We need to stop expecting that Canada will ever be homogeneous in life, culture or the arts. To say Canadian art is a fallacy, unless we mean world art. Because we have all arrived here from different worlds.
Canada is a multicultural country with many immigrants. I have never felt more like an immigrant then when I took a writing course at Ryerson in autobiographies. I happened to be in a class with predominantly white women whose parents were born here but great great grand parents came from Scotland or England. Our first assignment was to write about a memory from when you were 4 years old and we were to share it next class.
Well, I was one of the end readers and listened to others who wrote about chimneys, lovely Christmases, toys and nicknacks on the mantles of their nana's place.
I wrote about how the KGB pounded on our door in the middle of night and dragged my grandpa away to prison for being a "kulak", a business man, terrifying all of us.
The other ladies were stunned into silence. No feedback for me...
I dropped out of the course.
As immigrants we all arrive with different past experiences. As artists we express those experiences and also the archival ones from where we came from. It is the childhood ones that last the longest.
Canada is a multicultural country with many immigrants. I have never felt more like an immigrant then when I took a writing course at Ryerson in autobiographies. I happened to be in a class with predominantly white women whose parents were born here but great great grand parents came from Scotland or England. Our first assignment was to write about a memory from when you were 4 years old and we were to share it next class.
Well, I was one of the end readers and listened to others who wrote about chimneys, lovely Christmases, toys and nicknacks on the mantles of their nana's place.
I wrote about how the KGB pounded on our door in the middle of night and dragged my grandpa away to prison for being a "kulak", a business man, terrifying all of us.
The other ladies were stunned into silence. No feedback for me...
I dropped out of the course.
As immigrants we all arrive with different past experiences. As artists we express those experiences and also the archival ones from where we came from. It is the childhood ones that last the longest.
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