REALITY CHECK
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY CANADA?
Image courtesy: IRCC.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
Ever since we moved to Canada over a quarter of a century ago, family and friends in India, the US and other parts of the world have heard about what a welcoming, inclusive country Canada is. About how our neighbours made us feel at home from day one, several of them going on to become dear friends.
Through us, they’ve vicariously met Susan who loves my pretty dupattas and Anne who made coconut laddoos for us following a recipe in Chatelaine.
All of them are puzzled by recent reports about Canada. “What’s happening to your Canada?” they ask, concerned.
I have no answer. No way to explain the horrific loss of lives of a Muslim family in London, Ontario, mowed down by a man in a vehicle in what has rightly been called a hate crime and a terrorist attack.
I have no words to encapsulate the horror and the sorrow surrounding the discovery of 215 bodies of Indigenous children in a mass grave near a residential school. And the awful certainty that there were more. Many more.
Just a few short days later, that came to pass with the discovery of 751 more unmarked graves at another residential school site.
“This is not the Canada I know,” is not an answer because it happened and is happening in my Canada. I cannot absolve myself of the responsibility.
We are all culpable, either it’s a sin of commission or omission.
When we look away when we hear a racist remark or a hurtful generalization couched as a joke, we are guilty of not holding the perpetrators responsible. We help perpetuate the stereotype.
When we come across hate speech or an instigation to commit a hate crime on social media and don’t report it, we are guilty.
When we witness an entire community tarred because of the actions of a few and don’t speak up, we are guilty.
What can we do to prevent such tragedies from engulfing families and communities? This is a tough question with no easy answer.
Perhaps one place to start would be to ask our political leaders to engage in real dialogue. When they announce welcome packages for newcomers and programs to help them integrate, perhaps they should also design programs to introduce Canadians to some of the newcomers. Demystifying where we come from will go some way in fostering a better understanding of varied cultures.
And when a hate crime is committed – by anyone against any community – if the punishment was swift and severe, that might be a deterrent.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the multiculturalism policy which Canada adopted in 1971.
It was the first country in the world to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy, intending to preserve the cultural freedom of all individuals and provide recognition of the cultural contributions of diverse ethnic groups to Canadian society
In a nation that is an amalgamation of people pulled together from all across the globe, it behooves the leadership to be aware of the fault lines. The leaders have to be ever-vigilant and alert. And they have to lead by example, not pay lip service to the beautiful idea of all of us being part of one big happy family.
Because when the then prime minister Brian Mulroney condoled the deaths of “Indians” in the 1985 Air India bombing or when the then foreign minister Stephane Dion claimed “there were no Canadians” on the flights bound for Toronto that were stranded in Brussels airport after the bombing there in 2016, they revealed the fact that multiculturalism as a policy has outpaced true multiculturalism of intent. To many, the then-political leadership included, we were not Canadian.
No one walking down the street should feel like they have a target painted on their back. Because we will always look different, nothing we can do about that.
As Harnarayan Singh wrote in One Game At A Time, even after 100 years of his family having been in Canada, they were “welcomed to Canada” by a door-to-door salesperson.
On June 7, the day after the van attack, Dany Assaf was scheduled to speak at a free virtual event organized by Canadian Club Toronto.
This is what the email promoting that event said: After the tragedy of 9/11, a sign suddenly appeared on a suburban Edmonton lawn that read, “Osama bin Laden lives closer than you think”. The sign pointed to Dany Assaf’s house.
Dany was born in Edmonton, where he played hockey and dreamed of the NHL, a life familiar to any Canadian kid. Yet suddenly, despite generations of family history in Alberta, he and his family were branded as Muslim terrorists: the “other” to be feared and shunned...
His newly released book, Say Please and Thank You & Stand in Line: One Man’s Story of What Makes Canada Special and How to Keep It That Way, offers a blueprint for hope that seeks to reclaim the soul and spirit of what has made Canada unique.
We may look different, but we all chose Canada for the same reasons. A good education system, public health, and above all, a caring society with room for all. We shouldn’t let a few hijack that. We can’t allow those values to be denuded by fear fuelled by misinformation.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a 2020 film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing and The Newsroom). The film follows the Chicago Seven, a group of anti–Vietnam War protesters charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In a very powerful scene at the end of the film, one of them is given a chance to make a case for a lenient sentence. He chooses, instead, to name the 4,752 soldiers who were killed in the Vietnam War since the trial began.
It’s tragic that we don’t know the names of the 215 children who lie buried in the mass grave. But we do know the names of the family members killed in the van attack.
Yumna Salman, 15.
Madiha Salman, 44.
Salman Afzaal, 44
Talat Afzaal, 74.
We know from media reports that Salman Afzaal loved his garden.
His wife Madiha was working towards a PhD in Environmental Engineering.
Their daughter Yumna was a budding artist and her grandmother Talat was the pillar of the family.
Say their names out loud. Remember their names. So that we are all motivated to work to keep Canada the way this family wanted it to be – a country they felt safe in, one in which they could put down roots in.
I take hope from the outpouring of grief for the little children in the mass grave and for the Afzaals. That tells me that in my Canada, we may make terrible mistakes, but a majority of people hold everyone dear, they value all lives.
Happy Canada Day!