January 16th, 1991. The family farewells were done. The house sold, worldly goods packed, and pets bidden farewell to. We were moving to a new country with two suitcases each and three thousand dollars to our names.
The heartache was deep. We were moving from Southern
Africa, our home for the first four decades of our lives, to a country, Canada,
on the other side of the world. South Africa, the pariah of the world for
decades because of its apartheid policies, had been isolated by sanctions.
Despite having travelled to UK and Europe, that was the extent of our exposure
to the rest of the world. Our knowledge of Canada was extremely limited. We had
seen the beautiful pictures of forest, mountains, prairies and lakes. I had
visited for a few weeks, four months earlier, on a “look, see visit”, but that
was it. Nice people who spoke English, a massive beautiful country, but for all
practical purposes an unknown quantity. It was to be an adventure for sure but,
lying in bed together on the night prior to departure, our level of
apprehension was high. What was the next chapter of our lives to look like?
We awoke at 4am the following morning, at my Mom’s
house in Boksburg, to prepare for the first leg of our flight which would take
us from Johannesburg to Brussels on Sabena airlines and then on to Toronto. The
Americans had been threatening invasion of Iraq for weeks, and as we watched TV
that morning the first bombers had taken off in the early hours of January 17th
and the attack on Baghdad had begun. Speculation had been rife that Saddam
Hussein would be releasing a wave of airport and plane attacks across the globe
in retaliation. We had the cheapest airfare available – no refunds, no date
changes. We wondered if we would be the only people on the flight.
The hustle and bustle at the airport were a welcome
distraction, followed by the final farewells, to my Mom and Cher’s folks. Then we were in the air with a handful of
other intrepid passengers like us and, ready or not, the adventure had begun.
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| Boerie, in all his glory after a trip to the beach. Satisfied after every seagull for miles around thoroughly terrorised. |
Elaine, aged 12, and Julia aged 9 had been game for
the adventure, but they too had needed to bid farewell to friends and beloved
pets. A few weeks earlier our cat, Sandy, and Elaine’s favorite, had been
killed by a car so we were spared the pain of giving her away. Saying goodbye
to Boerie, our dog was hard. He was my special boy. I used to love taking him
to the beach where he would chase seagulls to his hearts content. Julia had
said to me, “Daddy, you wouldn’t leave one of your children behind when you go
to Canada would you?” I replied, “No, of course not”. She had me trapped, “Well
Boerie is part of our family. Why are you leaving him behind?” It was like a
knife to my heart. I promised Julia that when we got to Canada and the time was
right, we would get more pets. We had arranged to give Boerie to some folks a
few blocks away from our house in East London who were willing to take him.
When we had delivered him, a few days before our departure, to our friends, we
did so with leaden hearts. Lo and behold the next day, Boerie was back at our
house, sitting outside our garden gate with a smile on his face as if to say,
“Hey you guys, you left me behind by mistake. But don’t worry I found my way
back”. My betrayal of “my best friend” was fully exposed. Oh, my goodness, this
leaving of home is not for the fainthearted.
We had arranged to stay overnight in Brussels so that
we would not arrive in Toronto totally exhausted. Our plane was touching down
in Montreal prior to our final destination in Toronto. For us Africans the
landing was something of a novelty. It was snowing heavily with whiteout
conditions. The ground was invisible. As we landed, our fellow passengers broke
out into clapping and applause. This was something we had never witnessed
before. I guess harsh climates yield up different reasons for celebration.
Before we took off from Montreal, our plane was sprayed down with pink goop, to
keep the wings from freezing. Yikes, this was an adventure which was beginning
to offer a bit too much excitement.
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| Canada - second largest country on the planet. It's geography had fascinated me since childhood |
At Toronto airport, the girls were delighted to be
greeted by a sweet little Beagle dog, who came up to say hello, soon followed
by an official who announced that she wanted to know what was in our hand
luggage. We were bemused. It turned out that Cher had kept a couple of ham
sandwiches from the plane for a snack later. We were now branded as potentially
dangerous importers of risky goods and sent off to a different line up with our
suitcases, presumably to be hung drawn and quartered. A family of Asians ahead
of us were having every item of their suitcases meticulously inspected right
down to the squeezing of their toothpaste tubes. We must have looked innocent
because were soon on our way to be met by Rose, my sister, and Roy her husband.
They lived in the forest, about half an hour north of Lakefield, close to
Stoney Lake. It was a three-hour drive or so before we were able to get our
heads down for a much-needed rest.
