "non-governmental, non-profit organizations with funds (usually from a single source, either an individual, a family, or a corporation) and program managed by (their) own trustees or directors, established to maintain or aid social, educational, charitable, religious, or other activities serving the common welfare through the making of Grants".

A family or child allowance is a monthly government payment to families with children to help cover the costs of child maintenance. The Family Allowance began in 1945 as Canada's first universal welfare program.

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.

Emigration refers to the act of leaving one's region or country of origin to settle in another.

Disability is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the temporary, prolonged or permanent reduction or absence of the ability to perform certain commonplace activities or roles, sometimes referred to as activities of daily living.

Most demographers, however, devote themselves to studies that go beyond this core; eg, by questioning why purely demographic phenomena (fertility, mortality, nuptiality, age structure) vary and what social consequences may result from these variations.

The movement of nationals of one country into another for the purpose of resettlement is central to Canadian history, from the Aboriginal peoples, whose ancestors migrated across the Bering Strait from Asia, to the most recent arrivals.

As civilization has developed, so have systems of counting and record keeping. Periodic population counts have been an essential activity of human societies throughout history, but modern industrialized nations are more dependent upon detailed knowledge of their populations than ever before.

Most of the criminological research in Canada has been done at those universities where centres focusing on research have evolved. The Université de Montréal established Canada's first School of Criminology with Denis Szabo in 1960.

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."

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.

The term BUREAUCRACY is traditionally associated with the administration of GOVERNMENT and its various agencies. (The definition of the word bureaucratie in the 1789 supplement to the dictionary of the French Academy was "power, influence of the heads and staff of government bureaux.

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.

Children have been maltreated and exploited throughout history. Evidence even exists that child abuse existed during the prehistoric period. Children have long been considered family property. Fathers in ancient times could sell, mutilate or kill their children.

Juvenile delinquency, in social science, refers primarily to social acts of juveniles that are defined and evaluated as deviant or antisocial by legal or social norms and that are usually socially learned.