Rejoicing and Reckoning

I often reflect on my family’s move to Canada as the great escape. I love my country of birth and I am fiercely proud to be Jamaican, but for us, at the time, Canada was a refuge in every sense of the word. Even though on record we were a typical Caribbean immigrant scenario – a group of children following their mother who had arrived many years earlier to work as a nanny – we were economic refugees, escaping the violence that often accompanies poverty. We were not from a war torn country, but we had experienced violence. Were it not for the economic situation, my mother would never have left the beautiful land of Jamaica to permanently settle somewhere else. The separation from our mother, as far as I was concerned, was a form of neo-colonialism that devastates families and relationships in the same way as the transatlantic slave trade.

Still, I was thrilled to be in Canada and embraced my new home. My siblings and I took cues from our mother and engaged in “Canadian” culture, while maintaining the food, practices, and faith of our Jamaican heritage. When I became a citizen, I considered myself fully Canadian, the concept of settler was not even a thought. It was not until I embarked on graduate studies that I encountered the term, and the “other” Canadian history, the story of Canada’s first people. It is absolutely unacceptable that it took me that long. It is even more unsettling to think that one could grow up in Canada and not encounter these truths.

Today, as an educator, I am committed to ensuring that Indigenous history is Canadian history and taught at every level of the education system. Moreover, I very much identify as a settler who is so grateful to live here, to be Canadian. As the horrors of residential schools are literally unearthed, I look to our Indigenous communities for the best way forward. It is of the utmost importance who dictates what healing should look like. I rejoice in being Canadian while acknowledging the need for a reckoning. Canada is a great country, but it cannot be so for some, it must be so for all.