The next morning, when we awoke, the outside
temperature was -24 degrees Celsius. For the first time, but not the last, the
thought crossed our minds, “Oh my goodness, what have we done?” Our horror was
soon dispelled as we all donned snowsuits and boots and went outside to play in
the snow. Rose and Roy’s kids, John and Joy, similar in age to our girls, were welcome
playmates for the girls. We began to relax. Perhaps we were going to be ok, but
we did wonder how long it would be before we could go outside without all this
extra clothing? Its probably a good thing we never asked.
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| All that snow and tobogganing to boot. A wonderful treat |
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| Temperatures below -20. Brrr!! |
In our first few days we had taken delivery of a used
Nissan Sentra which we had bought from a couple of Rose and Roy’s friends who
were leaving the country to work with Wycliffe Bible Translators. It was good
to be independently mobile again.
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| Everything was new and different What an adventure! |
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| Hoar frost. A fairly rare phenomenon |
After a couple of weeks with Don and Marg, John Booker
had arranged for us to move to Lois and Earl Heron’s home in Greenbank to house
sit for 6 weeks whilst they were snow birding it in Florida. This was a
gorgeous house on a large lot. We felt very privileged to be living in such
good digs. We were in the height of winter and being a little north were
experiencing winter a bit more keenly than many. One morning we woke up to find
all the trees covered in hoar frost. It was exceptionally beautiful. We were
astounded. Who could imagine such a phenomenon? So many little things were so
different, and we were absorbing them like sponges.
Another morning we woke to find the 100-foot driveway
covered in deep snow. I looked to my right and to my left. Both sets of
neighbors had obviously got up early and their driveways were clear. I was
impressed. These Canadians are clearly a tough bunch, to deal so quickly with
what looked like a big job before heading out to work. I took a deep breath,
grabbed a shovel, and started digging. About an hour later I was on my last
legs, puffing and panting, sweat dripping down me and only a third of the way
down the driveway. I was beginning to count the cost of owning a Canadian home
and my admiration for Canadians was rising by the minute. Just then a truck
arrived with a big snow blade on the front and the driver announced he was here
to clear the driveway. Phew – what a relief. I had been dreading having to face
that job every few days. |
| Icicles on a car. Who could imagine such a thing? |
Cheryl has always had green fingers. We had been asked
to keep the Heron’s indoor plants watered. Cher attacked this job with her
normal enthusiasm and was happy to report back to Lois Heron on her return,
that all her plants were in good shape, especially the large planter in their
front hallway. Lois, smiled and said, “actually that plant is artificial.” We
all had a good chuckle about that.
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| L. to R. Nancy Ford, Cheryl Cornish, Holly Blair, Elaine Martins |
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| Rob in front of SU Office. |
Within a few days of arrival, John Booker invited us into
the Scripture Union office to meet the staff and check out the lay of the land.
We met Holly Blair, Elaine Martins, and Irene from the office and Peter Jackson
from the warehouse. It was good to meet the folks who we would be working with.
Irene, pulled me aside and said, “Rob, I also am a recent immigrant. Things
will be tough for you at first, but we have learnt how to survive and I’m going
to teach you how to do the same”. She then proceeded to tell us where to find
good quality used clothing, furniture and so on. This was very welcome advice
as our dollars were scarce and we had been trusting that God would show us how
we were going to make it. From then on, we would regularly visit our local
Goodwill or Salvation Army store and pick up good quality clothing and
furniture for rock bottom prices. This survival tip served us in good stead for
many years in our early days in Canada.
One of the first things we needed to do was to get the
girls into a good school. In South Africa, and East London in particular, we
had access to top notch government schools. They had both been in an excellent Elementary
school for girls, called Clarendon. They had received an excellent foundation.
We needed to find out which were the best schools in the area and then we would
look for accommodation nearby. We asked Don and Marg for their thoughts. They
put us in touch with Alice Chase who had kids the same age as Elaine and Julia.
Alice was extremely helpful but didn’t really understand what we were looking
for. It eventually dawned on us that most schools were considered about the
same in quality. There were no “exceptional” schools of note. Alice did tell us
though that it might be possible to get the girls into the Gifted Program. This
gave us hope. We eventually decided we would shoot to live in Ajax, not too far
from where the SU office was in Pickering and close to where John Booker and
the Chases lived.
