+ TRANSCRIPT

[00:00]

My name is Ariella Kohn Adams. [Different voice] Bruce Berger. [Different voice] Sabina Wex. [Different voice] Anna Kohn. [Different voice] Elaine Gold. [Different voice] My name is Mendy Bisk. [Repeats the exact same thing in Yiddish] [Different voice] I’m Josh Patlik. [Repeats the exact same thing in Yiddish.] [Different voice] My name is Michael Wex. [Repeats the exact same thing in Yiddish][Different voice]My name is Dina Bisk. [Speaks in Yiddish] That was the best I could do that wasn’t really Yiddish.

[00:30]

Because I grew up with Yiddish only associated mainly with religious people and having to try so hard to learn it to understand like the [says Yiddish word]. A [same word] is like the rabbi’s writings. It was just so annoying and academic and [Yiddish] but now that it’s just funny. And music and songs and regular pop culture. It’s fun.

[00:54]

I’ve heard it in a few like Jewish media things that show on Youtube Yidlife crisis. [YidLife Crisis clip from S2E3 with the speakers saying, “I need this, and you don’t. [Different voice] Eff off, mother. [Mayim Bialik’s voice] Hi ‘mom’? I’ve got these two schmendricks here, that think I can’t speak Yiddish and they’re wasting my time.”]

[01:12]

Yeah Yidlife crisis is like the best. It’s like Seinfeld in Yiddish. And yeah, I love it.

[01:18]

I guess it reminds me of my you know early childhood. [Different voice] It reminds me of like my grandpa's weird apartment that he used to live in with like family pictures lining the walls.

[01:31]

My students [unclear word] ask me how you say “fun” in Yiddish. And I’m like you know there actually is no word because in the shtetls no one ever had fun so they never needed it. [Different voice] Yeah it’s not like a happy language. [laughs] But it is funny.

[01:44]

Lots of Yiddish words get used by Anglo people who don’t have a Jewish background. And it’s so incorporated into the language they don't even realize. They’ll say “I was kibbutzing around”. No, you were kibitzing around [laughing] which is kidding around.

[02:02]

Shvitz. Shlep. [Different voice] I shlepped to the store. [Different voice] Schmekel. Um, sheigeitz. Shiksa. People say chutzpah a lot. [Different voice] Chutzpah. [Different voice] Chutzpah. [Different voice] My favourite is glitch, like when your computer screws up. [Different voice] I hear people say tuches too. [Different voice] And schmuck and putz. [Different voice] A lot of people of people will use the word schmooze. [Different voice] So a word like schmooze, which in Yiddush means almost the opposite of what it means in Englih. Schmooze means to have a relaxed, friendly, kind of pointless conversation. In English of course it means to affect niceness or affect intimacy with somebody in order to get something out of them that you want.

[02:54]

[Multiple voices of older people speaking in Yiddish overlapping]

[03:10]

[With the voices in the background] So the thought of Yiddish um brings people back to their childhood, to their bubbies and zadies and it um just makes people feel good. However, very few people actually use it in their daily lives.

[03:23]

My grandparents, that was their first language but after that generation, it didn't exist as a first language.

[03:33]

After the Holocaust, many Jewish people they wanted to disconnect and forget all the painful memories of the war and the past. And for them, Yiddish, although it had a lot of beauty to it they also associated it with a lot of pain. And therefore they deliberately did not speak it to their children and then a generation or two later it really has dwindled.

[03:56]

When you start to get large-scale Jewish immigration, you had something that Yiddish had never actually prepared itself for. Which was an anti-Semitism that was not one hundred percent exclusionary. Eventually, you could kind of became a part of the larger society. You could change your name, and after one generation nobody would ever know who you were or where you came from. And if you had no connection to any thing of that culture other than the language, the language is gonna be the first thing to go.

[04:36]

[Schoolchildren chanting in Yiddish]

[04:48]

I think it’s important to teach younger kids Yiddish because Yiddish has a part of our heritage for about a thousand years. Understanding Yiddish and understanding the Yidddish mindset allows us to get into the minds and the lives of our ancestors back in shtetls. It always seemed like something connecting me with my ancestors and with sort of uh I guess my place uh in, in Canada. That’s why I decided to learn Yiddish.

[05:17]

I wanted to learn Yiddish because it is a language that so few people know anymore. So it’s not like “Oh I’ll get a job because of it” or something like that. It’s just something that’s important to me culturally.

[05:28]

I wanna feel connected to my like Ashkenazi culture and I think that’s one of the better ways to do it.

[05:34]

What Ashkenazi people think of as Jewish culture is pretty much completely Yiddish culture. And if you don’t understand it, in an odd way you don’t really understand where you have come from. You know as Isaac Bashevis Singer once said, “If you don’t understand your grandfather, you can’t understand yourself”. [Different voice] It’s like the Indigenous peoples of Canada who are making an effort to relearn their languages.

[06:04]

This is an interesting discussion that is going on in Indigenous communities across Canada right now. Whether they continue the culture without the language. And most of them have concluded that they can’t. And I would say the same for Yiddish.

[06:20]

To actually learn the guts of the language, you know it does require a lot of solitary time. But I also feel like I’m doing something enormously worthwhile.

