New Canadian citizens remind us how lucky we are
If ever your despair is deep.
If ever, for example, you conclude there is no hope for a world where an entire continent is aflame.
If, perhaps, you cannot shake the knowledge that an intemperate presidential command could end with 57 Canadians being shot down a world away.
Or if in bed at night, you stare at the ceiling afraid that you live in a world where division is everywhere, in a country said to be on the cusp of dissolving, in a province where you have been told to wonder about being able to find a job or a doctor.
Well, then, my advice is to haul your ass down to Pier 21 the next time a batch of newcomers receive their Canadian citizenship, as I did on Jan. 15. Then the gloom will lift. You will see this place as others, from far-away countries, see it. And you will realize how profoundly lucky we are to call it home.
Sometimes we just need to be reminded of such things.
Sometimes you need to see 49 people from 14 different nations stand, right hand in the air, pledging allegiance to “her majesty Queen Elizabeth the second…her heirs and successors” and vowing to “faithfully observe the laws in Canada and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.”
You need to see them walk, appropriately enough inside the Museum of Immigration, to the front of the room and shake hands with the row of dignitaries.
Then you need to see them turn towards the rest of the room, clutching small Canadian flags, faces beaming as friends and family clap and cheer.
The biggest applause was for Tareq Hadhad, Justin Trudeau’s favourite immigrant, who spent three years living in a refugee camp after fleeing his native Syria, before moving to Antigonish in 2015.
Now, Hadad’s Peace by Chocolate brand is famous enough that the prime minister gifted some of the candy to U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi during a visit to the U.S. and it could be purchased downstairs, in the Pier 21 gift shop, in Welcome to Canada chocolate bars. (Hadad’s cache, someone whispered to me, is such that Marco Mendicino, Canada’s minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship flew in for the ceremony, and mentioned him during his speech.)
But the applause just kept rolling last Wednesday. For the man in the Sikh turban and the women in the hijabs.
For red-dressed Clare MacDermott, who met her Halifaxborn cardiologist husband Jason Young somewhere atop Mount Everest — and who moved here with him from Dublin, Ireland seven-and-a-half years ago.
“It’s a great honor and privilege,” she said after the ceremony, holding her oneyear-old-son Ciaran, her threeyear-old, Roisin, by her side.
When I asked what being a Canadian means, she said that she hasn’t “had the vote for seven years.” Now, as a Canadian citizen, MacDermott — who grew up next to Cranberry’s singer Dolores O’Riordan, dead a year ago Wednesday -- will be able to cast a ballot in the next election.
But so will Apol Mercader, who walked to the front of the room with her husband Miguel, daughter Meg, 10, and son Carl, age three.
In her arms she cradled a sleeping Elijah, just a month old.
“We came here to make a future for our children,” said Apol, who arrived from the Philippines with her husband and oldest child nine years ago, and who now lives in Lower Sackville.
On a similar quest was Walid Sallam and his wife Ghalia. In 2015 they came to Nova Scotia from Egypt with their son, Zeyad and daughters Maram, Ziema and Malika.
“It’s the best,” Walid, an accountant said when I asked what he thinks of Canada. “We felt Canadian the moment we arrived.”
Ghalia, an administrator at Saint Mary’s University, told me that Canada’s diversity is what drew the family here. They feel at home in Bedford, where Zeyad, now student at C.P.
Allen High School, has made a splash in an international Leggo competition.
The room seemed to be filled with stories like that: of people with, as citizenship judge Joan Mahoney put it, “their own immigration journeys that brought you here today.”
There they were welcomed, not just by Mendicino, but Stephen McNeil, the provincial premier who reassured the freshly minted Canadians that in this country they will never have to surrender the culture and identity that they brought with them from their old home.
“Thank you for choosing us,” McNeil told his 49 new voters. “We will be with you in your good days and stand with you in your difficult ones.”
There will be those for newcomers in a province still reeling from the recent downing of Ukranian Airlines flight PS752, which took the lives of eight people with Nova Scotia links.
But this was not the day for such somber thoughts. Instead, inside a building where new stories began in this country, they clapped and cheered. They waved maple leaf flags.
Then our newest countrymen and women walked out into the foyer to eat some cake, as people do during moments that they will remember forever.