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3. New Beginnings: Canada, Part 1

I followed Art’s feet out of the airplane, not wanting to make my first stride in the new country a stumble. When I crossed the line from the airplane’s walkway into the airport, I took a deep breath.

This was Canadian air.

We had arrived, and there was a whirlwind of emotions bubbling up from inside of me—we had left a difficult country, but it had been our home; we were in a new place, full of promise; this land was full of unknowns, including work, housing and a language that I’d never spoken. What if we never earned enough money? What if Canada wasn’t all it had been talked up to be? What if we had to return to Paraguay, defeated? After all, selling literally everything we owned had purchased four flights—but there were seven of us. We’d had to borrow the money for the remaining three, so it was with a lot of excitement but a little bit of hesitation that I walked into a new country.

We had to wait for our luggage—a few bags of clothes, all that we had—to arrive on the carousel. The words on the signs were all in English, and Mom was pointing while talking to Dad. Thankfully, there were also pictures, and even I could figure out that the luggage was off to the right.

“Arvid, slow down!” Mom called out. I was running ahead of them, always the scout. At 13 I could dodge not only the dodge balls in gym class but also the people moving through the airport. I stopped before I got out of their field of vision.

“It’s down there!” I called. The stairs down to the next level were strange—they were moving. I took a hesitant step onto their surface, joined by my brother and sisters.

Rushing off the escalator, I was the first to arrive at the carousel. Pulling the boarding pass from my pocket I compared the flight number with the numbers on the wall. Our luggage was coming one carousel over, and I waved for my family to join me. We moved, spread out in a line with my parents holding the rear. Even though they weren’t moving all that fast, I could tell they were excited. I hadn’t seen a smile stay on Dad’s face for that long since—well, perhaps never.

“We have the green bag,” Mom was telling me. “And don’t forget the red suitcase.”

“I know, Mom, I know,” I spoke back to my mom with a wave of dismissal. She licked her finger and came at my face, but I dodged it deftly. If having your mom clean your face with her spit is embarrassing in Paraguay, I knew it couldn’t be any better in Canada.

She made a move to chase me, but there was no competition. I ran away, running around a few other weary travellers. One older gentleman glared at me, and I used my charm to let him know that I wasn’t up to anything suspicious. Finally, a smile cracked his face as he followed my gaze back to my family. There were regular travellers in airports, and then there was us, clearly out of our element but clearly loving every second.

“Mom, look!” my brother was saying. I followed his pointing hand and saw a shop, the beginning of a line of storefronts stretching off impossibly far.

“Ice cream,” I whispered. A treat that we could only dream of. Mom looked up at Dad, the desire to treat her children evident in her eyes. They tried communicating quietly, but we weren’t little kids anymore.

“Can we have some ice cream?” my older sister asked.

“Yes,” Dad responded, and we all let out a little cheer. Beside us, the conveyor belt began to move, still empty. He fished his wallet out of his pocket, opening it. I had gotten so used to seeing it empty that something—anything—in it was a surprise. The bills were colourful and strange, completely foreign.

Dad looked at Mom. Mom looked at Dad. They looked at us. We looked at each other.

“You go,” Art said to me. I shook my head, more nervous than when standing in front of a penalty shot.

“I think you should,” I whispered to him. We went through the entire family until we finally realized that Elfie, the only one with any guts, should do the buying.

“Go buy one,” Mom said to Elfie. She pulled one of the bills from Dad’s wallet. We didn’t know how much it was or what it meant, but she handed it to my sister and spun her in the direction of the shop. Elfie hesitated, but we all cheered her on with our whispers. Behind us, there was a loud clunk as the first piece of luggage hit the conveyor belt. It wasn’t ours.

We all watched Elfie without breathing, as if she was going to defuse a bomb. She got to the shop and pointed at the ice cream. She was trying to speak, but it didn’t look like any words were falling on understanding ears. But the pointing worked, the money exchanged hands, and she was given the ice cream—and three coins—in return.

Another bill passed, another trip, another three coins.

After four trips and some serious smiles from the ice cream, we figured we had this down.