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| New school. New challenges - but the girls were up for it. |
The girls were booked into Southwood Park Public School where we commenced a love/hate relationship with the principal. In our
first meeting with him we had taken samples of the girl’s workbooks from South
Africa. Their handwriting was copperplate and spelling flawless, as they had
been taught. The principal snorted derisively and made a sarcastic comment that
“this was how we used to teach children forty years ago”, implying our girls
had suffered from an inferior, old fashioned schooling system. This did not get
us off to a good start. The girls got settled into their classrooms, but
clearly for them it was a shock to their systems. Firstly, they had to learn to
work alongside boys. Secondly, they had to get used to a much less structured
classroom set up. It also seemed that wanting to learn was not very cool. In
South Africa, when the teacher entered the classroom, the children would all
rise and in unison would greet the teacher. They were not allowed to sit down
until the teacher said so. Of course nothing of the sort existed in this school
or any others. Daily they would come home with their eyes wide and tell us
things like “do you know what Johnny said to the teacher today?”. For us, this
was the hardest part of settling down in Canada. We really felt we had traded
in a top of the line educational Cadillac for a rather modest VW Beetle.
Although I had a job lined up in Canada with Scripture Union, we did not
yet have approval to live and work in the country. South Africa was still under
heavy United Nations sanctions. Accordingly, the Canadian government made it exceedingly
difficult for South Africans to apply from within South Africa to move to
Canada. We had to apply from an embassy outside of the country. For us, who
were living on a thin budget in South Africa, it was costly, time consuming and
tedious. We had decided, rather naively, that now that we had a job lined up,
it would be a simple matter, once in Canada, to make our application for a work
permit and go from there.
Once we had our feet on the ground and feeling a bit settled,
we were itching to get started at Scripture Union. Until we had a work or
residence permit though, this was not possible. It was time to go to the
nearest immigration office and do the necessary. We hit a brick wall. We could
not find the right people to talk to. We eventually approached an immigration
lawyer. All the advice we were hearing was the same, basically “Go to the
nearest Canadian embassy outside of Canada and get in line with everyone else.
Write to us and we will send you and application form when we are ready”. What
I had assumed would be a simple, fill out a form and wait a few days, process was
turning out to be much more challenging. We were in the country on a holiday
visa, had a three-month non-negotiable return ticket back home. We had sold our
house and dismantled our lives completely in South Africa. We were sure that
God had led us to Canada, but the way forward seemed murky to say the least.
Yikes!!
After a couple of weeks of bashing our heads on
blockages I said to Cher. “Lets just go down to the Canadian Embassy in
Buffalo. Every other time we’ve needed to resolve a problem like this we have
just had to go in person and explain our situation.”. We left home at the crack
of dawn one day to do the two to three-hour drive to Buffalo. We were
determined to be first in line at the embassy. We wanted to have lots of time
to persuade whoever we spoke to that our request was clearly simple and easily
resolved.
When we arrived at the embassy, we were first in line
and waited patiently outside the door until it was opening time. Finally, they opened
and we were given a number to wait to be called with. We were tense and a bit
nervous. There was a lot riding on the outcome of this. While we were sitting
waiting, Cheryl remembered that she had left something in the car that she
needed for the girls. She took them downstairs to go and retrieve the needed
item. While she was gone, I was called through for an interview. The gentleman
was very friendly and pleasant and asked me why I was there. I told him our
story. He said to me, “This is your lucky day. There are three categories of
people that we fast track – University professors, journalists and religious
workers, because their jobs often require them to change countries.” He said, “how
long do you plan to stay?” I replied that we had decided that two years would
be a good start and we would know by then if we needed to stay longer. He prepared
a two year work permit and said, “if you
think you might need to stay longer, I suggest you apply soon, for Landed
Immigrant status and you should be fine to have it processed within the next
two years. The whole conversation had not taken more than fifteen minutes. I
walked back into the waiting room with the work permit in hand. Cher nearly
fainted. We spent the rest of the morning exploring downtown Buffalo a bit. It
felt like God had lifted a huge load of worry and concern off our backs.
Looking back now, we realize that getting into Canada is no easy thing. People
wait for years to have their applications processed. God had slain a giant on
our behalves, and we felt he was confirming the prior leading that had brought
us to Canada in the first place.
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| 62 Rideout Street - our first home in Canada. |
Now we had to find ourselves somewhere not too
expensive to live. We had our budget in hand and knew that we could not afford
a lot. We had initially looked at some apartments near Pickering Town Centre,
but John Booker said, “no, you can do better than that”. Eventually we heard
that the Anglican manse in Ajax was empty as the minister had left and they
were looking for a short-term tenant. They were in the process of renovating
the house. As it turned out the timing worked well as we had committed to
staying in the Heron’s house in Greenbank while they were away. And so, after
two months in Canada we moved into our first home at 62 Rideout Street in Ajax,
alongside of the Anglican Church. It was a newly renovated four-bedroom house.
Freshly painted, newly carpeted throughout and the rent was manageable. Once again,
we felt God’s loving, leading hand, guiding and providing for us graciously.
