Unit 1: The Power of Storytelling
Activity 4: Newcomers Stories
Part A: Main Idea Question
Read the three excerpts below (The Past is Another Country, Winnipeg Public Library, 2013) highlight the experiences of three newcomers to Canada.
Which story do you identify with the most?
Read
Youngjoo (Julia) Kim
Winnipeg
“After an early dinner, we went outside wearing jumpers. We looked around with curiosity and fluttering hearts as we settled into a new place. Who are my neighbors? What’s around my house? It was January 23, 2011, the second day we landed here. I left without my husband, for he is working in my home country. He was planning to come later. I came with my two daughters.
As soon as I opened the front door of my apartment, the cold air from outside pushed itself into the house like a baby rushing to its mummy. I stepped out. “Mom! It’s too cold!”, cried out my daughter. “Can we go back home now please? I want to go back to Korea. How can we live in a place like this?”, cried out my daughter.
Jamie Morales
Window of Dreams
“The good things went so that better things could come. Every morning, I wake up eager to go to university and learn from my professors and classmates alike. I never saw myself attending university outside of our old hometown let alone in another country. I never thought I would one day be here, striving for top marks side by side with students from different parts of the world. It’s wonderful. In the community, I meet passionate individuals who strive to make a difference every day. They do in many fascinating areas like entrepreneurship, leadership and communication, and literacy. It’s inspiring to be around them. That’s another great thing about being here; I can come face to face with people I admire. Imagine that.
I live in the prairies, a place where the skies are wide open, the winds are strong, and where you can stand in the same spot the whole day and see the sunset and the sunrise. I’ve only known dry and wet seasons in the first nineteen years of my life. Here, I can watch the snow fall, the ice melt, and the leaves change colors, firsthand. I can see the fog when I breathe out, I can touch the snowflake when it falls straight from the sky. Having said all that, the little things still count the most. There’s food on my plate. I have warm clothes and embraces to wrap myself in. I have friends and love. I have a family I can come home to. I am very, very fortunate.”
German Cruz Reyes
More than an Immigrant: The Remaking of Self within a Culture of Silence
“For the first time I opened my eyes and understood the “friendly labour culture in Canada”- the negative one. And for the first time I asked myself “what am I doing here?” Fortunately, I found the answer when I looked at my beautiful wife carrying our daughter. However, I couldn’t help feeling angry, humiliated, abused and exploited. It was totally ridiculous: six months probation time without benefits and paying into the union close to 500 dollars without their protection. If this was not a manipulative system and exploitation, what was it?
Later I found out that this company does this sort of thing all of the time. They hire many immigrants and make them work harder with the threat of failing their probation time with full intention to just give the contract to one employee out of many. Sadly, this can happen to anyone, but for some reason I think this most often happens to immigrants. In some ways this is legal but it still feels like discrimination.”
Part B: Matching
Matching
Part C: Fill in the Blanks
Matching
Part D: Reading for the Details
Read the paragraphs in Part A: Read the Excerpts again and answer the following questions.
Reading for the Details
Part E: Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking
Part F: Prediction
Prediction
Read the continuations in The Past is Another Country – Volume 2 (Winnipeg Public Library, 2013) to check your answers.
What do you think happens in the rest of each story?
For your convenience, you can download an editable MS Word version of the activities to work on your device or print and fill by hand.