Finally, all seven of us had a cone. Elfie had gotten every single one. And received 21 silver coins in return. Seven dollars and twenty-one quarters later—we had no idea until later that two bills would have sufficed—we had had our first taste of the country that would become our home.

* * *

Canada’s immigration department had denied us entry for over 10 dedicated years of our trying to get into the country. Due to health concerns, the number of children, my family’s poverty and the lack of family support in Canada, it was tough to meet the immigration point requirements in order to be accepted into the country. Which is why, perhaps, it felt like the Israelites entering the Promised Land as we landed in Toronto at the beginning of August 1970. A thin and athletic 13-year-old with blond hair, freckles and not a word of English to my name, I was nervous yet excited about the opportunities and possibilities ahead.

Everything was big—from the plane we travelled on to the vastness of the land in which we were arriving. After the flat plains of the Chaco, the rise and fall of the Appalachian Mountains was new to my young eyes. But we plunged further inland and flew to Winnipeg, a city with a rising industrial emphasis and a growing population of people just like us—immigrants, refugees, Mennonite folk with only hard work and the fear of religious persecution in our past. We were in a land where we could build our churches, speak our language, work our work, drink our maté (a tea-like drink that’s passed around with a communal spoon-like straw), worship our God and continue our traditions. Of course, at my age I wasn’t as concerned about our traditions as my parents were. In a country where homes were solid and my town would be thousands of times the population of my village, I was excited about the future.

Would Canada be the land of prosperity, the land flowing with milk and honey, that we had all dreamed it would be?

It was amazing that we could travel thousands of kilometres away from our home and move into a community with people who understood us. Even those who didn’t understand us were willing to accept us.

When we arrived, my dad and older siblings went immediately to work. For the first year the income was pooled until we could buy and pay off our first and only family home. From that point forward my siblings could work for their own income but paid room and board until they moved out.

Mennonites, though not the wealthiest in Paraguay or anywhere, came with a hard work ethic, honesty and loyalty that made them fantastic employees. Dad began working as a labourer and moved to a machine operator, building furniture. The work was different than what we were used to as a family, and the fulfillment it provided was not the same as working on a farm and bringing in your own food, but the work was consistent and the income well appreciated. The Palliser factory was full of others like him, fresh off the boat, as well as immigrants who had been in Canada for several years. There was a camaraderie that pervaded the factory and boded well for keeping employees loyal.

* * *

We arrived in Winnipeg in August. Because we had thought we would be immigrating sooner than we did, I hadn’t gone to the junior high school class in Paraguay that started in February. This meant that not only was I a year older than some of the others in my grade to begin with, but now I had missed half a year of grade 7. We were forced to make a decision—should I go into grade 7, at nearly 14 years old? Or should we bump me up to grade 8, where there were people a little closer to my age?

Given that junior high school is not the easiest place to be, any teenager with a few strikes against him is likely to get bullied or victimized. With not knowing the language, with my blond hair and freckles, with not knowing a single person going to the junior high school, I already had a few strikes against me. Dropping into a grade 7 class while almost two years older than everyone else would be the tipping point, so I wasn’t eager to jump into that atmosphere. Besides, I’d always had an aptitude for math and had never struggled through school.

Though it took some convincing, the school administration finally agreed to let a German-speaking kid from Paraguay into grade 8 with not a single word of English. They did assign a few helpers to move me along, but it was like jumping in front of a soccer net blindfolded.

Having borrowed my neighbour’s banana-seat bike, I spent the days ripping up and down the back lane that started at the side of our house. The surface was gravel and full of potholes, but it was like a smooth stretch of asphalt compared to what I was used to. Now 13 and able to ride a bike properly, I practiced my acceleration, turns, skids and pothole-dodging skills.

* * *

The crunch of gravel was always the first thing that alerted me to a car coming down the back lane. Pedalling quickly, I would turn to look over my shoulder and verify that I’d heard correctly and they weren’t pulling off into a garage or parking pad. Once I knew that they were coming my way, I’d pull over to the side and let them pass. Sometimes the tires would kick up rocks that hit my calves and shins, but I did my best to establish eye contact with everyone who passed so I knew they saw me.

