I was fortunate to step away from my everyday Seattle experience for a couple of days to Vancouver, thanks to my generous partner caring more about my birthday than I do. Even though I’m Canadian, because I’ve lived in “The States” (as we say up there) for so long at this point, I tend to forget that culturally it’s a very different place. This was exaggerated when I lived in Philly because it was just so far away that anytime I could make it up there, everyone would seem so Canadian, but I’d also be busy with the emotional resonance of cramming all the loved ones, food, sights and sounds into a short time that I would have hardly any mental bandwidth to ever examine exactly what that means.
Greedily stuffing my face in Richmond at every opportunity, as we rolled into town, we chatted with Anson Leung, whose mother and father have run HK BBQ Pit Master for over 20 years and are a staple of Vancouver Chinese food. I felt so damn proudly Canadian hearing a young person with foreign-born parents telling me matter-of-factly and confidently using the first person plural (we) to talk about the tolerant and inclusive attitudes of Canadians. And adding that while business has been a bit off because of the pandemic in the news, “Canadians are pretty good,” to suggest that racism didn’t seem to be the cause of the fluctuations, though he did add that occasionally people would give a look or say something a bit odd. As we left every seat in the joint was claimed and there was a line out the door.
But this is what my spiel is about today. Out for a run around BC Place and Olympic Village, I passed by this doorway on the way out and also back:
I couldn’t help thinking the rest of the way about the hours of the place. 7:30am to 1am, every day. Before morning shift and after afternoons if you worked shift work (if there’s such a thing anymore, since unions unfortunately barely exist now; probably not so much for people who have critical reasons to visit the Canada Border Service Agency anyway). Open every day because shift work is every day, not to mention you have family, loved ones and others to care for, probably, if you happen to be a person need to make a refugee claim or apply for citizenship to a country by showing up in person to a downtown office.
Not that I know anything about this process. Both of my parents were born in other countries (and their parents were born in countries they weren’t born in), but I don’t have any experience with the US or Canadian immigration system because I was born in Canada. And this is a blog that’s notionally about speech technology, so this is what I started off with the intention of saying:
With respect to the incorrect notion that language = culture or, (Orwellian, I think?) idea that people are doomed to think only in the words they’re granted in a language, the thing that jumps out to me is how much the use of language obviously reflects the cultural norms embedded in the life of this country that used to be my home.
Canada has two official languages, and here at the entrance to this government agency, they’re equally prominent, text size-wise. If you’ve ever crossed the border you will know that’s equally true of every single person you will talk to when you declare your citizenship and the purpose of your visit. One is not better, one is not worse (let’s not talk Bill 101 or French Canadianness right now but lmk if you wanna sometime), and they’re always available everywhere government services are available.
It’s probably worth noting there are dozens of First Nations that claim the BC Lower Mainland as home, and there are hundreds of thousands of people of Chinese descent in the area, among hundres of other groups. I’ll bet you a buck if you showed up and asked a question in Squamish or Mandarin they’d have you covered.
I’m willing to say that because in a totally stupid and unreasonable car accident I caused by driving in shoes with super wide, squishy soles I have otherwise only run in, I tapped a car while parallel parking while the owner stood in front of her house and watched. (went to hit the brake and touched the gas as the same time) (I know!) Once I’d arranged the car appropriately on the street, I got out to assess the damage, and saw the plastic exterior of her bumper had a bunch of cracks in it, and I prepared to be yelled at and feel the wrath of the Canadian car insurance industry as well as beg forgiveness.
The owner walked over, looked at her bumper, and told me matter of factly, “you didn’t do that, you should know. Someone hit and ran me this week, and that’s what they did. It was totally already like that,” she said, inspecting her bumper and mine, unable to find a mark on it. And as I made eye contact with me, she was like, “But with the look on your face I should totally mess with you because man are you freaked out!” Adding with a smile, “Just kidding, it’s totally fine. But are you okay? What the hell did you do?”
Some dumb ass ‘Merican tourist shows up in her residential neighborhood, drives into her car, and her response is to make sure I have all of the information I need to appropriately assess my situation, crack a joke, check in on me, and then inquire about her vital interest.
Typical Canadian. Accommodating. Disarming. Informal. Unfussy. Altruistic.
She’s just reflecting the culture she lives in though. And that’s what’s embedded in the use of language in this totally boring and otherwise uninteresting doorway a bit east of downtown Vancouver leaves me with.
I forgot home felt like that, but I’m grateful to know it’s a way to feel, and the norm, somewhere.