Article published in Our Canada Magazine (a subsidiary of the Readers' Digest) April 2021

FINDING HOME
By Margaret Deefholts
Memory seeks to save the past in order to serve the present and the future.
- Jacques Le Goff

Leafing through an old album the other day, I realised with a small sense of shock that it has been 43 years since I first arrived in Canada with my husband, Leon, and our children Glenn and Susan, then aged six and four. I don't recall much about those moments of arrival—we were probably exhausted, disoriented and glad to be at journey's end.

Forty-one years is a long time. So, I ask myself, when did I shed the mantle of “landed immigrant”? And when did the cloak of Canadian identity begin to fit comfortably around my shoulders? After our citizenship ceremony, we posed for pictures with the citizenship judge and a uniformed Mountie. It was an impressive and symbolic ceremony, but it did not turn us into “Canadians” overnight.

Those early years, were busy. Our careers took shape. We drove the kids to and from extracurricular activities: skiing, tennis, swimming and music lessons. The Canucks skated across our TV screens and we yelled triumphantly when they scored a goal. We made new friends, some of them from India, others who had been born and raised in Canada. Canadian-isms began to creep into our speech (although I retained my home-grown accent): “ketchup” for ‘tomato sauce', “apartments” for ‘flats', and “gas” for ‘petrol'—even the ubiquitous “eh” making an occasional appearance!

Yet underneath all this, I still missed India. It would be a neat conclusion to say that following a couple of return visits, I settled down without a backward glance. Not so. For a while I was in a no-man's land. I no longer belonged in India, but I didn't feel very ‘Canadian' either. Social integration is one thing, but an emotional bonding with one's country of adoption is a much more subtle border crossing. And it comes in small unheralded moments rather than in a single blinding flash of epiphany.

The tapestry of our lives are threaded with many patterns—some of them brightly coloured, others dark grey. Mine has included gaily embossed designs: Glenn's and Susan's graduations from school and university, career triumphs, weddings and special occasions, like Christmas and Birthdays. The cloth itself is a warm amber, perhaps even the colour of gold, as it is the fabric of companionship, love and laughter, woven by dear ones and good friends. But there have also been sombre motifs marking the passage of time: saying a final farewell to my parents, my husband, my sister and my daughter as well as mourning the loss of old and dear companions.

omewhere within the warp and weft of the years, Canada became “home”. If I were to look carefully, I'd find a small stitch here, or a larger stitch there, each of them knitting me into the overall broadcloth of this country. Some of them, buried in a fleeting moments, have been part of ordinary, every-day life in Canada—spring tulips in bright array in my garden beds, or the drone of neighbourhood lawn-mowers and the smell of steaks wafting from backyard barbecues during our long summer evenings.

But there have been other, more significant occasions—returning from some far flung part of the globe and delighting in familiar landmarks as my plane descends to Vancouver airport: Grouse Mountain peeping through clouds, bracelets of log booms on the Fraser River and the scalloped outline of the Lions Gate Bridge. Or driving along Howe Sound, where the road winds past inlets glinting in the sun like silk threads, and snow-capped mountains stand outlined against the sky—and realising for the first time that this splendid wilderness was now "my" country, and the comforting thought that although Canada like any other country, may have its social and political problems, it is a privilege to live in a society comprised by and large of decent, law abiding people.

I will always be profoundly glad that I was born, grew up and lived in India with its enormous diversity of people, languages, religions and traditions. I am bound to it by ties of ancestry stretching back over three centuries. Canada, on the other hand, is the land of my adoption and I am joined to it by choice. India was a cherished part of my childhood and youth; Canada brought me to maturity. India was my family's inheritance; Canada has given me the gift of the future.