Author Archives: Rae

Family Matters

My parents immigrated from Sicily, Italy to Canada in 1958 by boat and landed in Bathurst, NB, where my father under the direction of his father, started his first Barbering business. At that time, mother was pregnant with me and I was born in Canada.

There was no Immigration assistance available to my parents during these difficult times.

My father started working when he was 17 years old as a Barber in Bathurst, NB. Both of my parents did not speak English. My father learned to speak English and French while working in Bathurst.N.B.

My parents moved to Saint John, NB in 1961 and mother attended night school at Saint John Vocational School to learn to speak English. While I was attending junior high school, I was assisting my mother with her grammar and conversational homework. My father, the eldest of the 4 brothers, was responsible for helping the younger brothers to get established in Saint John, NB., which was part of the italian family culture. Now one of my father’s brothers has a successful business as a Barber/Hairstylist as my late father had when he was alive.. Working at that young age to support the family and at the same time helping other family members was difficult during those times.

However, with determination, courage, faith and hard work my father prospered, along with any family member or friend who needed his assistance in any way… In Saint John, NB my father achieved his 4th Degree in the Knights of Columbus and President of Lions Club, West Saint John Chapter. All these valuable skills my father passed onto me to help others grow in life and not to take anything for granted and to keep strong and positive.

- Rosalia in Saint John, N.B.

What Comes From a Jar

My story revolves around a family recipe for Antipasto. First some background. I am 57 years old, the middle of 5 children, and the product of a ‘mixed marriage’ – my mother’s parents were from Scotland, my father’s from Calabria, Italy. It came as a shock to both families when these two young people met at a church dance and married in 1950. Two different worlds – different traditions, relationships.. and food!

So it’s ironic that when I was 24 years old and looking for something to do it was my Scottish mother who shared the recipe for Antipasto with me. It turns out that she had become quite expert at making this very Italian recipe – in an effort to fit in with my dad’s family.

It is also ironic that my partner-in-making-antipasto is of Irish descent. And so the Celtic-Italian Antipasto tradition continued. Every year since 1979 we have made antipasto together. We have laughed together, cried together and broken more than our share of mason jars together. Over a steaming canner we have shared the joys and heartbreaks of our lives as our families grew. Antipasto Day became a tradition we cherish.

This year something magical happened.

Without a lot of organizing on our part our daughters (and one daughter’s daughter) showed up to help with Antipasto. There they were chopping, talking, nervously filling jars for the first time, and sharing a lifetime of memories. As my “Antipasto Friend’ and I looked at each other across the room we both knew that we were embedding this tradition into the next generation. From southern Italy, to my Scottish mother, to our hybrid Italian-Irish team.. onto our own children who are a wonderful mix of Irish, Scottish, Swiss, French Canadian, Swiss… Antipasto lives on. And each jar contains rich memories and stories that nourish us inside and out.

-Maria in Vancouver

Legacy of a Childhood Memory

I grew up in a small interior town called Merritt. It happened to be one of the small towns where Japanese families were housed during the second world war. Of course, by the 1950′s, when I was in grade school, the Japanese kids were part of our classrooms.

The first I remember understanding that there was a “difference” between the Japanese people and the “English” was overhearing the debate raging about the pending marriage of a “white” boy and a Japanese girl.

He was the son of the local baker and she was the daughter of a seamstress. (my memory thinks – I was only about grade 4) They seemed very happy to me. He smiled at her a lot and his parents and her parents seemed to be friends.

I remember my mom defending this happy couples’ decision. She was outraged that there were some people who would glare at the couple or turn away when they walked by.

I know that they did marry and my wish is that they had a wonderful rich and happy life together.

I am eternally grateful to my mother who, through action and wise words, gave me a life long gift of the ability to honour diversity.

- Marilyn in BC

Beyond Words

I think my first “multicultural” experience was as a young child, many years ago, riding the train from Vancouver to Winnipeg. I remember that I played with several other children — none of whom spoke English. Somehow, we managed to communicate and it was a fun, enjoyable experience.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I started to wonder how we could possibly have managed to communicate without a common language.

Then, in 2008 I travelled to Romania with one of my cousins. We wanted to see where our grandparents and great grandparents had come from. Neither of us spoke a word of Romanian.

Yet, one day when we were visiting Lasi in north-eastern Romania, I spent about half an hour in “conversation” with a Romanian man who spoke no English. Somehow we managed to communicate and I learned that he had a wife and two children (he showed me their photos) and that he now worked as a security guard.

On another day while we were at an art gallery, I had a conversation with a man who did not speak English but understood it to some degree. He not only spoke Romanian, he also spoke Yiddish — and it just so happens that Yiddish was my first language and I still understand it if it is spoken slowly.

