Culture shock in a place where you can be yourself
By: Peter DruxermanThis is a wonderful article from the Toronto Star about one of our former employees and her experiences immigrating to Canada. I am so glad that we could have been a part of her Canadian life. You can watch the embedded video from the star, or read the full article below.
Mar 21, 2009 04:30 AM
To Elmira Amirpour, it was culture shock. In Canada, she could be Iranian.
“In Europe, they want you to be like them,” she said over coffee in her sunny, stylish Markham living room. “You have to change. So you do it without noticing. Here, you can stay who you are.”
Not too long after the 34-year-old dental hygienist arrived with her husband and son, she encountered a Chinese teller at her bank.
“I couldn’t really understand her, but I was so happy to see her. Anybody can work here.”
At age 14, Amirpour left Tehran for Denmark, sent to join her brother. Their parents would eventually move there, too. She grew up in Copenhagen, got her degree, worked, had lots of friends, married, owned a house, and had Kasra, who’s now 7.
“In Denmark, I never wanted to say I was a Dane, and the Danish never expected me to be one. Patients would ask you five times to say something. Or, no matter what you said, tell you you didn’t pronounce it right. They would be surprised you didn’t live in a tent or had a dining room table. You were always reminded you didn’t look like them.”
It wasn’t until she left that she realized how much energy it took to get through that kind of tension every day in Denmark.
“Kasra will tell you he is Danish. But if we had stayed there, he would not have been treated as a Dane.”
Still, the adjustment has been hard since the family arrived in Canada in October 2007.
She’s not as resilient as she was at 14. She misses her friends and Copenhagen, a sophisticated, fashionable city. She misses Danish movies and music, but knows she can get them on the Internet.
She hates not working.
“I know I am still struggling to find my place here,” Amirpour said. “It seems like I am locked behind a door. I know there is a big pretty garden on the other side, but I still have not found the right key to open it.”
She’s learning Canadian ways, slowly. She worked for a while at Druxy’s, where a customer upbraided her for not knowing that the jam in a peanut butter and jam sandwich should be strawberry. She had to have poppies explained to her on Remembrance Day, but wore one proudly last November. She knows now what a double-double, a Reuben sandwich and a BLT are.
Amirpour and her husband, Shad Hossein Estedadi, decided on Canada after a visit to her sister, who lived in Newmarket.
Estedadi was a social worker in Denmark, with a radio program to help foreigners learn to “get along with Danes.” Now he works at a consulting firm.
“We came here because we want to stay here. We’re not part of the community yet. But we will be.”