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The Great White North Encounters September 11: Race, Gender, and Nation in Canada’s National Daily, The Globe and Mail

This article draws on the representational discourses that were circulated by The Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s dominant national papers, in the immediate aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001. The author argues that the paper’s coverage reinscribed and reaffirmed national mythologies of Canada as a peaceful haven, and of Muslims as either victims or terrorists. Drawing on colonial stereotypes, these representations were inflected to communicate a hegemonic interpretation that justified the rescue of Muslim women “out there.” Simultaneously, representations of Muslim women in Canada demonstrated their distancing from the actions of Muslim men in Afghanistan.

Canadian mass media–newspapers, September 11 reporting, stereotypes of Muslim women and men, colonialism

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 32, No. 4 (2005): 50-68