TK has been fore warning about possible traps/dangers in Canadian immigration.

Two articles one about the past 100 years an another about will establish that NOTHING has changed in 100 years.

The only thing is that people cried before and cry now.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1129609--foreign-trained-banker-works-as-security-guard


http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/11/canada-founded-on-misery/

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Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.

Canadian Museum of Civilization
Mortgaging the Homestead, an 1890 painting by George Angus Reid, portrays a moment of darkness and misery.

Library and Archives Canada
To browse the 19th-century Canadian art at Ottawa’s National Gallery is to enter a cheery land of carousing French habitants, axe-wielding pioneers and heroic warriors. Fresh from the crowded art colleges of Europe, Canada’s earliest painters could not resist framing their new adopted home in glowing terms. But when painter George Angus Reid, the son of Irish immigrants, sat down in 1890 to sketch his diploma work for the Royal Canadian Academy, he dredged up one of the most painful experiences of his youth: The day the family was forced to mortgage their western Ontario homestead.

A “mortgage was a last resort,” wrote art curator David Burnett in 1990. By calling a banker into their home, Reid’s family had effectively signed away control of their destiny, forever to languish under the “shame and stigma of failure.” The darkness and misery of Reid’s Mortgaging the Homestead stands in stark contrast to the bright, majestic paintings hung around it. Reid’s family patriarch sits slumped and defeated before a banker, his head in his hands. Seated against a wall, two grandparents dressed in the styles of the old country stare forlornly at the floor. Their gamble for the Canadian dream has failed.

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By 2030, according to recently released projections from the 2011 census, due to falling birth rates more than 80% of Canada’s population growth will need to be borne by new immigrants. In many ways, it is a return to the country’s roots. Canada was built on the backs of immigrants. Brave pioneers cleared the land, hammered the railroads and forged the cities that make up modern Canada.


Illustration / Kagan Mcleod After Grant Wood
CLICK TO ENLARGE
Many of them did not enjoy it one bit. There are reports of Ukrainian pioneers bursting into tears upon sighting their new Alberta home, Atlantic colonists whose stomach twisted into knots when they remembered the day they decided to set out for Canada, disenchanted Upper Canadians who drowned their sorrows in a constant stupor of cheap, rancid whiskey.

“Disillusionment, disappointment, sometimes mixed with a dose of indignation about the false visions which were used to lure them to that foreign land,” said a Dutch newspaper in a 1925 summary of immigrant experience.

But for all the death, privation, suicide, depression and starvation of Canada, thousands stayed — and millions of us claim them as ancestors. Never mind the modern tales of trained Iranian PhD holders driving Vancouver cabs: What does it mean to be a country founded on misery?

With the 1885 completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway still years away, British settler Jennie Plaxton and her husband were forced to travel to their homestead in Prince Albert, Sask., by horse and buggy over muddy, mosquito-infested dirt tracks. In her journal, Ms. Plaxton describes coming across another couple: “The bride was in torment with mosquitoes, just nearly crazed with them” she wrote. Days later, the unnamed bride would kill herself with a revolver.

“There are people who genuinely experience trauma in this new country,” said York University professor Roberto Perin. The personal papers of Canada’s earliest lieutenant-governors abound with petitions from new citizens begging to be given passage back home. Newcomers were stunned by the lack of infrastructure, the extreme climates and the cocktails of deadly diseases hiding in the wilderness.


Topley Studio / Library and Archives Canada
Settlers would occasionally stagger off transatlantic sailing ships, only to see their families wiped out in a matter of weeks by cholera, tuberculosis and even malaria, known to settlers as “ague.” “Whole families were down with the ague in 1847,” wrote Upper Canada settler Anne Langton. “And perhaps no one to look after them but a neighbour, a mile away, herself in a state of ague.” The despair of these early Canadians continues to pervade our maps: Misery Bay, Ont.; Disappointment Lake, B.C.; Mosquito, N.L.

In her 2007 book Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities, Royal Military College historian Jane Errington follows the Upper Canada odyssey of Harriet Pengelly, a young immigrant from the Channel Island of Guernsey. “Left my happy home,” wrote the young wife in 1835, as she and her newlywed husband, Robert, disembarked at Liverpool. Upon arrival in the village of Flamborough, now a suburb of Hamilton, she laments “Alas! What am I come to! My heart is breaking with grief!” While her husband trolled around for land Pengelly kept to their dirt-floored cabin, writing desperate letters back home. When replies came, she wept uncontrollably with emotion. When they did not, she was unable to eat.


Richard Johnson / National Post
CLICK TO ENLARGE
After little more than a year, the heartbroken young bride was buried in St. Peter’s Churchyard in Cobourg, Ont. Dead from unknown causes, later historical accounts would write only that Pengelly was a victim of the “harsh Upper Canada winter.” “I regret more & more, every hour having brought my poor dear departed wife to this Country,” wrote Robert after the funeral.

