Moving provinces helped me see what it took for my parents to move across the world
Growing up as a child in Canada was confusing at times, but we found our way through
This First Person article is the experience of Vaidehee Lanke, a medical student living in Saskatoon. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. This story is part of Welcome to Canada, a CBC News series about immigration told through the eyes of the people who have experienced it.
It was my first day of kindergarten in a new country when my parents and I walked in to see a giant red dog at the door. We were perplexed by the sight of the principal dressed up to entertain students coming in on the first day of classes. At four, I was scared of this towering creature.
It wasn't until a few months later that we realized he was dressed as Clifford the Big Red Dog, a beloved childhood character that most students would have recognized.
Not us though. Even now, years later, my family still gets a good laugh remembering our sheer bewilderment at the giant red dog on the first day of school in Canada, just one of the new experiences — strange, funny and heart-warming by turn — we encountered on our way to finding our feet as immigrants.
When my family first landed in Canada in April 2005, we had no idea what was in store for us. My first memories of Saskatoon were of an intense winter storm. The huge snowflakes pelted down, one after the other, soaking us through and blurring everything around us until we couldn't see past a few steps.
In many ways, the last two decades of navigating life in a new country have felt like trying to find a way through the blizzard and figuring out where I belong amid the storm.
For many of those years, I didn't always know where the Indian parts of my identity belonged.
Once, when I was in Grade 1, I opened my lunch box and started to eat my paratha (a type of Indian flatbread) with my hands.
A classmate peered at me curiously. After many minutes of staring, I began to feel self-conscious as my classmate finally said, "No one eats with their hands."
I felt humiliated and stopped eating. I was very confused. My family would eat many of our meals with our hands.
For a long time after that, I wouldn't enjoy or feel comfortable having Indian food for lunch.
As I grew older, I found myself doing a sort of identity mental gymnastics. When someone asked me my name, I'd ponder the question as if it were a difficult math equation.
In my head, a storm of thoughts would rage: Should I go with the English version of my name, the one that most are able to pronounce (VAY-da-hee)? Or should I stick a limb out and try the Indian version of my name, enunciating the letters as they were intended to be pronounced (VIE-they-hee)?
As a child, I was conscious of all the ways I was different, but I didn't fully realize the gravity of the challenges my parents were facing trying to find work or navigating this whole journey without a community around them.
It wasn't until I moved away for graduate studies in Montreal that I started to understand how brave they'd been. I had moved just two provinces across the country and could feel the enormity of the change. They had moved across the world and, as the very first of their families and friends to immigrate, there was no playbook to follow or path carved out for them.
Through it all — the financial struggles, job searches, lack of community and countless doubts — they remained hopeful and committed to creating a life for my sister and me.
Like me, they were no longer part of the world they left, but they were also not fully a part of this world in which they arrived. They stood on a bridge straddling both places.
Over the course of my high school and university studies, I found other people who had immigrated to Canada as children. Over many lunches, study sessions and coffee breaks, we would laugh about the confusing moments, wondering how our families wandered into the unknown so courageously.
Every time I feel lost, I remember my parents' journey and it gives me hope that I too can carve my own way in life and my own place along that bridge between two places.
Being an immigrant is a lifelong journey. It never stops being with me and it will always shape my life. Now, as a medical student, I carry that identity with me, thinking about how immigrants' experiences shape their medical history or how I might support immigrant communities with their health needs.
These days, when someone asks me my name, I don't think twice — the English and Indian pronunciations are both on my mind. I might share one version — or both depending on the circumstances — and I'm always willing to help folks learn how to say them too.
It's no longer a matter of confusion; it's a matter of pride. After all these years, I see they both represent the person I am today.
Do you have a compelling personal story that can bring understanding or help others? We want to hear from you. Email [email protected] to learn more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
