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A different view is expressed by Peter Newman. He argues that personal identities are now more important than national identity. Newman (1995, p. 394) contends that between 1985 and 1995 "Canadians ... reinvented themselves from deferential nerds living in a quiescent and faintly colonial society to articulate and astonishingly defiant arbiters of a sophisticated national-state." Newman suggests that "Instead of defining themselves through the traditional identity (as interpreted by politics, business, and culture) people began asserting their own identities" (Newman, 1995, p. 71). Indeed, he argues that "by the mid-1990s, Canada had almost as many cultures as postal codes." (Newman, 1995, p. 331). No wonder Newman (1995, p. 103) concludes that by 1995, "it was time to abandon the quest for the Canadian identity."

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