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| Elaine and Melissa's Brother |
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| Quest Club Kids - Back Row; Elaine, Julia, Melissa, Amy Front Row; Kim, Melissa's brother |
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| We discovered a great toboggan hill nearby. |
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| Part of our sleepover Program |
looking for a church to join. So far nothing had quite fitted what we were looking for. The girls were needing fellowship and the friends they were meeting on the street did not seem to have any church connections. We decided to start a Quest Club in our basement, named after the Scripture Union, kids devotional guides. We soon had five or six kids meeting weekly and even arranged a sleepover. One of the girls who joined that was Kim Mills who became Julia’s first friend and up until recently were still in touch, although life has now taken them in different directions. Another was Melissa, who is now married with kids. We occasionally see her around and catch up on her latest news. We pray that we planted seeds of the gospel in their hearts which will some day take root and grow.
I now had to get down to the serious business of looking
after our home. We had an old garden shed on the property which was jam packed
with treasures which we were glad to make use of. We found two bikes for the
girls which was a great find. I got them going and the girls were happy to have
them. Life was beginning to feel that things were getting back to normal. We
were getting used to the very safe living conditions in Canada and, for us
Africans, the amazing honesty of people. Rose and Roy would go away for days on
end from their house in the woods, leaving their front door unlocked. I guess
we got a bit careless and the girls’ bikes were left on the driveway one night.
We discovered the next morning that both had been stolen. This took us back to
our natural African caution. I guess life in the suburbs is not quite as easy going
as in the country.
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| Biking on the Ajax waterfront was a treat |
Speaking of Africa. For us Southern Africans, living
outdoors is considered part of the natural God given way of things. BBQ, which
we call “Braaivleis”, which means “Cook meat” is a bit more of an art form than
it is here in Canada. There is no such thing as propane. That would be
considered cheating. It starts with an outside fire, which is carefully
monitored by the men, whose job it is to come up with a perfect set of coals
for the cooking. This is the only form of cooking the men are expected to, and
dare I say it, trusted to do. Often the fire will be started and the
conversation will get going and then fairly regularly the moment of perfect
coals perfection will be missed through all the chatter the process will need
to be re-commissioned. This is all part of the occasion of braiing and enjoying
the great outdoors lifestyle which people from Africa value so highly. Now that
we had our own home to live in, it was time for a braai. One of the treasures
in our garden shed was an old wheel rim. This became our fire pit. It wasn’t
long before I had rounded up all the scrap wood I could find, and we had a good
fire going in our back yard and the meat was soon on the go. We soon got the
message from friends and neighbors that live fires in our backyards, really were
not the right thing to do. Reluctantly we had to let go of our braai model for
the much shorter form of propane BBQ. Having said that I am now a great fan of
the quick and easy, convenience of this approach, and in the light of our often-iffy
weather it makes a lot of sense.
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| Cheryl, Squiz and Sambo - the squirrels would scrabble and slip on the tiled floors, but could climb curtains easily. |
One day, when I was doing chores in the garden, I
spotted a baby squirrel shivering in the corner of the house, sheltering from
the wind. Clearly, it had been separated from the mother. We called a local pet store and asked if
they could take it in. Their reply was along the lines of, “We have more baby
squirrels than we can handle. What your little one needs is a friend, which we'll give you, and here’s
how you need to care for them both”. So, armed with that information we took
them in, found them a cage and proceeded with feeding them milk every three
hours. We named them Squiz and Sambo. This was a great family project. However,
squirrels grow up quite fast, and although we used to handle them and play with
them, they were very skittish, and had incredibly long and sharp nails. They
used to love climbing the curtains. We had been warned about the potential for
rabies and were terrified of being nipped, so eventually we decided to return
them to the wild. We stuck their cage out in the big tree in the garden, with
the door open and left them food in case they could not find their own. After a
couple of days of checking in with us, they took off and we never saw them
again. We felt we had done a good thing and had also managed to dodge the
bullet for a while longer of needing to fulfill our promise that “when we get
to Canada” we will get new pets.
Letting go of one’s culture is a long and painful
process. Most of us do not even realize how much that we take for granted in life.
Our natural assumption is that this is the way things are done and there is no
need to do it any differently. Only when
one moves to an alternative culture where things are done differently do we
begin to realize that all of our previous assumptions don’t necessarily make
sense to the new culture and it is us who have to adapt, not them. We found Canadians to be genuinely nice people, but very
quickly realized that many folks had a meagre understanding of our background.
The prevailing attitude was that Africa was one country and the fact that we
were from South Africa, meant little to them. They did not understand our
history, geography or sport. Also, folks had virtually no idea what our lives
had been like. All our achievements, track record and personal stories were of
little or no significance. This was a painful but understandable reality. We
realized that we were now in Canada and all that lay behind, was in the past.
