Canada is an amazing place and it brings its own challenges. In my quest to understand Canada better, I tend to meet people from different walks of life and try to understand their perspective of Canada. As I am living in Greater Toronto Area, I encounter numerous immigrants regularly. All of them have come from different countries and cultures and they had their fair share of struggles in the past. And many of them continue to face challenges in their new home country. While browsing in a library, I had a chance encounter with a lady from Krygisitan who landed in Canada nearly three years back. In her school, she learned two languages - Kyrgyz and Persian. She never had a chance of forming a complete sentence in English for first 20-odd years of her life. To get away from a place where the government never delivered, never provided basic necessities and never enforced the rule of law, she moved to Canada with her family. However, upon landing here, sh...
It is five minutes to nine in the night. It is dark and temperatures are frigid. Gary is standing outside an apparel store and he has his coffee to give him company. He is waiting for his shift to start. He works part-time with a company which does inventory for retail stores. Most of his shifts are either in the night after store is closed for customers or on the weekends. He is a student in Canada studying in a Brampton college that’s known as College of Desis (locals from Punjab, Northern India) amongst Indians. As a student in Canada, he can work officially for 20 hours per week. However, in that time frame he does not earn much to cover his expenses that he is loaded with. He lives in a rented basement in Northern Brampton. He pays about $500 for that basement and has promised the owner to help with some chores. He cleans the snow from driveway during winters. He rakes leaves during fall. And doing such tasks is helping in...
Everyone talks about weather — It seems everyone’s way to start a small talk is weather talk. It is also considered to be the safest topic as it’s not personal or awkward and everyone has a take on it. And weather can be challenging for someone new in this country. I have seen four different weather patterns — sunny, rain, freezing rain and snow in a single day. When I left home, sun was shining while temperature was near freezing. As the day went on, sun hid behind black clouds and it started raining. Soon, rain turned into freezing rain followed by few centimetres of snow. I made my way to home in the bus buzzing with passengers sharing their take on the crazy weather pattern. Sports. Everywhere. — I knew India is crazy about cricket. I know US is crazy about basketball, football and baseball. Before landing here, I had no inkling that Canadians are also crazy about sports. There’s a thing called Winter Olympics...
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