MPs recall first days in Canada on the path to representing the country
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
at 10:38 on July 1, 2006, EST.
By JENNIFER DITCHBURN
NDP MP Olivia Chow. (CPimages/Aaron Harris)
OTTAWA (CP) - Back when Canada was just a babe, dozens of the men who sat in the House of Commons were born in Ireland, England and Scotland, with a few Americans and French thrown in to the mix.
Fast forward 139 years, and parliamentarians hold birth certificates from countries as diverse as Uganda, Haiti and Malta, a reflection of the immigration patterns that shaped the country.
Currently, 41 of 308 MPs are foreign born. Some of their families escaped political persecution overseas. Others came to Canada for a better economic life.
Here are a few recollections from MPs on coming to Canada:
Pablo Rodriguez, Quebec Liberal MP:
Rodriguez emigrated to Montreal from Argentina in 1974 when he was eight years old.
"My dad was fighting against the military regime, he was a lawyer and also ran for governor in a province north of Buenos Aires. At a certain point the military said they had to eliminate him. So they blew up our house, they put a bomb in the house. We were all injured, but we survived. They also put bombs in two of our cars but they missed. So we knew it was just a question of time, but they were going to get us.
"One night we left, with five pieces of luggage. We arrived here and we knew one family. But I didn't know the language. I didn't know English or French, I only knew Spanish. I didn't even know what snow was because we came from the North. Our whole life changed on that day. We had to start from scratch.
"We stayed with a friend's family. We didn't have any money. And everything was decided very fast. So we left with the minimum. My mom still had the impression we could go back one day, but it took 15 years to be able to go back to Argentina.
"You lose everything. Much more important than the house and the material aspect, you lose touch with your family. Your grandparents die and you don't see them anymore.
"I think when you grow up here it's normal to have your family around you, at Christmas you have your cousins, your uncles. That wasn't normal for me because I never had that after we left. But on the other hand I learned to understand how important friendship was, and my friends became my family.
"At that age you adapt fast, so I started playing hockey that same year. Both my parents had university diplomas but they weren't recognized, so (my dad) had to work night shifts in factories in Montreal, and my mom would go clean houses.
"What struck me most was the safety factor. In Argentina, I didn't feel safe walking on the streets. I came from a situation where I would have to go to school with bodyguards, because for the soldiers to take me they'd trade me for my father and then he'd be dead. The fact was that our house was attacked meant that we didn't have a sense of security. For the rest of my life after I arrived here I could walk on the street and not be worried about safety at all. And I got to see my father much more often. In Argentina he had to hide, he was put in prison by the soldiers a couple of times and tortured by them, so of course life changed in a peaceful way."
Tony Clement, Ontario Conservative MP, Minister of Health:
Clement arrived in Toronto in 1965 from Manchester, England at age four. His father was a Greek Cypriot and his mother English.
"We came out of Terminal One (at the Toronto airport). I always regretted when we tore down the old Terminal One we didn't have some sort of ceremony, because hundreds of thousands of people came through Terminal One.
"We couldn't pack everything, so we had to choose which toys. I remember my mom sitting me down and saying, 'We can take that toy or that toy, but not both.' And I remember having to choose. It was very traumatic for a four year old!
"And I remember when we arrived in Terminal One I was very hungry, and the first thing I ate in Canada was a Mars bar. I guess she wanted to shut me up, so give the kid a Mars bar.
"I remember it being very strange to be in another country from where you were from, even if it was just overseas from England. I remember in the first couple months of being here going into a store and asking for an ice lolly instead of a popsicle, and the store owner looking at me as if I was from Mars. I very quickly learned the word for popsicle."
Deepak Obhrai, Alberta Conservative MP:
Obhrai was 27 years old when he came to Calgary from Tanzania. He had received professional training in England.
"I landed in Calgary, and because my previous experience was as an air traffic controller having worked at an international airport, I had the shock of my life when I saw the Calgary International Airport which was just a bunch of shacks. I thought, am I in the right country or did I miss something here?
"When I came out of the terminal, the person standing in the taxi line was my former principal when I was at primary school in Tanzania. There he was driving cabs. That was the second shocker.
"The third shock of my life was about a month later when I had my driver's license and it snowed, and I didn't know how to drive in snow, and the first thing was I went into a big spin, applying the brakes.
"What was interesting was the big roads, and open spaces and very few people around. My family and friends were around and told me to expect tough conditions in the job market and challenges coming up. There was a tremendous amount of discrimination during the time I came into this country. What had happened was that the first wave of Indian immigrants had already come from East Africa, so we started feeling this discrimination factor. At that time there was no such thing as immigrant settlement. You were out on your own.