We needed to start again building a brand-new life here. I have found that this
has given me a real empathy for newcomers to Canada, as I see them struggling
to hold onto what they have left behind, but needing to engage in the here and
now of Canadian culture mores and needs.
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| Hugh (Cornish) and Mary Jennings - our long lost Canadian cousins. What a treat to find them? |
Shortly before leaving South Africa to come to Canada,
we had been contacted by an elderly aunt, Flora Haliburton, in South Africa who
had been contacted by a relative in Scotland who had been visited by a Canadian
couple inquiring about Cornish relatives from Scotland a few years earlier. We
were given the couples contact information. Now that life had settled down a
bit, we contacted the couple who, it turned out lived about an hours drive away
and arranged to meet them. The couple were Mary and Hugh Jennings. Hugh had
Cornish blood in him from his mothers’ side, who had been a Cornish before
marrying. Mary had researched both sides of their family trees and presented us
with the Cornish one. There was a major gap in her Cornish tree which she had
not been able to complete. It turned out that two of the brothers from a few
generations earlier had emigrated to Canada and one they thought might have
gone to South Africa but had no confirmation of that. As we checked it all out,
it was clear that we were the missing South African link. Over the years we
have met some of our distant Canadian cousins. It was fun to make that
connection and to realize that even here, in this land far away from our
forefathers, God had sent representatives of our shared ancestors.
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| Disney World was a dream come true for us. |
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| The Magic Kingdom - wonderful! |
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| Nasa - another dream fulfilled. |
Something we had set our sights on from the get-go of
being in Canada was that while our girls were young enough, we had to visit
Disneyworld in Florida. Somehow, we had managed to accumulate a bit of cash and
we decided in the March break of 1992 to do a ten-day dash down there in our
newly acquired van and see the sights. We were still unjaded Africans, and this
was one of the greatest holiday adventures we had ever had as a family.
Disneyworld delivered one of life’s great experiences and I have since claimed
it was the best value for money I’ve ever enjoyed. We also found time to visit
Cape Canaveral and Daytona beach.
Soon after returning, on March 22nd, 1992
we celebrated my 40th birthday. By then we had settled into Ajax
Alliance Church, where there were lots of couples at our age and stage, and we
had a good number of friends over. We were beginning to feel a lot more at home
and settled. Just then we were notified by the Anglican church that they had
found a minister and needed us to move out. Oh dear. Life had been so good
where we were. Now we were thrown into confusion again.
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| It was soon time to leave our comfortable home at 62 Rideout Street |
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| 40th Birthday - how did that come up so quickly? |
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| Cheryl enjoying her bright sunny kitchen at 62 Rideout |
God is faithful and it turned out that a local
Presbyterian church down the road and closer to the girl’s school, was empty as
they were without a minister and they were looking for a short-term tenant. We
were happy to oblige and so after 18 months at 62 Rideout Street we moved into
the Presbyterian manse at 4 Hills Road in South Ajax, with Cher’s Mom and Dad
helping as they happened to be visiting at the time. This was a slightly more
upmarket neighborhood, with older homes, larger lots, and more mature gardens, so
we felt we were moving up in life. This was to be our home for another 15
months.
It was here that we acquired our first permanent pet
in Canada, and this was not by intention, but rather by accident. One day a cat
just arrived on our doorstep and let us know that we were welcome to have her
come and stay. She became ours by default. We felt bad for whoever had lost
her, but after a concerted search for her owners, she became ours. We named her
Smokey and she settled down for the duration. It turned out she was pregnant,
and we were the port in her storm. She produced her litter, which was of course
great fun. Amazingly we found homes for all of them except for one, which we
kept and named Tigger. This was the beginning of a long line of cats which even
I, an exclusive dog lover, came to enjoy and appreciate.
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| A proud moment - the day we became Canadian Citizens |
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| Rose and Roy's home in the woods - it was lovely to visit them. They always had extra waifs and stray kids visiting. |
And so, after almost three years we were beginning to
feel that we belonged in Canada. Work at Scripture Union was always
challenging, but we lived in hope that things would improve on that front. Rose
and Roy were living about a couple of hours drive just north of Lakefield. We were
able to see them regularly. Life was good. God was good. Moving to a new
country is not something I recommend for the faint of heart. It calls for
energy, drive, and determination, to overcome the many obstacles one faces.
Letting go of all of one’s personal histories is very costly, but a necessary
part of bonding to the new country and culture. We had done it together as a
family, God had helped us, and we looked forward to the future with
anticipation.
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