What does Canada mean to me? Interesting question, well, it could mean so many things depending on how you have felt at each stage of your life in this country: sadness and happiness, stressfulness and quietness, being loved or hated, healthy or unhealthy, among others. On the other hand, this question is a kind of tricky one because it could have so many answers like the nine lives of thousands of cats, so I am going to tell you about one of those lives: my positive one.
My name is Oscar, I was born in Venezuela, the son of a couple of recently landed Portuguese immigrants, including myself with six months inside my mother’s belly waiting to be born in that beautiful country.
Why have I decided to come to Canada? Well, I was in Venezuela, I wanted to meet a new country because the conditions in my home town weren’t good enough, so to visit any country abroad with affordable prices, Venezuelan people had an annual quota in US Dollars for travelling abroad due to the foreign currency exchange control installed by the government in that time.
This annual quota in US$ was going to finish in 2013 so I decided to travel somewhere around the world to use my quota, in addition, my nephew who lives in Canada was visiting Venezuela at that time and offered to come to his place in Toronto for two or three weeks meanwhile he was outside Canada. After those wonderful days in this Country, I loved what I had seen in Canada in that travel.
After coming back to Venezuela, I decided to come back again for a longer time, and after about two years, I came back to Canada as a visitor for six months and during that time, I decided to apply to be a Permanent Resident in Canada.
How did I come? I came with a small bag with my regular clothes and basic stuff. When I travelled here, I couldn't travel directly to Canada from Caracas, because the international airline companies blocked out the country due to a huge debt in US Dollars from the government with these airline companies.
Because of this government issue, I had to travel by plane from Caracas to Bogotá, Colombia to a Colombian Airline Company without any Account receivable from the Venezuelan government. From Bogotá, I took another airplane to Toronto, Canada on December 28th, 2015 with a stopover the same day in New York, United States.
One of the first things I learned when I arrived was about the rules and behaviour of people, especially outdoors, people have different behaviour than people in my country, because, people follow the rules, especially transit rules, crossing in the corner, being polite to say hi, sorry, being very friendly with strangers, doesn’t matter how they look, poor or rich, people are polite with everybody, including homelessness.
Indoors I noticed that there are some kinds of rules and behaviours, for example, leaving or putting off the shoes outside the door or at the entrance because floors in Canada are made of wood and with the snow in winter and rains along the year could damage the inside floor of homes.
The friendship culture also has a different behaviour from my country. Usually, when we meet somebody, and introduce ourselves we do it very close to the other person, and when we say goodbye, we hug and kiss each other.
I noticed that in some cultures, like the Chinese, it’s not mean that they don’t like, but they grew up without these manners or traditions including some kinds of Canadian people., but in some areas, Canadian people like to hug and kiss; they like to talk and say “Hi!”, but inviting you to their place is in a different way.
You cannot appear in their place, like we do in my country, knocking on the door and saying “Hi I was passing through the neighbourhood, and I decided to visit you”. This is not possible in Canada, it is very unpolite. You have to let people know in advance that you want to come to their place.
My first friendships in Canada were made in the church. after a few months of living in Canada, I received the news that my mother had died in Venezuela, so with no possibility of going to the funeral I decided to pay for a Mass for my mother in a Portuguese church which I found after I searched online for the closest one to my place.
On the next Thursday morning, I arrived at the Portuguese church trying to set up the Mass for my mother, but there was nobody able to attend me, so after waiting for a while, I decided to go to the Spanish church crossing the street. Yes, you can see a church in front of another one in Canada!
I was very welcome at the Spanish church because in that moment it was present the Priest José David, and a small group of parishioners who usually help to clean the church on Thursdays. I was lucky that I had decided to go to the church that Thursday.
After my mother’s Mass on the next Sunday, I decided to go to the Mass every Sunday and join the parishioner's helpers to clean the church on Thursdays. Usually after the Mass, there was a lunchtime in the basement, which had a stage, a large floor with more that a dozen of tables and a complete kitchen among other amenities.
Usually, we had lunchtime in the basement after Mass, but sometimes we had special events or parties, celebrating Mother’s Day and Father’s Day among others, so we had celebrations with food, dance and performances on the stage.
I made a lot of friends in the church, and one day, after the Mass, a Canadian guy from Newfoundland who used to go to the Spanish mass, asked me if I was interested in helping him to improve his English because he used to travel to Peru and he already knew some Spanish words and sentences but he wanted to practice and improve it.
