Thinking Canada Guest Blog

Intro­duc­tion

For the sec­ond year in a row the CCA is play­ing host to EU stu­dents tak­ing part in the Think­ing Canada pro­gram. Dur­ing the pro­gram, stu­dents spend three and a half weeks tour­ing Canada and learn­ing about our var­i­ous insti­tu­tions before par­tic­i­pat­ing in a two month intern­ship. We asked this year’s stu­dents, Eszter Szenczi from Hun­gary and San­dra Siew­ert from Ger­many, to share some of their ini­tial impres­sions and some of what they have learned so far in their study tour.

Pour la deux­ième année de suite, la CCA accueille des étudi­ants de l’Union européenne dans le cadre du pro­gramme Think­ing Canada. Lors de ce stage, les étudi­ants voy­a­gent 3 ½ semaines au Canada et acquiert des con­nais­sances sur les diverses insti­tu­tions cana­di­ennes. Plusieurs par­ticipent après à un stage dans des organ­ismes. Nous avons demandé à nos étudi­antes de cette année, Eszter Szenczi  de la Hon­grie et San­dra Siew­ert  de l’Allemagne, de partager avec nous leurs impres­sions ainsi que ce qu’elles ont appris lors de leur voy­age. Les blogues sont en anglais seulement.

Canada, the Land of Surprises

As a would-be “Cana­di­an­ist” spend­ing two months on intern­ship with the CCA, I have been asked to share my first impres­sions and the news­wor­thy expe­ri­ences I have had in Canada so far. I thought that writ­ing about the “Think­ing Canada” Study Tour I ven­tured on this Sep­tem­ber would be the per­fect source of inspi­ra­tion for this blog.

Eszter Szenczi in Québec dur­ing the Think­ing Canada study tour.

I have been a PhD stu­dent doing research on one of Canada’s Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples, the Métis, for three years. After com­pil­ing a huge amount of infor­ma­tion on my tar­get group, it was high time to com­pare it to real­ity, so I started angling for upcom­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to visit Canada, the land of beavers, hockey, and maple syrup. The “Think­ing Canada” Study Tour has been orga­nized for the third time this year and is des­ig­nated to del­e­gate a group of grad­u­ate stu­dents from EU mem­ber coun­tries to Canada, to pro­vide them with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of its com­plex diver­sity. I quickly made up my mind, applied, and for­tu­nately, was selected.

Although last year’s expe­ri­ences promised a smooth sched­ule, hardly had we landed at Montréal-Trudeau Air­port, with enthu­si­asm and excite­ment in our hearts, when an unex­pected inci­dent came about that left a bad taste in our mouths. All our interns were required to appear at the airport’s immi­gra­tion office and give details about our tour, intern­ship, and even more sur­pris­ingly, our pri­vate lives as well. After spend­ing four hours at the air­port, we became aware that since 9/11, Canada’s pol­icy on immi­gra­tion has changed so dra­mat­i­cally that this strict bor­der con­trol has become a reg­u­lar pro­ce­dure for vis­i­tors to Canada. In the end, two of our interns were not allowed to under­take their internships.

Despite these ini­tial dif­fi­cul­ties, we set out for a four-week tour of the coun­try, trav­el­ling to six Cana­dian cities (Ottawa, Que­bec, Mon­treal, Toronto, Vic­to­ria, and Van­cou­ver) in three dif­fer­ent provinces. We vis­ited gov­ern­ment and non-government orga­ni­za­tions and were given insight into some of the cur­rent issues in Canada, such as mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, immi­gra­tion, English/French rela­tions, envi­ron­ment, and Abo­rig­i­nal issues. The pro­gram was exhaust­ing, but energizing.

…as a for­eigner to Canada, I con­tin­u­ally have the con­fus­ing feel­ing of being in a mul­ti­cul­tural group of peo­ple tem­porar­ily brought together for an event or festival.

As a Hun­gar­ian, com­ing from a more or less cul­tur­ally and eth­ni­cally homoge­nous coun­try, one of the most strik­ing expe­ri­ences for me, evi­dent right upon enter­ing Canada, has been the country’s cul­tural diver­sity. Mar­garet Atwood said, ‘We are all immi­grants to this place;’ and how true! Strolling in the streets of Toronto or Van­cou­ver, you con­stantly bump into peo­ple of the most diverse ori­gins, from Asia, Africa, Europe, or Latin Amer­ica. The num­ber of vis­i­ble minori­ties in Canada is rapidly grow­ing and a mas­sive demo­graphic shift is tak­ing place. Canada has the high­est immi­gra­tion rate per capita in the world, and as a for­eigner to Canada, I con­tin­u­ally have the con­fus­ing feel­ing of being in a mul­ti­cul­tural group of peo­ple tem­porar­ily brought together for an event or fes­ti­val. This Cana­dian “mosaic” can be per­ceived through­out the whole coun­try. It is won­der­ful to wit­ness chil­dren grow­ing up see­ing all kinds of cul­tural dif­fer­ences, learn­ing to tol­er­ate them and per­ceive them as a nat­ural human char­ac­ter­is­tic. In the house where I am cur­rently accom­mo­dated, the own­ers are Venezue­lans, the ten­ants are of Mex­i­can, Inuit and Hun­gar­ian ori­gin, and every­one gets on per­fectly well.

