By Kevin de Silva
Kevin De Silva is a second generation Guyanese-Canadian, and a student of Political Science and Caribbean Studies at the University of Toronto.
This piece is a response to an article, “Canadian Guyanese longs to come home” that appeared in the January 30th edition of Stabroek News. It isn’t meant to be read as a criticism of this article, which enumerates the benefits of the Canadian experience for the Guyanese diaspora. Canada as a place for wealth and opportunity is a strong enough theme in both popular talk and I would argue, even seeps into the Caribbean unconscious. Yet such a belief is rarely coupled with a different, more pragmatic understanding of the situation for Guyanese people in Canada. Whenever confronting a picture the key is to not see in two toned terms or in overblown colour, nor to focus on one isolated dynamic. The point is clarity, and a broader analysis, simply for the sake of honesty.
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In the land of plenty, mega-supermarket temples dot the landscape with shelves full of food; items ranging from watches and furniture to toothpaste and shoes, all found of course, in one convenient location. The somewhat religious fervor of those who frequent these resource depots, as well as the cold and almost robotic activity found inside, is something still foreign to me, a person born and raised among them.
“Gyal, mi a come in las’ week and di soup a $2.09, mi come today an it $2.49. You people a lie.” An elderly Guyanese man, possibly in his 60’s, was scolding a sales representative about the store and his soup. The lady, who also was from the Caribbean answered calmly: “Sir we probably had a sale last week that’s over now.” The man snapped back, unconvinced by her explanation: “No, no, no. I un wan hear dat. Y’all people a lie and di aisle dem not even clean, everyting a mix-up, mix-up…”
Nearby shoppers looked at him cautiously and tried avoiding him, they thought he was crazy. I figured that he was probably from a place in Guyana where you would actually talk to people while shopping, and he was gravitating towards the people who looked and sounded like him, who would understand his confusion and frustration with the store.
If we were inclined to change the lens of this very small and maybe peripheral story, step-back, and view the store as emblematic of the Canadian experience for many new-comers generally, I think we get interesting results, and possibly uncomfortable conclusions.
Canada is a land of milk and honey in many very real ways. The “mega super-market temple” is just one example of this. One look at the Parliament building in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, may be another proof of its majesty. My favourite example though is located in our financial district at the intersection of Bay and King in downtown Toronto, the four tallest structures aside from Toronto’s CN Tower: the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the Royal Bank of Canada, The Toronto Dominion Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia. Masses of steel, glass and electric wiring that top the Lake Ontario shoreline, powerful and heavily lit. They represent the essence of the downtown core, as well as Canada’s central nervous system, the batteries that power the Canadian poker game which immigrants who wish to head North intend to not only buy into, but to win.
Our chip stack however is small and our hand, usually weak. Just reaching this destination is riddled with bumps and bruises, and a stable respite in a peripheral community such as Scarborough or Jane and Finch, areas where numerous newly arriving Caribbean people call home, is considered a mark of success. Neither in affluence nor in destitution, these spaces are constituted as zones of limbo, and have been for me personally, purgatorial in many respects. Canada as a posterboy for the dream of wealth and comfort, of the good life and of relaxation, the land of endless possibilities, is often thought of in religious terms: an Israel for displaced, dislocated and fragmented exiles.
This conception of Canada as a paradise is in my opinion perfectly understandable, especially considering the amount of hardship experienced by those who have for years called Guyana home. The struggle that all too many Guyanese people carry out on a day-to-day basis, dealing with not only financial constraints but with mental taxation, must be heavy enough to foster in the collective imaginary a place where, in the very least, they can inhale and exhale peacefully.
But the end of old struggles does not mean the end of all struggles. Social isolation outside of one’s cultural group, especially for the elderly who have had a stronger sense of neighbourliness and community back home, is particularly rampant here. As a consequence of this many new-comers, like the man mentioned above, are confined to social relations that are exclusive to the nation they were born into. The younger generations, who go through the Ontario schooling system, have the burden of carving out a more meaningful sense of multiculturalism. Even in these cases though, it is not at all clear that the project of multiculturalism will be signed, sealed and delivered by them anytime soon.
Outside of the sphere of culture, economic difficulty is by no means necessarily relaxed here. Some of the most easily available jobs one can obtain directly from home come though staffing agencies connected to industrial manufacturing. In Scarborough, many of these factories are heavily populated by men from the Caribbean. Some have worked in them for 10, 20, 30, even 35 years. Some, at the age of 50, live by themselves in single bedroom apartments, and cannot afford not to work lest they be kicked out. Most, if not all, know they will die doing these jobs. Having a stable two person income in order to stay afloat is therefore key in most circumstances. Yet the obvious consequence, especially in many Caribbean households, is the normalization of marital unhappiness and in some cases abuse, all to maintain financial security, all for the sake of survival.
According to polls conducted in 2006, a whopping 49% of Toronto’s population reported themselves as belonging to a “visible minority” group. Yet, a couple months back Torontonians were in the thick of a mayoral race, and in one of the most culturally, ethnically, and racially diverse cities in the world, only white candidates were considered viable. Rob Ford, the most clearly bigoted, prejudiced, and conservative of the group actually won. Our former mayor, who was not born here, still managed to win, while that possibility for a ‘visible minority’ doing the same, directly from their country of origin, is still highly unlikely. Lastly, of Toronto’s 44 city councillors, only three are visible minorities (7%) in a city where again, ‘minorities’ are steadily becoming the majority and in almost every sense, will be the future faces and hands directing this entire city.
But why make these points? To deter those reading from coming? To dampen their spirits and their belief in a better world outside of Guyana? Maybe to simply ruin their day?
The election of Barack Obama brought many platitudes to the forefront of not only the American political discourse, but to the worldwide political discourse. The universalistic themes of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ are tempting slogans that individuals, especially in conditions of strife, need to sometimes hear as fuel for a belief in another way, a realm divorced from despair. Although my own Canadian and Guyanese identity is constantly in a state of tension, I nevertheless have picked up one theme that we Guyanese share, regardless of skin colour: the ability to struggle.
Stepping into the land of plenty can certainly be a step away from certain hardships. The point that needs to be bolded, highlighted and underlined however is that such a step simultaneously brings with it a new set of frustrations and roadblocks. A new terrain demands a new approach to struggle, premised on adaptability. Yet to simply adapt in-and-of-itself is not enough. To stay afloat is one thing, but in order to truly flourish certain ceilings need to be destroyed, and there’s no reason why they can’t be. Spotlighting them is step one. Hammering away, step two.
