Winner of the inaugural Canadian Journal of Communication Editor’s Award for the most outstanding contribution to the field of communication research in 2021. 

Background: This article draws on municipal, provincial, and federal archives to examine multiculturalism as an ideology, a government strategy, and a media discourse.

Analysis: The author scrutinizes official and corporate forms of multiculturalism in Canada between 1971 and 2003, and develops case studies of “tempered radicals” who worked with and within small-l liberal institutions and discourses while trying to change them.

Conclusions and implications: The author suggests that the keyword “shy elitism” might be a helpful tool to address the forms of credentialism and anti-intellectualism that have often confined and defined the study of multiculturalism.