European Settlers are “Immigrants” Final Academic Essay

Noshing Zaman
ACST 1000
Dr. Richard Fields
02/12/2015

Précis

John Robinson, farmer at Bewholm in the County of York, and Thomas Rispin Farmer of Fangross journeyed through Nova Scotia years after the founding of Nova Scotia to account of the country’s position in economic growth, and to observe the lifestyle of the inhabitants. The journal is quite interesting as these voyagers express their initial thoughts of arriving in Halifax as discouraging, as they witnessed land covered in rocks and unsatisfying for cultivation. Most voyagers who arrived in Halifax were quit poor in England and came to find prosperity in this new country. This unfavourable appearance made passengers onboard the ships looking for a new prospective life in Halifax, wishing to take the long trip back to their homes in England. Even though immigrants today face the similar discouragement upon arriving to Canada, their motives are further discouraged by discrimination faced in their daily lives. Immigrants from rural Bangladesh face different experiences than those of urban Bangladesh upon arriving in Canada. Even so, the initial time in Canada is quite difficult to adapt. Further ignorance by several Canadians leads to cultures and religions being grouped to a specific title or cause especially for Middle Eastern immigrants. Some Canadians fear to allow Syrian refugees in their country because of fear of facing the terrors the Syrians face in their everyday lives. Citizens of Canada are related to those who have come from parts of Europe in quest for a new life style centuries ago. Several Canadians do not realize that Canada had once belonged to the First Nations people, who were eventually tortured and forced to give up their land to those European settlers.

Introduction

The emotional response from arriving to a new country is not only experienced by voyagers travelling to Canada back during the late 1700s, but are still experienced today by immigrants looking for a better life to support their families. Due to the lack of cultural knowledge provided in today’s society, the values of immigrants tend to be overlooked.

Discussion

As an international student, growing up in the rural areas of Bangladesh, had a similar experience coming to Canada. However, there is significant difference in emotional response that rural Bangladeshis experience compared to the experience of the wealthy Bangladeshis who come from the capital city of Bangladesh, Dhaka. To provide a better insight, most international students that come to Canada to study pays a tuition fee of almost 1,400 dollars per course. That is more than half of what a Canadian student pays for their tuition. Nevertheless, the tuition for international students at Saint Mary’s University is one of the cheapest. Therefore, the students who come as international students, must have an outstanding financial balance and provide proof of this standing. The students come from the capital city are the children of CEO’s, political leaders, doctors, or international business owners. Social media tends to depict the slums of Bangladesh, but what the media does not show, that foreign travelers witness, are the booming industries, shopping centres, factories and acres of residential land owned by its people.
The living standards of those living in the city compared to those living in the rural parts of Bangladesh can be compared to the lifestyles of those who are celebrities and lower-middle income families in Canada - with the exception of people living in the slums. The capital city, Dhaka is located in the south-central part of the country is one of the largest metropolises in South Asia. The inhabitants of Dhaka can confirm that their life was much more luxurious than the life they are adapting to in Canada. Back home, these people own several cars, have personal chauffeurs, maid servants, cleaners and cooks. They receive breakfast in bed and unlimited money to spend at clubs just as people do in America. For this reason, these students go back to their home country at least every year to relieve themselves and be spoiled once again. Once they come to Canada, most of these students end up learning, for instance, how to use a vacuum cleaner, or how to do their own laundry and even how to cook the food their personal cooks used to make back home from watching YouTube videos. Perhaps the worst experience is having to start a minimum wage job, forcing them to work under the pressure they are not accustomed to and use the physical strain they had never experience before in their life. Some Canadians criticize immigrants because majority apply for these minimum wage jobs, however, some of us don’t realize these adult immigrants do not have the relative work experience that Canadian adults do, since most Canadians start off with mimic wage jobs as a teenager.

