Oh Canada

Let’s start July with celebrating being Canadian.  I am forever grateful to my parents for choosing Canada over any other country when they decided to emigrate from Denmark.  My father evaluated many countries including Australia, South Africa and the United States.  He often joked that he chose Canada because they didn’t have rattlesnakes but one of the main reasons for chosing Canada was that there was no draft.  He only had one son in 1957 but Dad had lived through WWII. Denmark was occupied by Germany very early in the war and while Churchill liked to call Denmark “Hitler’s Canary” the fact was that Britain was prepared to invade Denmark only a short while after the Germans had made their move.  Denmark would have been a bloody field of battle even worse off than the Netherlands.  The fear of yet another war was large enough in people’s mind after the war to make many Europeans turn toward immigration as the answer for a safer life.

We were completely alone when we landed in Canada, we knew absolutely no one.  Furthermore there was no aid for immigrants.  I am not talking about financial aid but the kind of information as to where to find an apartment, how to register for a social insurance number and so on.  Dad was lucky enough by already having a job so his employer helped with the work process but finding a decent apartment was a nightmare.  Mom was almost beside herself dealing with a filthy little room and brand new furniture that fell apart after sitting on it for 2 days.

But somehow my parents overcame these obstacles with the fortitude of their ancestors as well as a determination not to be failures by turning tail and running “home”.  Canada became their home and we integrated, something Scandinavians are particularly good at.  Having said that, my family was somewhat unique in that we retained not only our language inside the home but we are still very Danish culturally.  To this day we sing the Danish carols and dance around the Christmas tree.  We have duck instead of turkey for Christmas dinner and we celebrate Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day.  We like our Danish porcelain, we like our open face sandwiches and don’t even get me started on “Rod grod med flode”.

Mom asks me “are you more Danish than Canadian”?  I cannot answer that because all I know is that I am an integrated Canadian with a Danish background and foreground.  I feel blessed to come from two great countries but I will always call Canada my home.