my Canadian experience
It’s been almost 2 years since my partner and I emigrated from Canada. The bittersweet feelings around leaving have led me to push it to the back of my mind. To almost pretend as if I never lived there to avoid dealing with how much I miss it. Healthy.
It was the right decision to leave, I had wanted to for so long, so missing it felt like a completely contradicting way to feel. The decision itself was both easy and difficult. Easy was the idea to move closer to home, to be nearer to family, and give ourselves a new experience. Difficult was the lingering doubt of whether it was the right choice.
Unfortunately for me, avoidance can only get you so far. So I decided to start unpacking that, to write about my time living there, the great and the less than ideal. Wouldn’t you know, it’s been incredibly cathartic and has helped me work through a lot of previously jumbled thoughts and feelings. It’s even cleared some of the clouds from certain memories, leaving me with an overall brighter picture.
I’ve sat with this piece for quite some time now, rereading and editing every time I look at it. It feels so consuming that I haven’t wanted to write or post anything else until I had this done. And finally, I feel a deep sense of peace.
Having said the things I wanted to say, reflected on the moments that mattered the most, and finally coming to term with the decision to leave, I am happy to finally share my Canadian experience.
it felt fitting to place a very happy and chaotic photo from our leaving party here to set some sort of vibe.
The Buzzfeed quiz that changed my life
Back in January 2019, I remember sitting in my university’s library, thinking up absolutely any way to procrastinate revising for my exams. After mindlessly completing a ‘Put Together Your Bucket List And We’ll Tell You Which Country You Need To Visit?’ quiz, Buzzfeed told me I absolutely must visit Canada next. I sent a screenshot to my friends in Toronto with a ‘should I move?’ text.
It was just a silly text and a sillier quiz, but for some reason, I couldn’t get the question out of my mind – should I move? I only had one term left until graduation and my dad was already asking me the big career questions that I had no answers for. Plus I had always wanted to move abroad.
I let myself simmer with the idea for a bit and long story short, I got my visa, told my parents I was moving, found a job as an Au Pair and moved to Canada precisely 10 months and 16 days later.
What was meant to be 2 years of living abroad quickly turned into almost 5 years, and during that time, there were a lot of things that shaped my experience, so much so that I decided to write an entire post about it.
in the first week of living in Kelowna, this was the sunrise view from my room. it felt incredibly magical.
Building A Life From Scratch
As you can imagine, when moving to a new country on your own, you have to put yourself out there in order to meet people. Personally, this was a non-worry for me.
In my teens, I had no issues with doing things on my own just to get them done, so putting myself out there didn’t scare me. That didn’t make ‘friendship dating’ any less difficult, and definitely no less exhausting — some friendships just didn’t bud, others faded away and then of course, some ended in disaster.
I think it’s important to note that one of the hardest things about making friends when you move abroad, is that typically you will only ever make friends with ‘non-locals’. People who are also experiencing this new place for the first time.
This is hard because it means you often experience fleeting friendships or worse, having your friends move home, leaving you left to start over. From personal experience, this can be incredibly draining and deeply saddening.
In saying that, there’s also something really beautiful about meeting people in different chapters of your life that now exist as forever friends around the world. So despite the heartbreak of neverending goodbyes, it also came with multiple platonic soulmates who will be in my life forever. A reminder that you can make true and lasting connections at literally any point in your life.
finding not one but TWO horse riding friends and going on a ranch trip together?!
you, me, and some floaties?
realising diversity doesn't come naturally
Amongst the difficulty of finding friends, I also found myself navigating race based experiences in the process. Coming from London, one of the most, if not the most diverse city in the world, I haven’t ever had this come up when making friends.
From nursery, through university, my friendship groups naturally looked like the cover of a school prospectus. To go from that to suddenly addressing different and offensive racial attitudes was incredibly ostracising.
This was especially hard in my first year living in a town called Kelowna, where the population was split between the hunting/shooting variety or the upper class ‘Kelownafornians’. Believe it or not, there was more overlap between those two groups than either would care to admit.
I wouldn’t say racism was deliberately overt there, bar a group of ‘country folk’ I commonly encountered that assured me that they weren’t ever talking about ‘my kind of Indian’. But despite it not being an in your face type of racism, there were a lot of frankly bizarre and incredibly out of touch things said to me during the year I lived there. Here’s my top 3 for you to paint a picture:
- Another parent dropping their 6 year old off for a playdate.
Mother of child: ‘You’re the new nanny right? And you’re from Mexico?’.
