I am a Traveller and an Immigrant

Mum and Andrew - a new home in Canada

“There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign.” — Robert Louis Stevenson 

I am a traveller. I was only 2 weeks old when my family drove from the big city hospital where I had been born over the dusty back roads of Africa to the agricultural station where Dad was working. I celebrated my first birthday in England after the long journey “home” by boat. I spent 2 ½ years in France when I was going to university, and I’m back again now. I’ve lived and worked in 4 Canadian provinces.

As a first-generation Canadian, I am an immigrant. Oh, it’s easy for me to pass. I have the right colour skin and the right accent, but that doesn’t change the facts. Anti-immigration rhetoric applies to me as well as to more recent immigrants.

I visited an exhibit on travel at the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (MUCEM) while I was in Marseille. The exhibit looked at travel from many different angles: as a search for the sun, adventure, exile, refuge, wandering. Two pieces in particular held my attention, and I want to share them with you.

Baggage 

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes 

Marcel Duchamp

I give a lot of thought to what I take with me when I travel. But what is far important is what I bring home with me. I would not be the same person if I hadn’t travelled. Perhaps the most valuable gift has been a more open mind. I still have my prejudices, but I’m also more aware that there is no one right way to live.

The many suitcases, all in movement, remind me that I am a solitary nomad, always on the move with attachments to many different places, collecting valuable lessons in each.

Exile and Refuge 

“What matters most on your journey,” Phil Cousineau tells us, “is how deeply you see, how attentively you hear, how richly the encounters are felt in your heart and soul.” (Zen on the Trail, Christopher Ives) 

Barthélémy Toguo

My family moved to Canada in search of work. We found a home, a steady income, good schools. Canadian citizenship was easily obtained. Yes, there were regrets. My father never felt completely at home in Saskatoon. My mother missed her friends and relatives in England. But we gained so much – space, opportunities, an amazing natural landscape and wildlife. In turn, we have contributed our skills and resources.

It can be frightening (and often dangerous) to board a boat for a distant shore, not knowing what you’ll find when you arrive. The boat in the exhibit is heavily laden with bundles symbolizing all we, as immigrants, have to offer as well as the sum total of our lives to date. For me, the teapots signify the immigrants’ desire to share a new life and to become part of a new community. The colours surely represent the joy of being alive as well as hope for the future and are a symbol of the rich gifts immigrants bring to their new home.

I am a traveller and an immigrant. Will you welcome me to your country?