Welcome readers and contributors. I am pleased you will be here from the beginning: this is my first time blogging. My name is Nadya and I study English Language at UBC. Although required, I would rather say “inspired,” to be on this platform for my summer 2015 distance education course, ENGL 470: Canadian Studies.

As with most theoretical english courses, this one contains a rich syllabus with objectives and fascinating terms such as colonization and canonization. But there is also narrative and storytelling. This is where I will mark my starting point and get more personal; with a story:

At 9 years old I had been in Canada for almost a year, attending an elementary school in North Vancouver with an ESL program. My parents decided to move to (the more affordable) Fraser Valley where they became home owners for the first time. Somewhere along the house hunting and moving process to Chilliwack, I learned this: Chilliwack has Indians. Perhaps it was the conversations my parents had with one another, or with their friends, but somehow this became a fact to me. Indians in my mind were dark, wild, naked, with bows and arrows, loud…

This particular memory is of my first day going to elementary school in Chilliwack. I remember walking towards the building, holding my mom’s hand. I remember feeling afraid. I was afraid of going to school with boys who wear loincloths and girls with dark skin and long dark hair. I clearly recall the immense feeling of relief when we walked through the door, passed the office window on the right, and I saw my first child: white, clothed, normal…like me.

This childhood memory became the pivot point of my confusion surrounding “being Canadian”. Yes, I can say I grew up in Canada, went to Canadian schools, and am a Canadian Citizen. This is simple for me to write but impossible to comprehend emotionally.

Now I am equipped with the intellectual terms used to describe Canada, such as multiculturalism, melting pot, or mosaic. A metaphor I seem to like is the one of a quilt. A construction of various parts from various origins, each with a personal story.

In a previous course on American Modernist Poetry, I was introduced to the poem “The Book of the Dead” by Muriel Rukeyser. It’s a collection of poetic segments about a historical mining conspiracy that form a narrative. This is where I would like to leave my first blog posting:

The water they would bring had dust in it, our drinking
water, …

we always had
the dust. …

As dark as I am, when I came out at morning after the
tunnel at night,
with a white man, nobody could have told which man was
white.
The dust had covered us both, and the dust was white.

 

 

WORKS CITED

Kymlicka, Will. “Being Canadian.” Government and Opposition 38.3 (2003): 357-85. Web. 15 May 2015.

“room12declairers.” wikispaces. Tangient LLC, 2015. Web. 15 May 2015.

Rukeyser, Muriel. “The Book of the Dead.” Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive. Elisabeth Däumer, 2012. Web. 15 May 2015.