Me: ‘No, I’m from London’
The child I looked after: ‘I thought you were from BC (Canada)?’.
6 year old being dropped off for playdate: ‘Seriously? Does she look like she’s from BC?’
Indoctrination starts young, but the mother at least had the decency to look embarassed.
- Grandmother of a child trying to find parking at the beach on a busy day. To note, a section of this particular beach was returned to the First Nations of that area – and if your first thought is ‘What? Why?’ I encourage you to read up on your Canadian x Indigenous Peoples history.
Grandmother: ‘Wow, a whole section of the beach just sectioned off and reserved for them? Can you imagine if we were to do that? Imagine what they would say? It also makes parking such a nightmare.’
So close, yet so far.
- Kelowna’s beautifully sunny and hot summer + me who tans wonderfully in any given sun and has spent the summer nannying outside at parks, beaches, and poolside = nice and dark.
Host parent, impressed by my tan: ‘Wow, you’re so dark, soon people are going to start screaming black lives matter in your face!’
And the point of this was?
Honourable mention to the friend who told me I was ‘too into racism’ when I expressed that I was upset about my own experience and the general state of the media at that point in time.
There are way more things that spring to mind when writing that list, but let’s say for now those were the most standout.
black lives matter.
this was just a fun photo that I decided to put here.
confronting my racial identity
These occurrences didn’t taint my time in Kelowna nor did I have a bad time there, but it was definitely an experience. So even though I really loved my year there, it was clear early on that it was never going to be a forever home for me.
With that in mind, I decided to move to Vancouver, a metropolitan area that offered more diversity. After about 6 months of living there, I found myself embedded in a group of Irish people and through them, I met even more Irish people. With similar attitudes and sense of humour, being amongst them started to quickly feel like home.
In spite of all the fun and the laughter, there was a point where I was looking at a group photo and was hit with the realisation that I was 1 of 2 people of colour in a group of 40+. That was a tough revelation. It wasn’t that anyone made me feel out of place or othered, but it didn’t necessarily feel great either.
I also didn’t love the amount of people that got me confused with one of my Iranian friends, claiming that we ‘looked similar’. Can confidently confirm, we absolutely don’t.
What really hit home though, was all the cultural overlaps and jokes that were thrown around an existing group of friends that I didn’t feel a part of. It wasn’t until I peeled a pomegranate for a friend and saw her light up with joy. For both the fruit itself and also the shared understanding that preparing fruit for others is a labour of love amongst asian cultures.
Such a small thing, but it left a huge impact. I loved my friends dearly, they were my home away from home, but I also missed being around people with a shared cultural understanding. It got to a point where I started to become jealous of all my Irish friends because they had that, and I didn’t.
Luckily for me, I had wonderful friends who went out of their way to understand my feelings and bridge the gap. Friends who brought me flowers on Diwali because I missed celebrating with my family, and friends that came together to celebrate Eid with me to experience some of my culture.
thank you to the Irish men for bringing diversity to my life.
I remember this day so clearly, it was the day I fell in love with Vancouver.
Discovering My Sense Of Adventure
Confronting my racial identity wasn’t just hardships though. One of the biggest breakthroughs I had in Canada was my mindset around certain aspects of social class and ethnicity.
Growing up as a POC in East London, a lot of basic outdoor activities were seen as middle class or ‘white people shit’. Ironic considering horse riding has been my one true love since I was 6. Nonetheless, amongst peers it could feel rocky to step outside the status quo and try something new.
I remember wanting to go camping at the end of high school, but when suggesting it to my friends, I was hit with ‘black people don’t camp’. I honestly didn’t think anything of it, and camping fell off my radar. Even something as simple as going for a scenic walk as a family felt like some dystopian suggestion.
Then, moving to Canada, all of the things I didn’t even dream of doing were suddenly at my doorstep.
Canada as a country and landscape brought with it experiences that I could never have lived anywhere else, and it really awakened my sense of adventure. I discovered hobbies I didn’t think I’d ever have, but actually just didn’t have access to growing up in London.
My opinion on outdoor activities took a 180. Except hiking. You cannot pay me to have a good time on a hike.
Camping, exploring, even going for long drives became my after work and weekend fun. Turns out 2 hours in the car isn’t that bad when you’re driving on beautiful Canadian highways instead of the M1 in bumper to bumper traffic.
Some of my best memories involve sleeping in my car, driving into the bush for a secret rave, finding hidden hot springs, or driving up to Big White to party without a place to sleep.
Canada had so many new things to offer which not only made my experience there unforgettable but also shifted my entire perspective. I am now adamantly against the idea that there are spaces I shouldn’t enter and delight even more in seeing representation across fields, industries, sports, simply everything.