For people like me, I come from the rural area of Bangladesh. The small village within the Natore district is located in north eastern part of Bangladesh. It is about a five hour drive from the capital city. The people who live there do not have the technological luxuries as the city habitants do, however, they still have the luxury of having chauffeurs, workers, and maids who would fan during hot summer nights using hand-fans made bamboo and date palm leaves. Instead of commercial flats like in the city, we live in housing with tin roofs which was much more comfortable than the mud-made houses. The one major issue about growing up as a female in rural Bangladesh, is that the importance of female education was minimal. Our society raises women to become wives after the completion high school. University or college was unnecessary and a waste of money. However, as the eldest daughter and that moment in time, the only child of my loving my parents, my parents wanted to see me educated. My father was from a very poor family and grew up in houses made of dry mud, with no fan or electricity at night. Even so, he was career oriented and he struggled his way to become an engineer in Kuwait. My mother on the hand, came from a family that owned acres of land and lakes and had personal farmers who cultivated those lands with 4-5 different types of luscious mango trees, banana trees and sugar cane crops. However after my grandfather passed away, her elder brothers discontinued the payment of her education. My mother was eventually married off to my father during the second year of her bachelor degree. Since her education was stopped, my mother had returned back to Bangladesh 4 years ago to finish the final two years of her bachelor degree and afterwards completed a master’s degree. Due to this craze of education that my parents had, their first priority was to bring me to Canada, as they knew they could not afford to send me here as an international student like the students living in the capital city. After going through several examinations, and months of running around immigration offices and a years of waiting, we finally received confirmation as permanent residents of Canada. Referring back to John Robinson’s account on first coming to Halifax and the disapproval and discouragement of the climate and environment he felt, made me connect back to the first time I came to Halifax from Mississauga, Ontario. Halifax, as most immigrants believed at some point, is a city with a lack of industrialization and only farmland. My father was desperate to find a permanent job that would sustain our family so we made the terrifying decision to travel to the province where we believed didn’t have any civilization. It was long road trip, and when we arrived at night, the highway was completely empty — just one or two cars were on the road. The streets were wide and spacious, and the air was disturbingly quiet creating a chilling feeling of loneliness that had my family felt washing over our bodies, though none of us said a word. Even though my family came to Canada for a better life style such as gender equality and better education, sometimes we miss the small luxuries that we had back home.

Canadians who are born and brought up in Canada, do not understand the struggles that immigrants go through for a better lifestyle. It is safe to assume, that John Robinson, Thomas Rispin and the other passengers on that ship on April 8, had felt the similar struggles. Back then, they had to look for land that can be sustainable and can be cultivated on, find ways of trading and generating income, and find the city that allowed for the most suitable living costs so they can bring their families from England. In Halifax today, families look for housing that is affordable and look for jobs that will support the family’s needs and living costs.

Based on the news clips and articles, in today’s society racism and discrimination against minority cultures or religions still exist. Even more so for Middle Eastern immigrants. The main goal all humans to come to Canada is to find a better standard of living for themselves and/or their family in order to relieve themselves of inequality, political crisis or war terror. The ignorance that immigrants face from many Canadians are unjust and of pure ignorance. When immigrants cannot properly pronounce English words, they are stigmatized for not trying hard enough to learn English. People do not realize that some letters in the English alphabet are pronounced differently in their own native languages. Many Canadians tell immigrants to go back to their home country, but they do not realize that their great-grandparents were immigrants, or more commonly known as settlers in Canada who had taken the country from the Aboriginal peoples by force. The First Nations people are not seen telling European decedents to go back to their home country, so why are these decedents telling people from Asia or Africa to go back to theirs? Ignorance is formed partially because of the biased history that are being taught in the Canadian education system. For instance, the views that Aboriginal’s have on Christopher Columbus are completely ignored. Canadian education system should teach the harshness of Canada’s history, for instance, regarding involvement of European settlers in mass killings of tribes, rape of Aboriginal women, and the mind manipulation and assimilation of their children. If Canada is apologetic for its atrocities committed towards these people, history courses should implement a chapter of the crimes committed by Canada during the 17th and 18th centuries. In this way, Canadians will be able to reflect on their behaviour and ignorance towards immigrants.

