Cana­dian Sky

There are the facts: when I was 18, I got a job in Hong Kong. After a few months, I real­ized I didn’t like it that much after all and quit to go trav­el­ing the world. Feng and I trav­eled for three years, almost non-stop. After each trip, we would come back home, on dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents — Europe for me, North Amer­ica for him. We would lit­er­ally slave for a few months, make money, and meet each other again to go trav­el­ing. Even­tu­ally, we were broke and got tired of it. We talk of set­tling some­where, at least for a lit­tle while. We briefly con­sid­ered the USA but then more or less agreed on Canada — at least, one of us would be legal there. I spent a year in Canada on a tourist visa, another year on a work­ing hol­i­days visa and even­tu­ally com­pleted the immi­gra­tion paper­work. And here I was, half Cana­dian.

There is the mind­set: for some rea­sons that I can’t fully explain, I had never thought of liv­ing in France. I mean, I can’t really com­plain — I had it all. A demo­c­ra­tic coun­try, a lov­ing fam­ily, friends and well, I was smart enough to get a few degrees as well. But I made a mis­take along the way: I had a taste of free­dom when I was 16, when I spend a sum­mer alone in China, study­ing Chi­nese at uni­ver­sity and trav­el­ing around Bei­jing. Once I real­ized the world wasn’t a scary place, once I real­ized I could go as far as I wanted and that, after all, it wasn’t because I was French that I had to live in France, I could only think of one thing: trav­el­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing the world. I didn’t reject my coun­try: I saw the world and got addicted to it. I like to think of it as the ulti­mate free­dom: choos­ing a new place to live, instead of liv­ing my life where I was born.

And there is a lit­tle bit of luck: I was lucky to immi­grate to a coun­try that has an open immi­gra­tion pol­icy. It was very impor­tant for me to be legal, a full cit­i­zen. I couldn’t have spent years and years on tourist visas, work­ing visas, you name it. I wanted to belong. Immi­grat­ing to Canada wasn’t easy but it was doable. That what mat­tered. And it worked out fine: it only took me a few months to get my per­ma­nent res­i­dence in Canada (after months of prepar­ing the immi­gra­tion file though). Mean­while, I learned about my new coun­try and got com­fort­able there.

All that wasn’t easy. It was a long process. Immi­grat­ing doesn’t come with­out a few tears, a few scars, a few ques­tions and a lot of doubts.

At first, just think­ing that I was alone in this big con­ti­nent would make my head spin. Free­dom was almost intox­i­cat­ing. I could be what­ever I wanted, do what­ever I wanted. It came with its coun­ter­parts though, fear and angst. It’s not like I had a safety net. Adapt­ing to a new cul­ture can be tough too. Think of all that you learned in life and that you now mas­ter, the things you inher­ited from your cul­ture: your mother tongue, the basic social skills, your polit­i­cal and maybe reli­gious back­grounds. Now, keep them, but start from zero some­where else, some­where where the val­ues and the way of live are dif­fer­ent. See the world under a new per­spec­tive, and adapt to it.

But instead of feel­ing pow­er­less, like I had felt in France, it seemed like I had the world in my hand. Sure, there were many things to learn and I felt frus­trated more than once. But I had hope. Some­how, start­ing from zero was an headache but it was also very lib­er­at­ing. I would ques­tion every­thing and find the answers by myself. I would look at the bright side of things and would naively ignore things I didn’t like. Being some­what of an out­sider made me under­stand the­o­ries I would have rejected had I been at home. Made me more dar­ing as well.

Maybe it’s that. Canada gave me a future, hope and the abil­ity to choose the life I wanted. Lit­tle by lit­tle, the jig­saw fell into place. Today, I can’t really imag­ine what would have been my life if I had stayed in France. Maybe bet­ter, maybe worse, who knows. But I’m glad I took a chance.

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