I tried winter sports and actually I really don’t like them… but at least I tried.
volunteering on a bison ranch because I love bison.
Accidentally Becoming An Adult
After all is said and done, without a doubt, my most prominent Canadian experience was growing up. I moved there as a fresh graduate, looking to have fun and avoid real life responsibilities, and I left as… Well, an adult.
Moving countries brought with it all the trials and tribulations of adulthood.
I got my first corporate job in Vancouver, which brought with it the enemy that is the HR department. I found myself dealing with numerous visa disasters and had to move back home for a few months. I broke my arm snowboarding while in between visas and subsequently healthcare; not only did I have to pay almost $5,000 out of pocket, but it took me two years and multiple breakdowns to get it reimbursed. At one point, I had to move houses 5 times over the span of 3 months because I just couldn’t get my shit together.
Shout out to the 6 weeks I lived off mandarins, biscuits, and cigarettes because I couldn’t afford anything else.
While at the time, these things all felt huge and as though my world was falling apart, in hindsight, they feel so insignificant. Of course they were hard, but the fact that they don’t matter at all now diminishes the stress I once felt.
I am truly grateful for the lessons they taught me and the resiliency they showed me I had. Honestly, I would have preferred to have not dealt with the stress of them at all, but to quote one of the greats ‘Life’s a climb, but the view is great’.
Plus, as a girl that lives for the plot, I’ve built up great lore.
what makes this injury even more ridiculous is that it wasn’t from a bad fall. I simply sat down and my arm hit the ground wrong and dislocated.
home is where the heart is
I feel like the first question I get when I talk about the fun I had in Canada was ‘wow, why would you ever want to leave?’. Honestly, this felt like a loaded question for the longest time, because I never knew how to articulate it.
There was never anything inherently wrong with my life in Canada, I’d argue that my life was unproblematically great. Sure there were some hard times and unpleasant moments but those exist everywhere, and in spite of them, I was living a mostly full life.
But for whatever reason(s), I spent most of my time in Canada not wanting to stay but not wanting to leave. I recognized all the things that I had in the palm of my hand by living in Vancouver, and yet it didn’t ever feel enough to stay. But without having a good enough reason to leave, I didn’t.
The beginning of the end came when my sister visited in June 2023. Having her over felt like being at home, the stupid arguments, sharing clothes, inside jokes and references — I didn’t realise how much I missed it. Travelling together again while I showed her around some of my favourite places in BC really emphasised how much I missed being around my family. I was surprised at how much of a slump hit after she left.
My best friend visited me a few months later, and with her came a balm for my soul. I loved having her over and I loved showing her around, but when I think about the best moments, it was eating donuts in the car, doom scrolling in silence next to one another, and laughing over old memories. It was simply spending time with her.
When she left, a deep rooted sadness took place. It took me a while to recognise that it was being irreparably homesick. Not for London, but for my family and friends. Suddenly that inexplicable feeling of always wanting to leave Canada became clearly tied to just how much I missed them.
It feels silly to have spent so long struggling to come to grips with something as simple as being homesick. For some reason though, it just never occurred to me thats what I was feeling because I was tying the overall concept to London, rather than people.
despite the amount of times I went to Steveston, it was my sister who discovered the best ice cream shop in all of greater Vancouver.
when I first moved, I didn’t get to see my family for almost two years. when my mum finally got to visit me, it was like a dream.
is the grass is always greener?
It was and still is a very frustrating feeling to try and explain, the juggling act of missing your home and family, while also enjoying the life you have built for yourself so far away from them. I never wanted to move back to London, and I likely never will, but for how close I am with my family, being so far from them was always a heavy weight that lingered within.
Even now, as I write this, I am still faced with new revelations about things I previously felt and didn’t know how to explain. This post has for real been free therapy.
Sometimes I still feel a bit torn, when I look back at photos of Canada and wonder if I made the right choice to leave. It’s inevitable to feel that way despite knowing I made the right choice, because I miss it. But even when those thoughts come up, there is no regret alongside them, only futile curiosity.
I definitely miss it, the lifestyle and the people, and in an ideal world, I would have convinced my entire family to pack up and move to Canada to be closer to me. That probably would have been the one thing that made me stay but alas, they would not uproot their lives for me. Selfish.
Ultimately, Canada gave me cherished memories and I am grateful that I made the jump to move there, but for how deeply being away from family was affecting me, I am also grateful that I left.
Shoutout Canada, ily <3