With the sun high in the sky that day, I heard the crunch and turned to look. A car was ambling down the back lane, bouncing through the potholes without avoiding them. I slowed down, my foot skidding along the gravel to help brake. As I pulled off to the right onto the thin line of grass and stopped before a garbage bin, I checked behind me again. The car was getting closer, and I recognized the driver. She was young, and her eyes were wide, popping with every bounce. In the passenger seat sat her dad, perhaps less terrified than the she was.

I turned to look forward again as they were about to pass me. But something was wrong about the sound.

It wasn’t going around me—it was coming right at me.

At the last second she had panicked and turned right instead of left—right into me. There was no time for reacting; there was no time for moving. I felt the crunch of the car as it hit my back tire, knocking me over in a tangle of arms and legs. The metal of the bumper passed before my eyes, and then I closed them, horrified of what was happening.

With the dust swirling around my face and the final kick of the car as the brakes stopped it from going any farther, I heard the crunch of the gravel as everything settled. Echoing back off the metal underside of the car came my own breathing, fast and terrified.

I opened my eyes to look up and—

No, that couldn’t be.

It isn’t right.

My left leg was between the engine block and the front axle, my bike piled on top of me. My breathing wasn’t getting any slower, only faster.

That’s not right, I thought.

A leg is supposed to bend, but only at the knee.

It looked like I had a new joint in my leg.

The bone in my shin was sticking out at a 90-degree angle, my leg dangling limply in front of me. For how fast my reaction time usually was, it took a little longer for the pain to hit my brain. But when it did—

If starting school in a week as an immigrant wasn’t bad enough, starting school as an immigrant with no friends and a broken leg was like jumping in front of a soccer net blindfolded with my hands and feet tied.

* * *

Hospital beds are not all that comfortable, especially when your pastor is walking into the room. Still relatively young, I wasn’t accustomed to any type of pastoral visit. Reverend William Neufeld settled himself into the chair beside my bed with a stiff collar and a well-worn (yet somehow still new-looking) Bible clasped between his hands. He cleared his throat, and I waited for him to speak. No way was I going to interrupt my pastor. My parents had left the room, so we were the only ones in it, and I suddenly became very seriously interested in the lines and folds in the sheets on the hospital bed.

“Arvid.” His voice was dry, but I didn’t think I’d be able to speak enough words to offer him water.

I smiled—more like grimaced—not knowing what to say. “How are you feeling?”

I looked down at my leg—the vehicle that I relied upon to bike, play soccer and move around. It was a horrible thing to lose the use of, but, all things considered, it was a small price to pay for the accident I had experienced.

“Okay,” I answered.

“Good, good,” he said, the tension seeming to lift as he leaned back in the chair and put the Bible on the counter beside him. But his hand didn’t leave its cover, and I waited for what I knew was going to come. My parents had always had a deep-rooted faith, but I’d never been one to follow in anyone’s footsteps.

“Does it still hurt?” There was compassion in his voice and his eyes, and I felt the pressure beating in my chest release.

“Some,” I said, perhaps acting a little more brave than I felt. “But they’re giving me medicine to take the pain away.” My mouth felt dry, and I reached over to the other side of the bed to lift the jug of water with the straw that every hospital bed has.

“Good, good,” he repeated. I wondered where this was going—no, I knew where it was going. But I wondered when it would get there.

“That was a bad accident,” Reverend Neufeld said.

“Yes,” I responded. “It was.”

“You were very fortunate to end up here—with only a broken leg,” he added. “Things could have been much worse.” I nodded. This seemed to give him fuel to continue on. “Arvid.” He pulled the Bible back between his hands, his fingers finding their home in the leather. “If the accident had been worse—if you had been killed—would you have been ready to meet Jesus?” The words were so heavy I could hardly believe that he was able to look me in the face as he asked them, but his gaze never left my face, while mine wandered around the room.

“I,” I began, not knowing how to finish. “I’ve always gone to church,” I argued, like everyone cornered will argue. I was about to continue on and list a resume’s worth of good actions from my past, but he cut me short.

“Arvid.” He continued to look directly at me—or was it into me?—with a gaze that forced me to look away. “I want you to think about that question. When you’re ready, come talk to me. But don’t take too long. Before your next bike ride might be a good idea.” There was a hint of a joke there, and we both smirked but didn’t laugh.