"My biggest, and most emotional aspect was in 1999 I went with the Governor General to Tanzania. This was quite an emotional visit coming back as a Member of Parliament. Aside from the fact that I met the president . . . here I was coming back as a successful man. The next day we went to my old hometown, where CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) had given money for the extension of classrooms, and this happened to be my former high school. So I sat with the governor general on the stage where I used to be caned when I was a bad student . . . . It was quite emotional."
Olivia Chow, Ontario NDP MP:
Chow came to Toronto from Hong Kong at age 13 in 1970.
"I remember watching a hockey game. I had never seen one before.
"We lived with a family. The kids were born in Canada, so I hung out with them. And then I want to Jarvis Collegiate in Grade Nine, and hung out with friends who were also born in Canada, of Chinese descent.
"I missed my dog in Hong Kong, you know, a 13-year-old.
"I got to know some friends quite quickly, at that age you get to know people. But the first while was a bit lonely because I didn't know a lot of people.
"I spoke some English, so I didn't go to ESL classes, but in English class I remember being asked to stand to read To Kill a Mockingbird and I couldn't read very well. It was really embarrassing. I just remember it was so embarrassing, as a teenager, standing up in front of the class, it was slightly disastrous. I think I stopped talking in class, and sat in the back of the class for several years after that.
"History was really hard too because there were a lot of words I didn't understand. I remember studying Louis Riel and I didn't understand any of it. I didn't even realize the Chinese existed in Canada for all this time, I didn't know they had anything to do with building railroads, that at the turn of the century they were here. I actually finally learned that after my third year in university. I took a summer job researching Chinese history in Canada. That's when I went, 'Oh, isn't that interesting!"'
Maka Kotto, Bloc Quebecois MP:
Kotto was born in Cameroon, but was living in France and working as an actor when he was first invited to act in a Canadian film in 1988 at age 27.
"That's when I discovered Quebec. And after that work experience, I agreed to come back to promote the film (Comment fair l'amour avec un negre sans se fatiguer). When I came back to promote the film, a few months afterward, I began to understand the importance of human kindness, of the openess of spirit versus what I was living in France for many years. It was relaxing. It was the human factor that convinced me to live in Quebec. The film had an indisputable success at the premiere, and projects started to come. I was at the top of my film career in France, so it was a bit risky for me to leave everything over there and start at zero here. But I made the decision. It was in 1990 that I decided to settle here definitively.
"I liked the spontaneity, the warmth, the simplicity and the humility of Quebecers. It's something we find in Africa, in Cameroon in particular where I was born. This kind of joy of meeting others -from the moment, of course, that you know they're not going to walk all over you.
"One thing that worried me was the climate factor, because I wasn't used to the deep cold. People really made me afraid of the winter. And they told me it lasted six months. I thought it was unthinkable. As a humanist, always on a quest for discovery, I overcame my fears in spite of everything and what I realized was t - hat it was a dry cold and when one is properly dressed one is fine."
-
OTTAWA (CP) - A list of current MPs born outside Canada:
Diane Ablonczy, United States
Omar Alghabra, Saudi Arabia
Vivian Barbot, Haiti
Susan Barnes, Malta
Maurizio Bevilacqua, Italy
John Cannis, Greece
Raymond Chan, China
Chris Charlton, Germany
Olivia Chow, Hong Kong
Tony Clement, England
Libby Davies, England
Sukh Dhaliwal, India
Ujjal Dosanjh, India
Steven Fletcher, Brazil
Joe Fontana, Italy
Hedy Fry, Trinidad
Nina Grewal, Japan
Albina Guarnieri, Italy
Rahim Jaffer, Uganda
Jim Karygiannis, Greece
Wajid Khan, Pakistan
Maka Kotto, Cameroon
Gurbax Malhi, India
Inky Mark, China
Keith Martin, England
Tony Martin, Ireland
Maria Minna, Italy
Maria Mourani, Ivory Coast
Deepak Obhrai, Tanzania
Daniel Petit, Belgium
Yasmin Ratansi, Tanzania
Pablo Rodriguez, Argentina
Michael Savage, Northern Ireland
Mario Silva, Portugal
Peter Stoffer, Netherlands
Andrew Telegdi, Hungary
Lui Temelkovski, Macedonia
Myron Thompson, United States
Vic Toews, Paraguay
Joe Volpe, Italy
John Williams, Scotland
http://start.shaw.ca/start/enCA/News/NationalNewsArticle.htm?src=n070104A.xml
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
at 10:38 on July 1, 2006, EST.
