I don’t often think of myself as being anything other than Canadian. Every so often, someone will ask me a question about where I’m from, or my ethnic roots, and I remember that my skin is brown, my roots, East Indian.
When I go home to visit my family in Saskatoon, it’s a different story. Suddenly I am awash in all the cultural differences between my family and the greater world we live in. Rather than the polite, Canadian way of telling people you haven’t seen in awhile, “Oh, you look good,” my grandmother will say, “Oh, you look tired and sick” or tell us that we’ve gained weight.
Once, my husband was thrilled to hear my grandmother’s honest assessment that he “looked thinner.” Then she destroyed his bubble saying, “On top, you look thinner on top,” patting his hair with a smile.
The last time we went for a visit, my father was on a mission to marry off my 26-year-old brother. He told him he would pay for a flight for my brother to visit this girl in Toronto.
“I have seen the girl. Handsome girl,” said my grandmother. “But, she is perhaps a little too old for him.”
“Really?” I said. “I thought she was 22.”
My grandmother’s face expressed shock. “22? I thought she was 24!”
My father told my brother that his sperm counts would soon start to decline, but alas, it was not enough to convince my brother that he should fly to Toronto to meet and marry a girl, and start producing babies before he lost all his fertility.
It was an extremely funny visit for my husband and me, although perhaps not as much for my brother.
Despite my parents being conservative, traditional East Indians, there is one thing they always managed to impart to us and that was the equality of all religions and cultures. Growing up, we went to mosques, Buddhist and Hindu temples and churches, and were always reminded that all people are equal.
When I first brought home my husband Tom, someone from outside our culture, it was a shock for them, but they accepted him quickly.
When he left after his first visit and they proclaimed, “He is a good man,” I knew that all would be well. (Although, my father did his best to warn my suitor that I had a temper and would yell, and my grandmother used her ‘Honesty is the best policy’ to point out that Tom had a pointy nose and I had a short, round nose and what on earth kind of noses would our children have?)
It’s all well and good to have a chuckle about cultural differences or to feel pride in your cultural roots, so long as one doesn’t start drawing lines in the sand – us versus them. It’s the assumption of superiority that become dangerous, that lead to prejudice, racism and in the extreme, genocide.
I take pride in Canada because of its pluralism, its acceptance and respect of diversity. When Cold Lake’s mosque was vandalized, and citizens came out to clean it up, my heart was glad to see Canada’s people unite against hate.
I hope that I teach my children, as my parents taught me, that it is a person’s values and choices that define them, not the colour of their skin, their background, or their religion. I hope they are open-minded enough to know there is only one race, the race of humanity, and only one religion, the religion of love.