My encounter with this guy, named Gerald, from Newfoundland, was lucky because I wanted to learn how to speak properly in English and besides improving my English speaking, this was the beginning of one of the best friendships I have had in Canada.
By the way, a few weeks ago when I went to Toronto to renew my Portuguese passport, I called Gerald and he invited me to visit him and then go to a restaurant to have a brunch and chat about our lives and families.
Meanwhile, another church member, Virgilio, from Cuba, invited me to join a gym where he was a Membership Plus in a “gym” called YMCA, but I didn’t know what kind of gym the YMCA was, so I delay the invitation for a while until I finally decided to go with Virgilio to join the “gym” YMCA.
I discovered that the YMCA was not a regular “gym”, it is a center with so many interesting activities at the YMCA, so I joined also the Membership Plus which includes a special area with a sauna, jacuzzi steamer, showers, lockers and living room with TV among others facilities and services.
For a while, when I was going to the YMCA I went directly to the Membership Plus area, but with along time, I started noticing that there were other amenities, like a pool, ping pong tables, basketball court, squash courts, and last but not least, a huge room, where usually there was a schedule for doing activities, like yoga, body fit, Zumba and learning Latin dance among others.
One day I approached the dancing classroom and asked a guy what I needed to start the dancing classes, and the guy told me “Only a pair of dancing shoes” for dancing, and that was it, I went to the next class.
This was the beginning of my dance adventure, I met so many friends, and I practiced my English, because, believe it or not, the majority of people learning Latin dance, Ballroom dance, and Line dance are Canadian, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Iranian and Polish among others but no too many Spanish speakers wanted to learn Latin dance, this was the beginning of encounters with my new English speaker's friends.
One day in a Latin dance class that Thursday evening of April 19, 2018, -Yes, I remember that special day- I met Elzbieta, a Polish blondie blue eyes woman after our teacher David asked the students to switch, so this way each student could increase their skills dancing with different partners. This was the beginning of our friendship on the dancing floor.
Instead of introducing myself to her, the first thing I did was ask her for her name, she understood my lack of etiquette and she answered me kindly, and from that moment we gradually began a close friendship.
We started to get along together in class and one class, on Thursday, May 17, 2018 -Yes, it was Thursday too, Elzbieta invited me to dance the next day at the Harmony Club and she asked me to go to a table near to the dance floor, but instead, I decided to wait for her at the entrance as a gentleman usually does, and she was laughing because she told me “You could wait inside” but it is okay.
Since then, Elzbieta and I have met on numerous occasions, such as dancing parties, social events and going to the cinema until we started to live together in Toronto. Eventually, she introduced me to his son Greg and his family in February 2019 and one month later, Elzbieta introduced me to her daughter Agnieszka and her family.
With the time passing through, we moved on January 18 2022 to Barrie because Elzbieta's son Greg wanted to have her living nearby, because he lives with his family in Minesing, so here we are living in a wonderful and peaceful City.
We started continuing our dancing classes here with a new dance class place, meeting new people, very good ones, so different from Toronto, we made a very close friendship with our teachers, this never happened with our teachers in Toronto.
We have made some dance classmates friends and started playing pickleball with some of them. Elzbieta and I enjoy playing poker at home and with her son's family place, and we both enjoyed the Lakeshore path including Centennial Beach, and the quality of life here is so plenty, so good.
I love dancing, my Elzbieta loves dancing too -Salsa, Bachata, Merengue- no Ballroom dance, loving so much each other, growing and making stronger friendships here in Barrie and practicing English. This is my reflection on the 15-minute of tape so please forgive me for any misspeaking in my speaking.
I am happy to talk in English also when I have talked with my daughters in Australia in front of my wife Elzbieta I usually talk in English with my daughters doesn’t matter if they are Spanish speakers, so we all can understand each other properly.
I am so proud to have decided to come to Canada as an immigrant and as a new Permanent Resident, I have started to do new and attractive activities, including learning English, first with my teacher Diane and now with my teacher Sayuri.
Finally, after I have joined this life journey since that first day I visited Canada for the first time, I can answer in my way, what does Canada Mean to Me? Well, In a few words, it means the start of my new life in this awesome country, which I want to keep for the rest of my life.