By JENNIFER DITCHBURN
NDP MP Olivia Chow. (CPimages/Aaron Harris)
OTTAWA (CP) - Back when Canada was just a babe, dozens of the men who sat in the House of Commons were born in Ireland, England and Scotland, with a few Americans and French thrown in to the mix.
Fast forward 139 years, and parliamentarians hold birth certificates from countries as diverse as Uganda, Haiti and Malta, a reflection of the immigration patterns that shaped the country.
Currently, 41 of 308 MPs are foreign born. Some of their families escaped political persecution overseas. Others came to Canada for a better economic life.
Here are a few recollections from MPs on coming to Canada:
Pablo Rodriguez, Quebec Liberal MP:
Rodriguez emigrated to Montreal from Argentina in 1974 when he was eight years old.
"My dad was fighting against the military regime, he was a lawyer and also ran for governor in a province north of Buenos Aires. At a certain point the military said they had to eliminate him. So they blew up our house, they put a bomb in the house. We were all injured, but we survived. They also put bombs in two of our cars but they missed. So we knew it was just a question of time, but they were going to get us.
"One night we left, with five pieces of luggage. We arrived here and we knew one family. But I didn't know the language. I didn't know English or French, I only knew Spanish. I didn't even know what snow was because we came from the North. Our whole life changed on that day. We had to start from scratch.
"We stayed with a friend's family. We didn't have any money. And everything was decided very fast. So we left with the minimum. My mom still had the impression we could go back one day, but it took 15 years to be able to go back to Argentina.
"You lose everything. Much more important than the house and the material aspect, you lose touch with your family. Your grandparents die and you don't see them anymore.
"I think when you grow up here it's normal to have your family around you, at Christmas you have your cousins, your uncles. That wasn't normal for me because I never had that after we left. But on the other hand I learned to understand how important friendship was, and my friends became my family.
"At that age you adapt fast, so I started playing hockey that same year. Both my parents had university diplomas but they weren't recognized, so (my dad) had to work night shifts in factories in Montreal, and my mom would go clean houses.
"What struck me most was the safety factor. In Argentina, I didn't feel safe walking on the streets. I came from a situation where I would have to go to school with bodyguards, because for the soldiers to take me they'd trade me for my father and then he'd be dead. The fact was that our house was attacked meant that we didn't have a sense of security. For the rest of my life after I arrived here I could walk on the street and not be worried about safety at all. And I got to see my father much more often. In Argentina he had to hide, he was put in prison by the soldiers a couple of times and tortured by them, so of course life changed in a peaceful way."
Tony Clement, Ontario Conservative MP, Minister of Health:
Clement arrived in Toronto in 1965 from Manchester, England at age four. His father was a Greek Cypriot and his mother English.
"We came out of Terminal One (at the Toronto airport). I always regretted when we tore down the old Terminal One we didn't have some sort of ceremony, because hundreds of thousands of people came through Terminal One.
"We couldn't pack everything, so we had to choose which toys. I remember my mom sitting me down and saying, 'We can take that toy or that toy, but not both.' And I remember having to choose. It was very traumatic for a four year old!
"And I remember when we arrived in Terminal One I was very hungry, and the first thing I ate in Canada was a Mars bar. I guess she wanted to shut me up, so give the kid a Mars bar.
"I remember it being very strange to be in another country from where you were from, even if it was just overseas from England. I remember in the first couple months of being here going into a store and asking for an ice lolly instead of a popsicle, and the store owner looking at me as if I was from Mars. I very quickly learned the word for popsicle."
Deepak Obhrai, Alberta Conservative MP:
Obhrai was 27 years old when he came to Calgary from Tanzania. He had received professional training in England.
"I landed in Calgary, and because my previous experience was as an air traffic controller having worked at an international airport, I had the shock of my life when I saw the Calgary International Airport which was just a bunch of shacks. I thought, am I in the right country or did I miss something here?
"When I came out of the terminal, the person standing in the taxi line was my former principal when I was at primary school in Tanzania. There he was driving cabs. That was the second shocker.
"The third shock of my life was about a month later when I had my driver's license and it snowed, and I didn't know how to drive in snow, and the first thing was I went into a big spin, applying the brakes.
"What was interesting was the big roads, and open spaces and very few people around. My family and friends were around and told me to expect tough conditions in the job market and challenges coming up. There was a tremendous amount of discrimination during the time I came into this country. What had happened was that the first wave of Indian immigrants had already come from East Africa, so we started feeling this discrimination factor. At that time there was no such thing as immigrant settlement. You were out on your own.
