Life's Transitions for a Canadian Experience

Volume 5, Issue No. 38

OPINION/COMMENTARY

/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /

. . . . . A community service of Romar Media Canada, The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail.com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . . . .

 

Our latest as of Wednesday, June 5, 2024 

~ All newcomers to Canada have most likely encountered the phrase "Canadian experience" in their search for jobs that match their education and experience in their countries of origin. It's actually a reference to things like language proficiency (in English or French), work culture, among others. Because employers demand "Canadian experience" as a prerequisite to being hired, I opted to create my own pleasant, unforgettable experience. 

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THE CULTURE, THE PEOPLE, THE WEATHER . . .

Make For a Pleasant Canadian Experience 

Reminiscing the Day Nearly 15 Years Ago

By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ 

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely. - William Osler

TORONTO - Everybody - jobseekers, workers, employers, managers, business owners, anyone who dreams and dreams big - talks about "Canadian experience" as if it's the bible from where bursts bits of wisdom to guide the quest for a new life in Canada.

Well, I've had my peculiar Canadian experience that has broadened my understanding of parts of this "kanata," the name First Nations people refer to their expansive village, and later Anglicized by white settlers as Canada.

February was perhaps the most inopportune time to come to Toronto from the all-year summer paradise called San Diego, California. It was the height of winter here, yet those in the know said that month and the next were milder than previous winters.

I wasn't going to argue that, the fresh-off-the-boat that I was then. I was freezing. My speech was a stutter of keywords. My ears were numbly crisp. My gloved hands were forever buried in the outsized pockets of my jacket. Despite all those, I let the soft and tiny snowflakes to fall and cover my face.

Quite a dramatic change. A life-altering transition it was.

Over there in the Philippines where I was born, and in America where I lived for 16 years after working nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent for a global news agency, it's the rain, raindrops, grains of water, that dripped on my face. And when Mother Nature deigned to be generous, she lets out a splash, then an inundation.

The images of people shoveling snow, of motorists struggling to drive through mountains of slippery white, of people garbed and covered with layers upon layers of clothing, of parched trees wrapped in white powder - I've seen them all from a distance as wide as the oceans.

In my eyes, they're simply images, not reality that one can touch and feel. My arrival in Toronto on that cold February night altered all that.

In one sudden moment, the phrase "Canadian experience" took a whole new meaning. It meant not a quick immersion in everything Canadian and try to live it; it meant being totally in a new environment. 

The culture, the people, the weather - they're all different from what I knew and learned, first in the Philippines, and second, in the United States.

My first Canadian experience days after emerging from a United Airlines plane from the US was in Niagara, a two-hour drive from my residence. It was just a week into my arrival and I still had to shake off the effects of a jet lag and acclimatize in this new environment.

Postcard-pretty Niagara Falls has long been archived in my memory, my scant knowledge of it gained from readings and from films. And here I was, transposed in time and space, savoring its beauty in the harshness of winter.

My only idea of water being frozen was from refrigerators and freezers. Niagara changed that too. The entire length of the river where the water flowed was all ice, fragile ice, white non-transparent ice.

The trees that once had verdant plumage now looked like skeletons of white, so eerily beautiful, so fascinatingly charming.

Suddenly again, images of faux white Christmas trees from the neighborhood of my youth evaporated. I smiled knowing now. 

At that time, artisans gathered twigs, fastened them to what stood as a spine nailed to a square base to resemble a tree, and painted them white to simulate snow. I never really imagined how trees could turn white. But now I know. (Copyright 2024. All Rights Reserved).