A Story of Immigration

     My family immigrated from France before they settled in Canada, but they would not have stayed there if they had the option to. At a young age, my Dad grew up without his dad, my grandpa because he lived in France. He had to make enough money to support his family in India and bring them to France. My grandpa worked different jobs in France, a chef on the island of Corsica. It was beautiful as he recalled the memories. But the memories were in rose-coloured lenses. My grandpa had to sleep in a hallway of a church because he was denied all types of assets. When my Dad was twelve, he moved to France for five years. 

 

     My Dad spoke of an incident when he was a teenager and how he had a knife pointed at him while given threats and verbal abuse. He spent his teenage-hood adjusting to the language barrier. He did not learn English first, it was his fourth language. It was hard for my family to deal with racism in France: the stereotypes, the violence, and the prejudice against my Dad and his siblings. Words used to insult him and the stereotypes of his accent. Feeling bad, he felt insecure about his identity. My uncle does not even know what to identify as. French? Indian? Canadian? The terrifying world of France in the 80s and the 90s made it unsafe to live in. Being stared at in the subway, rudely spoken to, verbally harassed. 

 

     In 1990, my uncles and my Dad were carrying a largely cloaked object around the streets. It looked suspicious to the French. At the time, The Kuwait Airlift was happening and the war was sparked in the Middle East. My uncle had dark curly hair and a long beard and they thought he was a terrorist. I remember how he said how scared he felt at that moment and how scared they all were. Trembling as they were ripping through their bags and demanded identification for how young they were. My Dad was thirteen. Thirteen when he witnessed the gendarmerie going through their things. Convinced they were terrorists they were persistent in trying to get the information out of them. This incident gave them a reason to want to leave but being denied residency from European countries, we turned to North America. Canada was the home we chose. 

 

     A fresh step into new soil, hoping they could erase the words spoken to them but Canada in the 90s was different than how it was now. The accent was made fun of and was self-conscious about whether people would like him no matter his ethnicity. The doubt that was caused was engraved into my dad’s high school experience when he tries to recall the experiences. Racism and forms of it such as micro-aggressions and stereotypes are impactful.