A CANADIAN STORY

Fifty seven years ago last week a tall, dark haired Englishman with a ginger mustache stepped off a DC-6 in Vancouver from Chicago via Seattle. He hailed a cab outside an airport building that was vaguely art deco, and was taken downtown to his new place of residence. The Barclay Manor was a boarding house then and still exists in some form today. On the way he crossed over the new Oak Street Bridge where the colorful bunting was still flying after its official opening a few days earlier. “What a wonderful people these Canadian’s are,” he thought to himself, “to roll out all this color just to welcome me.”  It was typical of his English humour, he was also quite tired.

His journey started a few days earlier on the northwest coast of England, where the stormy winter winds howl down off the Irish Sea and would steal your soul if you weren’t dressed and prepared for it. He had left behind his wife and newborn son, though they would follow in the September, to come to Canada with big hopes for a prosperous and comfortable life.

The journey to the West Coast of Canada was mostly made in the blind, and not just a little of that was blind faith. After all, the stories of your in-laws who had a few years earlier been out here only once for a short period, and the cheerful propaganda of the Government immigration brochures and films depicting life and opportunities, can only give so much assurance that what you assume from the facts presented are the truths of what you will actually find.

He and his wife had grown up in a seaside resort town, the kind of place where everybody in town is trying to separate the tourist from their money. The “season” was short and the winter was long. It wasn’t easy to put anything over on either him or his wife. When you grow up in a “Carny” town you learn the language of mis-direction, propaganda, and you didn’t need a degree from a business school to understand how the money cycle worked. Neither he nor his wife worked in the trade of the town. He had an aptitude for circuits and logic and electrons, she made candy and was a hairdresser.

The economic and political circumstances didn’t favour the kind of life they really wanted, so they became part of the European “brain drain” and joined the exodus to the various far shores of the old Empire.

They thought carefully about where they could go. America was only briefly on the table, though with his skills and experience he would most certainly have been snapped up by one of the major electronics firms. They had a newborn son and the military draft was still in place. National Service in the RAF had been two years of his life teaching him radar operations and maintenance, and came with an all-expenses paid trip to Malaya during a Communist uprising sometimes called “The Malayan Emergency”. He was proud of his time in Service, but they would both prefer to raise their children in a place that wasn’t prone to military adventurism.

So after all the consideration it came down to Canada, but where in Canada? It had to be by the water. Growing up by the sea neither of them could see a life without it being close by. And they decided that mountains would be nice. So they settled on Vancouver and they made their successful applications.

They drew up a plan. He would go out first and find work and then send for them. If he couldn’t find work in Vancouver, he would go North and find work in the mines, for they were always hiring those willing to work hard. In the end he found work quickly at the regional offices of the Dutch company Philip’s Electronics as a maintenance technician. The offices near the corner of Grandview and Boundary Roads, was where he was a year later when everyone in the office heard the metal scream as the Second Narrows Bridge collapsed, dumping seventy nine construction workers into the waters of Burrard Inlet and killing eighteen. It was one of those moments in history that everyone in the city shared. They would freely tell you where they were and what they were doing when they heard the banshee screech of failing metal.

The small family moved through a series of rental basements and houses as they saved for a house of their own. They were a modestly prosperous working class family of their time. He was gaining attention and respect for his quality of work and work ethic.

In 1960 he was hired as a transmitter maintenance technician for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His new workplace would be a building resembling a park ranger station/chateau that sat alongside a rough and only partially paved road, three quarters up the side of Mt. Seymour. Beside the building was a huge transmission tower that was visible with the naked eye from most anywhere in town. They also welcomed a second son. And they bought a small house in North Vancouver to reduce the commute, and to save money on bridge tolls. North Vancouver was affordable to working class folks. Times change.

In 1961, the third son came along keeping her busy with diapers and feedings. It was the way things were done. It was neither questioned, nor thought different. Those kinds of changes in the social structure of Canada were still a way off. She taught them to read, and draw, and indulge the imagination. She taught them their address and phone number, and to never talk to strangers or open the door to anyone. Bad World 101 for 1960’s kids. And there was always love from the whole family. The children never doubted, it was never said, but it was always felt.