"My biggest, and most emotional aspect was in 1999 I went with the Governor General to Tanzania. This was quite an emotional visit coming back as a Member of Parliament. Aside from the fact that I met the president . . . here I was coming back as a successful man. The next day we went to my old hometown, where CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) had given money for the extension of classrooms, and this happened to be my former high school. So I sat with the governor general on the stage where I used to be caned when I was a bad student . . . . It was quite emotional."
Olivia Chow, Ontario NDP MP:
Chow came to Toronto from Hong Kong at age 13 in 1970.
"I remember watching a hockey game. I had never seen one before.
"We lived with a family. The kids were born in Canada, so I hung out with them. And then I want to Jarvis Collegiate in Grade Nine, and hung out with friends who were also born in Canada, of Chinese descent.
"I missed my dog in Hong Kong, you know, a 13-year-old.
"I got to know some friends quite quickly, at that age you get to know people. But the first while was a bit lonely because I didn't know a lot of people.
"I spoke some English, so I didn't go to ESL classes, but in English class I remember being asked to stand to read To Kill a Mockingbird and I couldn't read very well. It was really embarrassing. I just remember it was so embarrassing, as a teenager, standing up in front of the class, it was slightly disastrous. I think I stopped talking in class, and sat in the back of the class for several years after that.
"History was really hard too because there were a lot of words I didn't understand. I remember studying Louis Riel and I didn't understand any of it. I didn't even realize the Chinese existed in Canada for all this time, I didn't know they had anything to do with building railroads, that at the turn of the century they were here. I actually finally learned that after my third year in university. I took a summer job researching Chinese history in Canada. That's when I went, 'Oh, isn't that interesting!"'
Maka Kotto, Bloc Quebecois MP:
Kotto was born in Cameroon, but was living in France and working as an actor when he was first invited to act in a Canadian film in 1988 at age 27.
"That's when I discovered Quebec. And after that work experience, I agreed to come back to promote the film (Comment fair l'amour avec un negre sans se fatiguer). When I came back to promote the film, a few months afterward, I began to understand the importance of human kindness, of the openess of spirit versus what I was living in France for many years. It was relaxing. It was the human factor that convinced me to live in Quebec. The film had an indisputable success at the premiere, and projects started to come. I was at the top of my film career in France, so it was a bit risky for me to leave everything over there and start at zero here. But I made the decision. It was in 1990 that I decided to settle here definitively.
"I liked the spontaneity, the warmth, the simplicity and the humility of Quebecers. It's something we find in Africa, in Cameroon in particular where I was born. This kind of joy of meeting others -from the moment, of course, that you know they're not going to walk all over you.
"One thing that worried me was the climate factor, because I wasn't used to the deep cold. People really made me afraid of the winter. And they told me it lasted six months. I thought it was unthinkable. As a humanist, always on a quest for discovery, I overcame my fears in spite of everything and what I realized was t - hat it was a dry cold and when one is properly dressed one is fine."
-
OTTAWA (CP) - A list of current MPs born outside Canada:
Diane Ablonczy, United States
Omar Alghabra, Saudi Arabia
Vivian Barbot, Haiti
Susan Barnes, Malta
Maurizio Bevilacqua, Italy
John Cannis, Greece
Raymond Chan, China
Chris Charlton, Germany
Olivia Chow, Hong Kong
Tony Clement, England
Libby Davies, England
Sukh Dhaliwal, India
Ujjal Dosanjh, India
Steven Fletcher, Brazil
Joe Fontana, Italy
Hedy Fry, Trinidad
Nina Grewal, Japan
Albina Guarnieri, Italy
Rahim Jaffer, Uganda
Jim Karygiannis, Greece
Wajid Khan, Pakistan
Maka Kotto, Cameroon
Gurbax Malhi, India
Inky Mark, China
Keith Martin, England
Tony Martin, Ireland
Maria Minna, Italy
Maria Mourani, Ivory Coast
Deepak Obhrai, Tanzania
Daniel Petit, Belgium
Yasmin Ratansi, Tanzania
Pablo Rodriguez, Argentina
Michael Savage, Northern Ireland
Mario Silva, Portugal
Peter Stoffer, Netherlands
Andrew Telegdi, Hungary
Lui Temelkovski, Macedonia
Myron Thompson, United States
Vic Toews, Paraguay
Joe Volpe, Italy
John Williams, Scotland
http://start.shaw.ca/start/enCA/News/NationalNewsArticle.htm?src=n070104A.xml