Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Early Immigrant Days-4

Torono in June is shivery, when you're just off of a plane from the equator, where your blood never had to thicken or thin,
depending on what time of year it was. The first few days were one sweater and one wind-breaker ones for me. As the days
in June went by without the arrival of summer, they became three sweater and one wind-breaker ones. That was around the
time I first learnt that summer in Canada was the last week in July and the first week in August, and the rest of the time, you should "brace yourself". Walking through the light spray from the thundering down of Niagara Falls two days after I arrived in
Canada, I wished I had brought a winter coat with me, but had to endure, my first touch of winter in June, instead. In those
days, many of us southern immigrants, seemed to find ourselves, within a day or two of arriving, at Niagara Falls. Sometimes
I have wondered, if this was, some kind of immigrant syndrome manifesting. You were in Canada now. You were one of the lucky ones. You had escaped. You were going to be "somebody" now. The insecurity that was part of rocketing you, to a place
underneath the Blue Canadian Sky, was still in place, so you had to bolster yourself, in these new and strange surroundings,
so the first thing you did, was send back home, the statutory picture of you at the Holy Grail. Everyone, had heard of Niagara
Falls, and here was a picture of you and it. You were on your way now. The ones left back home, would look at you
differently now. There was something special about you now. You had made it North the way almost all the ones you left
behind, wished they could, and here was the first proof, of this inspiring victory...............Quester.

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