ABSTRACT
In Canada, various social movements of the 1960s, multicultural policies and ideology and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms have ensured, at least in theory, that the context has broadened enabling the country to become a more explicitly diverse society. The Canadian example illustrates the continual interplay between diversity at one scale being contained within, and being necessary for, unified classes at larger scales, which themselves constitute diversity at another scale. The nature and structure of the communities within which individuals are mixing and the types of social support network available to them influence the probability of epidemics, buffer the negative effects from illness and other kinds of stressor and create conditions for a more resilient society. Robert Putnam reported that social capital was lower among ethnically heterogeneous compared to homogenous groups in the United States. The tendency of those larger units is necessarily to dampen internal disorder or chaos that may accompany the urges to diversify.
