Multiculturalism: A Reason To Smile

Chinaz from Nigeria. Mikhail from Philippines. Josef from Yugoslavia. Samuel from India. Monica from Spain. Avital from Iceland. Sayako from Japan. And me from China. All Canadians. All smiles.

My grad group picture makes me want to smile. Odd, every time I look at it, a current of electricity runs through me. It must be the energy of our smiles.

I curl in my bed, basking in the golden sunshine. The dulcet chorus of wild birds is whetting my fascination for Winnipeg. I am here for a five-week French immersion program. It is my third week here. We spent the first couple of weeks living in a rural Francophone community. So far this week, we have steeped ourselves in French theatre in the Collège Universitaire de St Boniface. The cross-culture experience has been wonderful! In fact, we will stage a production of Tartuffe in a couple of weeks. I wish my friends were here to share the fun and the smiles!

White thread. Yellow thread. Brown thread. Red thread. Streaming friendship of many cultures. Woven into a bracelet.

The friendship bracelet dangles on my wrist. My friends and I helped braid them for everyone in my high school. I will have to buy some thread soon, to make them here in Winnipeg, for as many new faces as possible.

Intertwined with the bracelet is a beaded wristlet of many colours. Lili, my best friend in China, mailed it to me. In her letters, she has always voiced her envy of the consummate multiculturalism here in Canada; the brilliant cultural diversity that we so celebrate gives her dream and hope. In China, she is an ardent believer of Falun. She is under threat of incarceration because of this faith. In China, there is neither freedom of religion, nor of speech, nor of basic human rights, let alone democracy—the premises for multiculturalism. I practice Falun too. I miss Lili's soft words and sweet dimples.

Lasagna Alfredo. Fried