So he spoke in Yiddish and I spoke in English and we learned that his family and mine had come from the same shtetl (small town) north of Iasi.

These experiences have taught me that communication is so much more than having a common language. By being open to using all our senses we can communicate beyond language and in doing so, even a brief encounter can be deeply moving.

- Sara in Powell River, BC

Reflections on a Hyphen

There are many reasons I am proud to be Canadian. Not because of the obvious reasons, it is a safe, clean, pretty country that allows gay marriage; but because of its real attitude towards multiculturalism. Sure, I was taught the definition of what it meant in school, when they explained the difference between a mosaic and a melting pot, but it was when I actually lived abroad – in America, China and I had to explain who I was, where I was born, and where my family came from, that it was clear to me – I was a product of something amazing, real and I was one of the lucky ones.

I am Canadian – not because I wear the flag on my backpack, but because where ever I go, and whoever I meet, Continue reading →

Sugarcane in the Cold

It was on a particularly cold Canadian winter evening that an unexpected skid of sugarcane brought a food bank to life.

The Seva Food Bank in Mississauga had just received our weekly shipment of food from our central distribution center. Among the expected boxes of soup, cereal, pasta and produce was a full skid of long yellowish bamboo-like sticks. Most of our young volunteers had no idea what these wooden sticks were and why we would be receiving them. Amongst the confusion, one of our well-traveled volunteers took one look at the skid and suggested that it might be sugarcane.

Knowing what it was still didn’t answer the question of “how do you eat it?” Running short on time before the shift began, our volunteers left out some the sugarcane sticks in our sorting area where our clients could help themselves to whatever they wanted. Continue reading →

Window on Citizenship

I work with the Institute for Canadian Citizenship – a non-profit charity that encourages active citizenship and works to ensure Canada’s newest citizens feel welcome and included. Working with a national network of volunteers and Citizenship and Immigration Canada, we host special community citizenship ceremonies. As part of my job I attend these ceremonies, but I can honestly say each one is so wonderful, and I never tire of celebrating what it means to be Canadian alongside our country’s newest citizens. These ceremonies are a welcome reminder of how diverse and multicultural our country truly is.

- Jess in Toronto, photo from Halifax community ceremony

Life Learning

I have been fortunate in my life to have had many varied cultural experiences. As a little girl, my Father would tell us stories of being in India/Burma during WW2 – wonderfully colorful stories of his interaction with the local people.

Our Brownie group included many girls from the local First Nations Reserve. My husband and I lived in Europe before everyone spoke English – what an eye opener that was! We taught our children about other cultures through food – cooking an exotic (to us) feast for as many national holidays that we could find books for in the library. I feel very fortunate to be able to travel and continue to enrich my life by learning about other cultures.

- Dorothy in Abbotsford, BC

Identity: A Tale of Two Daughters

I am a Jew and first generation Canadian. My parents were holocaust survivors who abandoned god when their families were killed by the nazis. Both my parents spoke several languages but the household language of choice has Yiddish. They would speak to me in Yiddish and I would answer them in English.

I married a woman who is a fourth generation Canadian of Irish-catholic descent. As a child, her father would drag the family to church every Sunday. But then he had a secular epiphany – golf – and putting replaced prayer. Today, the sum total of religion in my wife’s family consists of a rapid, mostly incomprehensible, grace before meals.

My wife and I are atheists. There is no hint of religion in our home. After our children were born we started buying a december christmas tree and we purchased a hanukkah menorah that we would light for one night and usually forget for the requisite remainder. We view these as cultural, not religious, icons.

There has never been any religious or cultural conflict in our home before the children were born or since. We have two wonderful teenage daughters. They couldn’t be more dissimilar from one another. Continue reading →

Daily Special: Global Buffet

Growing up, my friends came from many different backgrounds, and I attended a school where there was a lot of recognition of different cultures. After I graduated, the Vancouver-based company I worked for targeted U.S. multinational companies. On many occasions we worked with client divisions outside of North America in locations such as Japan, U.K. or Germany. Our internal group consisted of an Australian Project Manager, South African Designer, New Zealand Programmer, U.S. Art Director, Chinese Producer, Dutch UI Designer and Russian QA Specialist, among a team of Canadian with different lineage. Conference calls provided a unique opportunity to hear many different accents (and slang) at once and office potlucks were a treat featuring a global buffet.

Adjusting for difference was a regular part of our working environment. One example was job titles. On business cards, a “Sales Director” in North America might become a “VP of Operations” in China, where the status of a title is more important. This was life as normal, until I moved to a different job in another province. One day I looked around and it struck me how we all seemed much more similar in our backgrounds. That’s the moment I realized I may have taken multiculturalism for granted.

- Michael in Alberta