First Person is a daily personal contribution submitted by readers. Do you have a story to tell? Read our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by Catherine Chan
Starting over in Canada was hard. You have to leave behind who you were. You can prove your worth by showing the credentials and qualifications you gained during decades of education and work experience in your home country, but they no longer count. You are a newcomer and now a nobody. I find Canadians nice, but not very trusting.
In the meantime, you try to survive. After you arrive in the country, the struggle to integrate into Canadian society begins.
A co-worker once told me that Filipinos are friendly and cheerful and that many of them work at Walmart and Tim Hortons. I knew it was an innocuous remark (or an honest observation based on fact), but the comment was full of connotations. The most culturally diverse workplaces are the ones where the pay is the lowest because these are the only places willing to trust newcomers.
Those who believe that working a minimum wage job while trying to build a career from scratch is a blow to their ego will find the experience a loss of self-respect. They may even give up their visa, go back and resume their old lives. But for those like me who remain unfazed by the initial downgrade in status and are open to new opportunities, brighter prospects lie ahead.
I’ve learned to balance fitting in and celebrating my own cultural identity. Many Filipinos find it easy to blend in with the culture they feel enmeshed in. I can get lost in the crowd and join in the Canada Day celebrations. I’ve developed a taste for maple syrup on pancakes and gravy and cheese curds on fries. I’ve learned to love hockey. I’ve learned to apologize for even the most trivial of insults and to have a conversation about the weather.
And every time my wife and I feel homesick, we meet in the homes of our fellow countrymen and create little islands of the Philippines while celebrating the Filipino way. With my eight-year-old daughter, we celebrate pansit, rags And AdoboWe gossip in Tagalog and catch up on each other’s lives. We head to the basement to try and outdo each other at karaoke. After the party, we go back to our Canadian lives.
Despite our ability to assimilate, as a first-generation Canadian I will always feel like a foreigner or an exile. Naturalized Canadians’ hearts remain tied to their country of birth. When we think of a vacation in the Philippines, we refer to it as “going home.” Many of the Filipinos I know also think of leaving Canada after retirement. Our homeland is constantly calling like a siren song, making us pause every now and then with nostalgic wistfulness.
When we told our family and friends in Manila that we were finally going to receive Canadian citizenship, they sent us messages of congratulations. A patriot should consider it disloyalty to deny the country of his birth. But not for our Filipino family. For us, renouncing Philippine citizenship means escaping the ravages of poverty, natural disasters and a difficult government.
The proverbial grass is not necessarily greener in Canada. Here, I have to pay taxes on many things. Inflation is rising at a frightening rate. Housing is scarce. Yet, like millions before me who chose to stay, we continue to believe in and pursue our Canadian dream because others have succeeded despite the difficulties. I chose to stay because while I have learned to accept the fact that life is hard, here I can still dream of being more than I am. My daughter can also get a good education that we could not have afforded in Manila. I find that the public schools here in Canada offer young students the care, attention and quality of education that is only possible in the Philippines if parents have a fortune to spare for private schools. If the Canadian dream doesn’t work out for me, my daughter has a better chance of achieving it.
Before I came to Canada, I had known the hard life, but not the hope.
Last March, six years after our immigration, we took the oath of citizenship and became Canadians.
I did it with gratitude, pride and hope.
Raymund P. Reyes lives in Ottawa.
