What We
All Long For – CanLit THEMES
4) The
Ideal Canadian: I kept thinking, these new people could benefit from
more of a helping
hand,
more of a feeling of being welcomed here. It might be useful for them
to learn about
those
who are already here, how they did it, how they broke out of the
silos and interacted,
participated.
Those already here could extend a hand of welcome with language, and
social interactions, and schools, and employment, and patronage of
businesses. We are all immigrants. Most of us whose families chose to
come here arrived as "economic immigrants/migrants," poor
people without hope of owning land in the old country, of breaking
through the old class structures, seeking the freedom to be the best
they can possibly be. Just like today's immigrants. For some, war and
dislocation were the impetus for migrating. For others, not as much.
All came with the knowledge that they have to work hard, and hoped to
vaccinate their children with that knowledge too. Only Jackie seems
to have picked up that lesson, of what she has to do to survive in a
capitalist system. And Binh.
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