It took a skilled salesman to lure boatloads of English to one of the bleakest places on Earth, an icy tundra where redcoats went to die. In the 1830s, William Cattermole became one of Canada’s most visible spokesmen. To audiences around the country, Cattermole spoke of a land where “the lakes teem with … fish” and “deer abound in the woods.” He had ready listeners. The end of the Napoleonic Wars had plunged Europe into a deep recession — and England stood on the brink of famine. “In point of … capability for an advantageous settlement, [Canada] is not exceeded, if equalled, by any country in the world,” Cattermole wrote in 1830. He could be forgiven for exaggeration. Cattermole’s employer, the Canada Company, paid him by the settler.

A century later, pro-immigration rhetoric would reach a fever pitch under Clifford Sifton, the Manitoba newspaperman pegged by Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier to fill the recently treatied Prairies with European farmers. Teaming up with railroads and steamship lines, Sifton peppered Europe with posters and pamphlets showing burly farmers standing in endless fields of golden wheat. Sifton even coined a sexy tagline, “The Last Best West.”

In the deepest frosts of the Prairie winter, settlers would look back on these ads with bitterness. English immigrant Mary Louisa Cummin wrote that Canadian Pacific Railway promoters had promised “a fortune for everyone in three years not to mention glittering promises of practically free land.”

“Hopes were high. So we, poor fools, fell into the trap.”

“These people were the perfect victims,” Mr. Perin said. Whether it was 19th-century British or early 20th-century Eastern Europeans, many would-be Canadians were illiterate, uneducated and forced to put their full trust with go-betweens.


Canadian Museum of Civilization
“There was a lot of duping going on,” Mr. Perin said.

Slowly, the awful truths of the Canadian experience trickled home. In a February 1928 letter to the Dutch newspaper De Armhemsche Courant ominously titled “A word of warning for those who are thinking of emigrating to Canada,” a Dutch immigrant writes that the streets of his adopted Chatham, Ont., home were “black” with unemployed men. “Three months ago a Hollander committed suicide due to despondency and poverty and there’ll be more.”

Some European villages needed only to see the boatloads of one-time settlers fleeing home with tales of botched Canadian adventures. “A lot of people left; outmigration was as high as inmigration for a very, very long time,” said Adele Perry, the University of Manitoba-based Canada Research Chair in Western Canadian Social History. Under the 1872 Dominion Lands Act settlers were assured 160 acres of free land, provided they could cultivate at least a quarter of the plot within three years. An astonishing 40% of settlers could not cut it, or simply gave up — eventually fleeing to the U.S., finagling a ticket home or descending into the mafias and crime rings of the inner cities.

In modern times, the immigrant mix has changed but the Canadian experience remains as daunting as ever: unrecognized credentials, low wages, unemployment and dangerous work. This week, after a long day of vaccinating chickens at an Ontario poultry farm for minimum wage, 10 Peruvian labourers were killed in Hampstead, Ont., when police said the driver of their packed 15-passenger van ran a stop sign, driving directly into the path of a speeding truck.


Library and Archives Canada
In the early 20th century, Mr. Perin’s own grandfather came from northern Italy to work as a labourer, building a stone wall around Manitoba’s Stony Mountain Penitentiary and, Mr. Perin suspects, laying railway beds between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg. But after five years, the allure of the Canadian dream appears to have had no effect on the young Italian. He gathered up his earnings and returned to the northeast Italian plains of Friuli.

Of the Canadians that stayed, for many, the shock of immigration “never wore off,” said Ms. Errington. In letters, they long for relatives they would never see again and pine for one more chance to see the Scottish moors or the Irish hills. One universal comfort, she said, was the vague notion that things would “be better for their children,” she said. Long after their own youthful idealism had run dry, settlers clung to the idea that their offspring would have a better chance. Among Canada’s latest generation of disillusioned immigrants — degree-holding janitors and taxi drivers with medical credentials — the idea remains a precious mantra.

Mr. Perin’s grandfather left, but his son — Mr. Perin’s father — tried the New World anew. Canada has indeed been a land of opportunity, but rarely at first glance.

National Post
thopper@nationalpost.com

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Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.

Well found article Vandematram:

The truth is ... some make it and and some don't. Some know how to succeed where ever they are .... some don't know. Some know how to live happily wherever they are and some don't. Migrating to another country is not for every one.... Success or failure depends on many factors ... no one is at blame and no one is at praise.

Comments on the Article:

hikeandski
What a silly article! The author should try getting informed. My paternal grand parents came from Ukraine in 1897. There they were serfs. My father was an uneducated laborer and father of five. I was the youngest. My maternal grandparents came from Poland in 1893. My maternal grandfather spoke several languages. Both sets of grandparents homesteaded 160 acres.

I became a professional and a partner in the firm at 26. I had built a 2800 square foot brick home on a park in Calgary at 31, I now live on a small farm with a two acre trout pond 35 minutes from my former office in downtown Calgary. I drive four vehicles, including a Benz 500SL convertible in summer. My father told me about plowing the farm with oxen when he was 9 years old.

