My parents, Canadian, had four children; none of who were born in Canada. My friend, Anna, and her sister, were born and raised in Canada, but lived in a Polish, Russian Canada that was nothing like any of the Canada that I got to know.
Anna’s parents were old when they immigrated to Canada: nearly the age of my grandparents really. They were Polish. They had come to Canada as refugees from a Russian labour camp. After the second World War.
A war my uncle served in and survived. My father was too young to serve. I never found out why Anna’s parents were in that labour camp. Just that they had survived, but not their two sons. Their two sons had died.
They came to Canada, without their sons, but eventually they had two daughters: Anna and her sister. Anna said her mother thought it was some sort of punishment from God, having daughters in Canada after leaving the sons behind in Russia.
Anna could never figure out why her mother thought this. It was some sort of family secret: the Polish-family-in-the-Russian-labour-camp secret. Not her family; the Canadian family living in a Polish, Russian neighbourhood. Whatever the reason, it made her mother infinitely sad. So, sad that Anna, with her Canadian cheerfulness, with her unencumbered lightness of being, could never compensate her mother for her loss. “Look at me mom, see how high I can jump” did not distract her mother from constantly looking inwards at past images of times long gone, in countries far away.
Anna and I met when we were adults. Canadian gals. She, who spent her whole life in Canada, could not shake off the weight of her parents’ past. I, who spent half of my life up to that point in time living in various countries, struggled with a need to be, feel, different than my other Canadian friends. Except that we both probably were normal, average types of Canadian gals. That is the way it was back then. I wonder whether it is the same now.
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