Another current issue to consider, is Canada’s reluctance towards taking in refugees from Syria, especially following the Paris attack by ISIS. Because of previous political propaganda of fear, it has become a standard practice to group a certain crime to a whole population of people based on their religion, culture or race. During these ISIS threats, not only are Muslim immigrants and Muslim Canadians being threatened, but even people from India, who practice Hinduism or Sikhism are being affected as well, perhaps because of the similarity of their skin or because they are located in the demographic region near countries facing terror.

Conclusion

Due to the lack of knowledge and education that Westerners have about international cultures and religions. If people are taught the truth about their own history from an early age, then most discrimination will be eliminated in today’s society. The best way to do this is by implementing these into our education system. Immigrants entering Canada are no different from the settlers and voyagers who traveled into Nova Scotia centuries ago. People journey to Canada thinking it as the land of opportunity and freedom, and in both cases the main priority was and still is, to find a better standard of living.

Bibliography

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Donnelly, A. (2015, November 18). Majority of Canadians oppose Trudeau's plan to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees over in just six weeks: Poll. Retrieved December 2, 2015, from http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/majority-of-canadians-oppose-trudeaus-plan-to-bring-25000-syrian-refugees-over-in-just-six-weeks-poll
Joseph, B. (2013, February 12). Did Christopher Columbus Discover the New World? Retrieved December 2, 2015, from http://www.ictinc.ca/blog/did-christopher-columbus-discover-the-new-world
CBC News. (2015, November 17). Canadian man's selfie altered to look like Paris suicide bomber. Retrieved December 2, 2015, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/paris-attacks-canadian-sikh-selfie-photoshop-1.3320327
Robinson, J., & Rispin, T. (1774). A journey through Nova-Scotia, containing, a particular account of the country and its inhabitants: ... By John Robinson, farmer at Bewholm ... and Thomas Rispin, farmer at Fangfoss (p. 3-6). York: Printed for the authors, by C. Etherington.
Should Canada screen immigrants based on language or country? (2012, May 7). Retrieved December 2, 2015, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/should-canada-screen-immigrants-based-on-language-or-country/article4105535//

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[ 1 ]. Robinson, J., & Rispin, T. (1774). A journey through Nova-Scotia, containing, a particular account of the country and its inhabitants: ... By John Robinson, farmer at Bewholm ... and Thomas Rispin, farmer at Fangfoss (p. 4, 6). York: Printed for the authors, by C. Etherington.
[ 2 ]. Robinson, J., & Rispin, T. (1774). A journey through Nova-Scotia, containing, a particular account of the country and its inhabitants: ... By John Robinson, farmer at Bewholm ... and Thomas Rispin, farmer at Fangfoss (p. 5). York: Printed for the authors, by C. Etherington.
[ 3 ]. Should Canada screen immigrants based on language or country? (2012, May 7).
[ 4 ]. Joseph, B. (2013, February 12). Did Christopher Columbus Discover the New World?
[ 5 ]. Dickson, A. (2015, April 10). How badly did Christopher Columbus mistreat the indigenous people he encountered in the New World?
[ 6 ]. Donnelly, A. (2015, November 18). Majority of Canadians oppose Trudeau's plan to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees over in just six weeks: Poll.
[ 7 ]. CBC News. (2015, November 17). Canadian man's selfie altered to look like Paris suicide bomber.
[ 8 ]. Robinson, J., & Rispin, T. (1774). A journey through Nova-Scotia, containing, a particular account of the country and its inhabitants: ... By John Robinson, farmer at Bewholm ... and Thomas Rispin, farmer at Fangfoss (p.4). York: Printed for the authors, by C. Etherington.