In how many countries in this world does such opportunity prevail? And I am only one example of many many many thousands. The author should work hard and long and perhaps some day elevate himself to a jerk.



Wimbrooklyn
My grandfather worked his way across from Glascow in a cattle boat, ended up in Hamilton working a number of unskilled jobs before becoming a street car conductor.

He was able to buy a small house, raise a family of 4 children all of whom moved up a notch and so on for the next generation.

I don't know what Tristan's point is with the article but the facts are that 100 years ago, economic and employment prospects were very poor in the home countires, immigrants may have suffered some hardships, but in the end, were better off.

And the same (more or less) holds true today, people come to Canada for the betterment of themselves and children, it does not always happen in a day.

Most immigrants I know are the hardest working people around and they will prosper,



Craig Livingstone
Canada....founded on misery? How about Canada, paradise for those who overcame challenges. For every immigrant or pioneer who gave up, thousands of industrious individuals found freedom, happiness and a lifelong reward for their determination and fortitude.

No one captured them, enslaved them and forced them to come. They came because there was nothing for them in the Old World. To be born or to live in Canada is to win the greatest lottery in life. Just ask the millions who would love to face the "misery" for the opportunities that Canada offers for those who are willing get to work.

Thanks Vandemataram for the articles.
however I wish that more and more people migrate to outside of India,so that there is not competetion to my job in India.
If you had read my other post, you would have found that my company wants to sponser for a 3 day trip to Mumbai (all expenses paid). The reason that they are giving is that they want to exhaust the budget by March 31st, or otherwise the next years budget will be less than the previous years. Though I refused all other options of going to places like HK,Singapore etc., I am just going to Mumbai so that they will not trouble me for sometime.
If educated professionals donot go out of India and suffer in places in Canada for leaving India,do you think that people like me in India can enjoy what Indian companies offer?
just think.

Peace

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I am a Gents and not a Ladies.

I work in downtown toronto, I read the misery article and then went out of my building to look around, I saw only positive change in this country, . Built from nothing to self sufficient sitting among developed countries. The article does not highlight the achievements of immigrants.

Every immigrant to any other country , town , village (including newly wed bride) will have to struggle first. How many doctors or other degree holders are driving cab or are security guards for continously 5-10 yrs ? All most all settle down eventually in one profession or other.


Immigration is a difficult process, Even if country like swizerland offers you an immigrant status with monthly allowance for easy living many of us will sulk because of language barriers, boredom, seclusion, some Indian will even feel cold ! in most of the houses you cant flush toilet at night, this becomes a misery factor for many ! Vegies always say they are miserable.

Immigration is for flexible people, those who are ready to change profession if need be, change accent if need be, analyse and shed old habits, learn new attiquates which is surely needed, gel into new tradition and culture and shun useless religious & traditional practices which are prevalent back home.

I know few IT profesional doing well but shifted to real estate business, trucking, transportation, bacame lawyers and again doing well. Whats wrong with a Phd or doctor with a degree driving a truck or a taxi or going for other profession? Only wrong is that they are not going back if they are miserable.

Nobody will read that article if everything is projected hunky dory, then actually there will be no artcle , that article is to highlight misery of immigrants only but there is alway two sides of a coin !

Its all destiny. What has to come to one will come no matter what. What is not destined will not come no matter what.

Try to change what you can what you cant accept it and be happy.

Fatalism aside, I sure hope these folks are sitting in their chilly apartment and contemplating what exactly made them uproot their quiet, established lifestyle in India and move to the less known land with no real promise of employment, comparable in any shape or form to what they were doing. My suspicion is that it is important to Indians to prove to their neighbors and relatives that they can make to a far-off land in the Western hemisphere and thrive. Well, they did make it to Western hemisphere. If poor Indians or fresh graduates with no employment at home moved here, it would be a whole different matter; most of those immigrants in distant past were illiterate, pretty much hopeless back in their native European lands and so forth... so it must have been easy to buy into the pretty descriptions and have high hopes. But these professionals who were well established at home and are essentially driven by the needs of braggado and greed.... I wouldn't worry much about their success or failure. However, these stories may give newer immigrants to be cautious and keep their links to their old jobs while probing the new country for practical opportunities. Or just languish in whatever situation they end up in. But then again, only in India being a security guard may be looked down upon.... it is a job and gets you going day-to-day. Afterall, the society needs folks to do security jobs, cleaners, builders and all others. Think of education as a good thing, not a mere means to making cash. Canada is fortunate to have highly educated folks driving taxis, securing businesses and mopping floors. These folks are less likely to stray into drugs and crimes!! This is already an added bonus for the society.

Among many other nationalities, it seems to me that it is the Indians who are never happy... Not sure if it has anything to do with having low level of self-respect or dignity (why on earth so many seem to abandon a society that have been part of since birth!!).