How­ever, a por­tion of Canada’s pop­u­la­tion does not iden­tify them­selves as immi­grants; they belong to one of the three Abo­rig­i­nal groups (Inuit, First Nations, Métis) that have been treated fairly con­tro­ver­sially through­out Cana­dian his­tory. In Hun­gary I have access to a great amount of library mate­r­ial about their lives and chal­lenges, but I have seen in-person here that what I learned dur­ing my stud­ies is his­tory, and I need to learn a great deal more about the cur­rent state of being of Canada’s Métis peo­ple. For instance, back in Hun­gary, I have a long list of the pos­si­ble uses of the term “Métis,” but I have dis­cov­ered here that chil­dren from mixed mar­riages do not nec­es­sar­ily con­sider them­selves Métis any­more. Today only indi­vid­u­als with sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of Métis ances­try iden­tify them­selves as Métis. Many of them thrive, and for them, their long story of strug­gle is not an active issue any­more. I spend hours talk­ing to my Inuit fel­low ten­ant and I find myself stunned by how lit­tle I knew and how much I have already learned from her. I think I will need to rebuild my pre-constructed image of Canada’s Native peoples.

Another remark­able aspect of the Cana­dian pop­u­la­tion is its divi­sion between Que­bec and English-speaking Canada. As a stu­dent of lit­er­a­ture, from descrip­tions like Hugh MacLennan’s Two Soli­tudes, I gleaned some hints about the dif­fer­ent beliefs that have caused French-Canadians and English-Canadians to resist amal­ga­ma­tion into a homoge­nous nation, but in Hun­gary we do not know much about the bar­ri­ers that make it dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile the dis­sim­i­lar­i­ties between Eng­lish and French iden­ti­ties in Canada. When we were in Que­bec City, we con­ducted a lit­tle sur­vey about the ori­gin of the Que­beck­ers, and all of them con­firmed that they were from Que­bec, not Canada, while out­side Que­bec, peo­ple tended to iden­tify them­selves as Cana­di­ans. But in the mean­time, almost every­body in Ottawa speaks Eng­lish and French and mixes them in a won­der­fully har­mo­nious way. In every­day con­ver­sa­tions, peo­ple have no dif­fi­culty in switch­ing back and forth between Eng­lish and French.

Encour­aged by this charm­ing way of exchang­ing thoughts, I made up my mind to train myself into a tem­po­rary Cana­dian res­i­dent by read­ing Will and Ian Ferguson’s How to Be a Cana­dian. First and fore­most, I was instructed to start my days with a big mug of cof­fee from Tim Hor­tons. I had no dif­fi­culty detect­ing one, since there are sev­eral loca­tions of the cof­fee store nearby. First, I was think­ing about hav­ing an espresso, which I always do in the morn­ings at home, but then I real­ized that A) it would not be very “Cana­dian” of me, and B) they do not sell any­thing in a smaller size than a three-deciliter cup! I finally opted for a big cof­fee latte that lasted the whole day.

Dur­ing my lunch break, fol­low­ing my new book’s instruc­tions, I ambled a lit­tle in Ottawa’s Chi­na­town, the fifth one I have encoun­tered dur­ing my study trip. It was a unique expe­ri­ence, as in Hun­gary we do not have dis­tricts occu­pied by one par­tic­u­lar eth­nic group. The Chi­nese arrived in Canada dur­ing the con­struc­tion of the Pacific Rail­way in the 1880s and have built and dec­o­rated their res­i­den­tial areas in their own dis­tinct way: bound­aries are marked with spe­cial ornate gates, they are packed with hun­dreds of neon lights along with dis­tinc­tive Chi­nese posts, and the air is full of fra­grant smells waft­ing from Asian food stalls and restau­rants. While vis­it­ing, I had the feel­ing I was in China, a mem­ber of a tiny, local white minor­ity group.

After sat­is­fy­ing my ori­en­tal inter­ests, I vis­ited a Chap­ters book­store to search for the truly Cana­dian cook book I have been look­ing for for years. Two long shelves were entirely packed with books and jour­nals on inter­na­tional cuisines, but I could not point out one specif­i­cally about my tar­get theme. I am start­ing to lose faith in ever broad­en­ing my knowl­edge about Cana­dian food beyond la crêpe au sirop d’érable and la pou­tine!

Hav­ing said that, halfway through my tour, I am very opti­mistic and my pos­i­tive image of this remote coun­try has not changed, but been enriched. I wish to dis­cover many of Canada’s other curiosi­ties and to con­tribute to and ben­e­fit from this intern­ship. Although some dras­tic finan­cial cuts have been intro­duced by the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment to pre­vi­ously exist­ing exchange pro­grams, I hope that many other stu­dents from Europe can grasp the advan­tages of the excep­tional Cana­dian mul­ti­cul­tural pol­icy, which, sadly, has already been rejected by a num­ber of Euro­pean polit­i­cal lead­ers. But it is with­out ques­tion that study­ing and learn­ing from the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between Europe and Canada have will open our eyes to new perspectives.

–Eszter