Every Saturday, ONFR offers a column on Franco-Ontarian news and culture. This week, it’s Rym Ben Berrah who discusses social and educational issues that affect everyday life.
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Everything is bad in the world right now, isn’t it? We blame ourselves for not being too informed, we blame ourselves for not suffering too much like others who don’t have it easy, we blame ourselves for being privileged, then we blame ourselves to blame ourselves for being privileged, since each of us experiences something and all life is legitimate.
Aside from the international chaos, the misery and the intergenerational traumas which are emerging and which are to come, I think of the violence which rages in our lives as Canadians, both inside and outside of We.
I think of the body recovered on Saint-Quentin Island, that of the student of Congolese origin, Alexandra Martine Diengo Lumbayi, who died at the age of 21, rest her soul. His disappearance brings to light a subject that is close to my heart, and has been for years: immigration in general, international students in a particular branch.
You have to have experience, guts and, excuse the term, nerve in order to cross several countries and come and settle in the Canadian cold to succeed in your studies. It’s the Eldorado of the North American post-secondary or university degree: from Montreal to Toronto, to Ottawa, to Hearst, to Sudbury, to Kapuskasing and so on.
Reckless young people who live as their first experience, far from their roots, their close family and their parents, the fact of acclimatizing, adapting and operating in a Canadian education system. My personal experience covers more French-speaking knowledge regarding this data, but let us agree that uprooting has no language.
Despite the promise of the “Canadian dream,” uprooting necessarily implies a more or less significant loss of bearings depending on the situation. Photo: Canva
I have always found it astonishing to pay such exorbitant amounts for tuition fees that do not offer the total to people who come to ensure their future on Canadian soil, whether in terms of reception, integration, paperwork, post-diploma administrative procedures, development in a society where we do not has no root, but where we learn to establish ourselves, etc.
I am aware that there are various efforts made by several organizations, organizations and infrastructures to improve the experience of international students, but let’s talk about what can be improved.
Do you think that parents are reassured to send their offspring overseas with all the family savings, in order to return with a paper to ensure the future of the family or restore the image of the level of education of the household? Do you think that we equip these people so that they know how to read the circulars or how to find their way rather than wandering blissfully, sometimes haggard, between the shelves, looking for cans of food or pasta that they don’t have? never known? Do you know the moral harshness of winter and the economic harshness of obtaining everything necessary to have a fairly passable student life?
I myself was a new immigrant one day, and over the years I have developed acquaintances and friendships with several people from different backgrounds. Sometimes we laugh about it, about how difficult it is. It was, initially, to understand for example how to download the necessary files for school. Where is Coopsco? Which store to go to to buy medicine? Why can we get a TV at Walmart at midnight, but not have access to a family doctor? Why is it so easy to get a credit card, but so complicated to manage your finances and interest rates? But wait, that’s where I buy hot sauce (not Red Hot) and turmeric?
Mental health at risk
I think about everyday living arrangements and the idea of the news of Alexandra’s inert body being found shocks me. As I write these lines, I don’t know if the act will be declared criminal or not, I don’t know if she threw herself into that river by herself or if she was pushed into it.
On the other hand, I know that we can do more in terms of mental health, to support students, new arrivals as well as humans, all categories combined. The day before yesterday, at the pharmacy, I heard a young man ask what the Canadian equivalent of a doliprane. There needs to be a dictionary of cultures for people who have more than just one home.
You don’t need to come from elsewhere to understand the delicacy of conformity and the indelicacy of lack of tolerance and respect. You can simply go from a small town to a big one, from Casselman where you know your entire high school to the University of Ottawa where you get lost in a sea of humans, to understand that individualism is a scourge of our society .
Temperatures are starting to drop and horrors continue to circulate around us. It’s time to pour ourselves a big hot bowl of compassion and to be united. It’s time to help with a word, a share, a thought or a dollar when we can. Each of us experiences battles that cannot be put into words, and each life comes with its share.
You don’t need to come from elsewhere to understand the delicacy of conformity and the indelicacy of lack of tolerance and respect.
A thought for the less well off, the misunderstood, for those who rebel or abandon school, because the weight of incomprehension is too high, for those who graduate, but have difficulty finding work, because we demand “ a Canadian experience” in the file. To those who haven’t been able to sleep for months because of the news that bombards them every night. To those whose voices break when it’s time to celebrate, but the only spark they have is their roommate who offers them a game of hockey. A positive thought to anyone working for good, in integration and in breaking isolation, from 7 to 77 years old. The weight of evils is less heavy when carried by the mosaic of an entire community.
