SOME REFLECTIONS ON CANADA BY AN "OLD" IMMIGRANT...

Note: Some of this is taken from “A Son Of A Gun –an immigrants story” by PS Roseth (2007).

This is my 49th Canada Day ! No, not my birthday, it happened some years before in another country called Norway. When I arrived on the Cunard Liner Carinthia , July 1st, 1960, it was called Dominion Day. I was just eighteen, and spoke only rudimentary English.

I rode the Canadian Pacific Railway to Regina, Saskatchewan, where I had relatives –cousins whose parents immigrated and homesteaded in the Herbert/Swift Current area of Saskatchewan. Coming from the mountainous area of western Norway, it was quite a revelation to see the endless prairie ending in a line of blue sky in the far horizon, and with those ubiquitous red grain elevators dotting the landscape. It reminded me of the ocean –minus elevators. There were few trees, except what was planted around intermittent farm houses and the occasional copses where in my imagination the “deer and the antelopes” were likely playing –or skulking.

I remember vividly my first trip to my relative’s farm. We arrived in the evening, in the moonlight, and I saw farm lights dotted in the horizon, like ships on an ocean passing in the night. On a hill, I saw a coyote baying at the moon, as in a western movie. The land around Herbert is rather hilly and not especially well suited for farming, so much of it was grassland better used for ranching. My relatives arrived in the early nineteen hundred, too late for the better homestead land, and had to settle for the hillier, poorer farming land there. It must have been some adjustment for these Norwegian settlers; coming from the mountain farms of western Norway to the great, undulating Canadian prairie.

While I loved Canada, my romance with the prairie wore thin after a couple of hard winters in Regina, so I said goodbye to my relatives and headed east to the big city of Toronto, and except for a few years in other towns such as Bradford and North Bay, I have hung around the GTA ever since. It’s been a rollercoaster ride, both exiting and terrifying, but never boring. I have travelled across this wonderful land many times, on business and for pleasure, visiting every province many times. While there is a huge difference in the topography, the people are much the same, except perhaps Quebec, where, because of a different language and culture, there is a distinct flavour –more European than North-American. It makes for an interesting variation in the societal alphabet soup we call Canada. It began with bi-culturalism, and has progressed to multi-culturalism. Much is written, both for and against the Canadian experiment with a multi-cultural society, and the final chapter has not yet been written. Though my connection with the “old country” is tenuous at best, and mainly because of siblings still living there, I can understand that people that come in their later years, when culture and habits are more formed and settled, do have a harder time adjusting; especially so when coming from a culture so much different from ours. They should be helped, to the extent possible, with adjusting to a new life here, and they should come with an open mind, willing to adjust to the extent they are able to our existing culture and way of life; especially to our laws and mores. Those who cannot or won’t do so will find it hard to “kick against the pricks.” Canada is a country in the making, and “God is not finished with it yet”. But, while welcoming the new, we must not forget our history. It’s indeed a great and noble past on which to build our future. One need not be a Pollyanna to appreciate the greatness of our country, both geographically and socially.

Much water has run under the bridge since I first arrived on these shores in 1960. I remember Pearson and the Flag Debate, and how incensed and involved I got in that issue. It motivated me to become a Canadian citizen and take part in Canadian political life. It was a somewhat difficult decision, but an inevitable one; though Norway did not allow dual citizenship (and still does not), I felt I had to choose one or the other, and I chose Canada. I have never looked back since.

So, on this occasion of another Canada Day, I reflect on the many changes I have seen, both physical and cultural ones, especially here in the GTA. Toronto is a different city from the mainly Anglo-Saxon enclave I found in 1962; it’s now as international and cosmopolitan as any world polis. People of all cultures and races live in reasonable harmony and peace, especially when compared to most other countries; and nowhere has there been the huge influx of immigrants and the peaceful assimilation that has taken place in Canada in the last forty or fifty years.

The other day I was walking in the local park, and stopped to watch a soccer game played by the local school children, with parents sitting on the perimeters watching intently and sometimes yelling encouragement to their progeny on the soccer field. It was a rainbow of humanity collectively playing an international game of soccer. I felt a surge of appreciation and even gratitude for what this country has given me and is till giving me and all those other people there on the soccer field. In my twilight years I can take time out to enjoy the smaller things in life, including this world in microcosm that we have become; and paraphrasing Julius Caesar, I can say, if only to myself, “veni, vidi, mani –I came, I saw, I stayed”.


Sigmund Roseth