English teachers have always had this central position in my academic life, despite my interest in the sciences. Whether it was Mrs. Jones telling me to work harder (despite my getting an A-), Mrs. Berman giving me some great real-life advice, Doctor Menke paving my way into the I.B. program, or Mrs. Apel giving me Heart of Darkness to read when everyone else was reading neurotic literature by bad Canadian authors, I can still remember each English teacher I have dealt with. To this day, I respect each and every one of them for trying to challenge me. (As an aside, I am also honestly ashamed at the fact that my spelling and grammar has atrophed to such an awful extent, considering the effort they put in to polish my abilities. I blame my Japanese studies and years of meaningless blather on the Internet) In this tradition, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. P – a Canadian English teacher who moonlights at a small strip-mall Pizzaria in Richmond, B.C.
Our adventure began in Burnaby, when me and my Vancouverite buddy Simon decided to go crusing for Pizza. I had promised him that I wouldn’t feed him 1$ Pizza, and we’d go to a nice local spot. I also wanted to visit the infamous suburb of Richmond – the home of the cheapest people in Canada (as it is the #1 group of people who use the awesome Red Flag Deals website) and incidentally, the unofficial “Chinatown, Canada”. Why we wound up in “Chinatown Canada” while looking for a Pizza is a story in bad logic and sentamentality getting in the way of efficiency, but we had a good time crusing the streets, wondering if we’d find a ‘Tom Wang’s Big Pizza’ anywhere. Finally, on the verge of giving up, we saw a small mall across the street from the local Toys R Us where there was a Pizza store – Camy’s Pizza. (I am not 100% sure about the name). We nodded at each other and turned in.
Mr. P, the owner, was a bit shocked to see us walk in, and we had a seat. His son warmed up two large Vegetarian pizzas while we talked. We talked about my trip, the places I had been, and a few other things. Mr. P mentioned he had thaught school in Port Coquitlam – and he seemed to be very shocked when I knew it was the home of Terry Fox. Mr. P was a former English teacher and talked about how Terry’s classfellowes doubted he could do anything like what he was planning. He talked about business, how tough it was to open a pizzaria in Richmond, and how his students reacted to his night job. The pizzaria is a family-run business, with his son, daughter and disabled sister assisting in the best way they could.
In another world, me and Mr. P wouldn’t be able to have a conversation like this. Split by nationality or race or whatever artificial creation we human beings create for ourselves, we would have ignored everything we had in common. That is a state that is all-too-common among us peons of this world. To this end, Canada and Multiculturalism is a grand experiment. It cannot be summed up in the ethnic or religious identity that you’ll see in the US or embraced by fringe political parties. Frankly, we do not have any common roots or common ties. What we do have in common is our common humanity – and divorced from the propaganda of our home nations, it is all that we need to form a great country. If immigrants can throw away the hatreds of the past (while holding onto the non-hateful aspects of their identity), we will have formed the first world-nation that has ever existed.
I am not particularly confident that is possible, however. Mr. P’s pizzaria is inside an Asian strip mall, and next to some high-grossing businesses. However, in the month he has been operating, not a single Asian customer has graced his door. Whether this is simply a lack of interest in Pizza, a dislike of his decor, or something more sinister, is not for me to say. In the unlikely case that it is something more than simple customre tastes, then it is time for us to re-evaluate the processes by which we allow people to enter our country. Canada is too important an experiment to let fail because of a few small minds who fail to grasp its greatness.