I nodded at him like I understood the question. He began to pray then, his words flowing like water down a hill. I could hardly keep up with what he was saying, but ten seconds in, my mind was already lost. If the accident had been worse—if you had been killed—would you have been ready to meet Jesus?

When I got home, I asked Mom the same question. But she turned it back on me.

“Would you have been ready?” I was leaning against my crutches, and I took them out from under my armpits to lean them against the wall. Standing on one foot I hopped into the kitchen as she entered ahead of me. Like with Reverend Neufeld, the silence got entirely heavy and unbearable.

“I guess not,” I admitted. “I just—”

“God doesn’t want excuses,” Mom said. “He wants you.” I couldn’t argue with that.

“But now?”

“Now’s as good a time as any,” she countered.

“What do I need to do?” I asked.

The words and prayer that followed lifted a weight off my shoulders, a burden that I alone could not bear.

* * *

The bed was warm while I heard the house creaking outside, listening to the wind that used to seep into our home back in Paraguay. Here, though, the windows kept the air out and kept us warm—and, judging by what we had been told, we would need them.

I heard the creak of the floor outside of my bedroom door and shut my eyes tight, pretending I was asleep.

“Arvid!” It was Dad’s voice, whispering loudly to see if I was awake. At first I didn’t respond, but when he repeated my name and moved on to the next door I knew there was something going on that I didn’t want to miss. I rolled over and flung the blanket off my body, swinging my legs to the floor. My right leg did what it was supposed to, but my left stayed resolutely where it had been lying.

I hadn’t forgotten that it was in a cast, but sometimes things can slip your mind. I had to lift it with my hands to get it over to the floor, where its loud clunk woke up anyone who hadn’t already woken up from Dad’s whispers.

“Arvid, come outside!”

“What?” I responded, looking at the window. It was covered in a fog, moisture that had frozen in the cold November. The sky looked white, similar to how it had looked for every day the past week.

“Come!” He waved me towards the front of the house, and I pushed up from the bed, standing without crutches. I could walk short distances without them, so I used the walls for my balance. From my sister’s room I could hear her moving about. I hurriedly threw my pyjamas on, wanting to get moving as quickly as possible.

With my hobbling to the door my sister blazed past me, Dad leading the way. There was a smile across his face that sparkled with excitement, and I wondered what it could possibly be.

Once we’d all arrived at the front door he pulled it open.

A gust of cold air rushed in and made me shiver and pull back into my pyjamas like a turtle into its shell. But it wasn’t the wind, the cold or the empty street that Dad wanted us to see.

It was the blanket of white powder that had covered everything—the grass, the sidewalk, the steps, the trees, the small windmill in our front yard.

Snow.

I’d heard about it but never seen it. And certainly never touched it.

I dashed outside, with my cast like a deadweight slowing me down. I made it down the steps and out onto the grass in my bare feet and pyjamas. It was only a few inches of snow—just enough to creep up over my feet and onto the tops of them. My sisters were outside now, too, and one of them was feeling it with her hands. I leaned over to pick it up, feeling it melt on my skin. Dad was still back at the entrance to the house, smiling and laughing. He seemed to be waiting, and I couldn’t figure out why—

Until my nerves caught up with what was going on and I realized that my feet were turning bright red from the cold. With a shriek and a scream, I turned to run back into the house. In my rush my feet were slipping, and I could barely get my balance as I pummelled up the stairs, which were also slippery, and hobbled my way back into the safety of a warm home. Dad, who had seen snow plenty of times back in Russia, let out a laugh at my desperate scramble for safety. I shot him a look that only a teenage son can give a dad, then joined in laughing. It was unknown, but it was my life now.

We lived less than a kilometre from the junior high school I was attending, and the next few months had me walking with my crutches through the slippery snow, clutching the bars of the crutches in weather that I could never have imagined. My Paraguayan face, freckles and hair and the injury that prevented me from doing pretty much anything made me a target for taunting and bullying just like anyone else. It doesn’t take much to be targeted for bullying in junior high, and my introduction to Canada was no different.

That was all about to change.

First Christmas in Canada, 1970

Junior High yearbook picture, 1971