In the early 60’s family started to come over. Drawn by both concern, and love, the immigration boom of the time was helped along by her parents, and his mother. Then her sister and a friend, who would become a most loved Aunt, came through on their way to check out Australia but never left Vancouver. They too got jobs, and prospered in a working class way. But in Canada working class meant something totally different than where they had come from. They discovered the working class didn’t have the same social barriers. If you were competent, able, and willing you had chances for advancement and increased opportunities both economic and social. On the edge of the wilderness there isn’t room for rigid stratification. When there’s work to get done everybody knows how to drive the truck and where it needs to go, and why.

Vancouver had a different feel to them all. There is a freedom of thought, action, and revealed intent here than there was back “home”. The lives they were building, modest success upon modest success, was building to the realization that this was now home, and the place from whence they came and the friends and loved one’s still there, would always live gratefully in their hearts, but their hearts were rooted here. They all became Canadian Citizens as soon as they had the opportunity.

They refused to live in any of the city’s “enclaves”. Other immigrants had chosen to live in close proximity to other similar immigrants. They formed Vancouver’s “neighbourhoods”. The young family chose to spread their social wings in more diverse communities. In 1967 they moved to a new street, in a new neighbourhood on the side of Mt Seymour. It was so new the street was dirt, there were neither curbs nor sidewalks, but the power lines were underground and the water and sewer lines were new. The curbs would come later. When they moved they had no idea what a cultural milieu it would be, or that the greater area was more diverse than they had imagined.  Germans, Swedes, South Africans, Englishmen, most of the United Nations, and even some folks from Saskatchewan, all mingled pretty freely without any real tensions of their cultural pasts. Mostly they shared a quiet and peaceful place and future, and they did it without any real or conscious thought of doing otherwise.

It didn’t mean holiday observances might not have been different from house to house, that added to the children’s experiences of differences and diversities, nor did it stop the children from playing hockey in the street. Their children were the greatest gift they had been given, and this place they had chosen to live was giving the children an even greater gift, tolerance and respect.

Life goes on. The people in this story have mostly passed on. Only the woman who became “a most loved Aunt” remains. The children all stay in touch and live close enough to each other that getting together for Sunday breakfast is still the family tradition. One passed down from the parents that always wanted to share not just their wealth of experience, but also teaching by example, that you may not agree but you should always be civil and respectful.

This is just one Canadian Story. Today is the 147^th Birthday celebrating what is the most unique real time social experiment in human history. My parents and family chose to be a part of it. They became modestly successful in their chosen professions. In 1969 my mother returned to the workforce as a sales clerk at Woodward’s department store in Park Royal. At the time it was more out of a need to pay for the braces that my brothers needed than any great political or social statement. She continued to work long after the braces she paid for put the orthodontist’s kids through college.

My mother’s work helped my parent’s provide greater opportunities for us. She paid for our week long coach tour though Europe, The Benelux Countries, five countries in seven days. I’ve spoken of it before. Following that trip I returned to school and the grade 8 study of the Renaissance. Thanks to my parents, and my mother’s job to be specific, I actually had an idea of what the heck it all meant and where it happened.

I could go on at length with this but I won’t. I think you get the idea. Tonight when the sun begins to set on this day of national celebration and the parties and fireworks kick off, as birthday 147 becomes history, I will have a beer, bake a potato, grill a steak and serve it up with a big green salad. And I will spend some time thinking of the immigrant experiences of my family.

While ours was unique to us, the detail specific to us, it has been my experience through life that the reasons why they, and all the folks from the other nations came, and the gratitude they had for being accepted is a mostly Universal feeling for those who chose to come and prosper here. And among those who continue to do so.

In the end it didn’t matter where they came from, only that they lived here. Their legacy as immigrants rests with my brothers and I who are modestly prosperous, healthy, and happy. It’s what every parent wants for their children no matter where they come from. It’s the only thing that any society really wants for itself. In Canada it actually gets to happen, but quietly and peacefully.