[06:28]

Uh I would wish [stuttering] I would like to see it keep going. I guess this all comes back to your original question “What does Yiddish mean to you”. It’s like you know ask a fish what water means. It’s just you know I don’t what I’d be without it.

[07:00]

You’ve been listening to Yidd(ish)? created by me Michael Berger. This piece is a part of FIXT POINT Arts and Media’s Points of Empathy project, made possible by Canada Service Corps. Special thanks to Arielle Bocknek, Michelle Goldenberg, Shoshana Hershkop, Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman of Yidlife Crisis, Elaine Gold and the Canadian Language Museum, Mirinha and Herbert Blaff, Mendy Bisk, and all those interviewed. You heard L'chaim by Kevin MacLeod which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

+ TRANSCRIPT

[00:00]

[Sewing machine sounds]

[00:08]

To do with clothing and experiences of cloth. It’s almost like how everybody should work a service job in their life so they’re not an asshole at a restaurant. I think that it’s really valuable too. Cause we’re talking about clothing, I'm sure this applies to many things but really learn about how clothing is made. Even if you’re not interested in making clothing, because it kind of just will give you a different perspective.

[00:41]

I like the clothes which should look decent and elegant. [Different voice] Love clothing when you don’t really feel like you’re wearing clothing. [Laughing] Anything that has um like an interesting texture that just kinda like um float on the body. [Different voice] You know when, when you’re at restaurants and you keep on tasting all the foods? And then at the end of the night or the end of the day you’re won’t settle for anything less? It’s the same with clothes too.[Different voice] I think that I was born and then I immediately started loving clothes. [Different voice] I love having clothing that makes you feel like you can do anything in it. Like, I could build a shelf, you know? I could run up those stairs two at a time.

[01:29]

I think textiles is really denigrated as this very much you know quote-unquote “woman’s work” and whether or not you know like I don’t think that that’s accurate to the way that certainly not the way the textile industry operates. Or the way that you know um Western designer companies work. But throughout history it really has been this traditionally feminine role of sewing and knitting and creating clothing for the family.

[01:50]

My mom is really adverse to sewing. She really doesn’t like doing it. She finds it very stressful. It just has like a memory for her that not positive. And I think that is because her mom made all of their clothes. They were always matching, she had three sisters and they were always matching uh in their little like you know floral outfits. And there was always like screaming coming from the sewing machine. And my grandmother did sew all the time but also didn't like it. She wanted everything to be really beautiful and she wanted to create the kind of life she felt that they deserved and that she wanted but she couldn't afford that life without this other you know level. And I think she mad about that on multiple levels and also and like base-level did not enjoy sewing.

[02:37]

When you know how tricky it is to make a dress, and you know that the fabric of that dress was woven, maybe it was by a machine, you know. Probably it was by a machine, but still that’s there are jobs there. And that thread was spun, and what that thread was spun of was harvested by people. All these different hands and then if your at like an H&M or whatever there's probably a lot of other items that are that exact dress that you’re holding that will never make it to anyone. They'll end up in a giant garbage pile somewhere very far away where people just don’t know what to do with it. It’s just this weird waste. And the reason why that’s happening is because that dress only costs five dollars.

[03:32]

Different kind of fabrics used to come from Japan, right? And now then Indonesia took over those kind of fabrics. But now it’s everything is from India, even India is taking um copy of whatever Japan or Indonesia used to do it. So we get it from India now. It’s good price everything is similar but the quality what I miss in Japanese is really good. It was really nice. There was a Kanebo name the name of the fabric used you used to get it. It was so good so smooth. India is also good like suratis, I don’t know if you know the name of the places but they make those places in Surat in India. They tried to copy it, it's quite similar, it’s quite soft. But that was real right? This is copy.

[04:10]

So if you only paying five dollars, other people are paying for the rest ‘cause the cost is the same.

[04:18]

I think because I’m way more conscious of what I wear, who’s making it. Like knowing what the designers you know that their livelihoods are like, based on how we can carry them and support them and sell them um and help them continue doing what they do. Like they work around the clock, it’s their whole life. I feel like I’m it’s like I’m both worlds, like I would love to be able to wear new stuff but is I know wear it’s made, I know who’s making it, I know who’s behind the drafting table and is like slugging away trying to express themselves and be conscious of like the fabrics they’re choosing.

[04:53]

Canada especially people likes to be here only one time. One time part. Even over here, I used sell it pure silk, everything was very pure, dupioni, very high class. But now it is people “We don’t want this silk, we want cheap, my daughter she’s not gonna be here a second time.” But it still mended my own. The ah name my name is good for quality still for special customers. I still have that people, that people comes to me after having four hours, five hours to get that quality.

[05:22]

Lots of things have changed since I opened the store now. Totally different, yeah. Because the priorities are changing now. When we opened the store here on Gerrard Street, there were hardly any store. I think in North America, this was the first market. Not very many people were there but after lots of people from East Africa at that time they came, and uh they were just um kicked out from that place, you know. Idi Amin was there, right? Something was going on at that time. So, lots of people they came. Once people started knowing that you know Canada is a country that there can go, right? So there was a time when all the Sri Lankan people came, so many of them they came. So once the people started coming, they started sponsoring their own family members. So that’s how the generation and generation you know it’s multiplication is going on right now in each community you see. So the same way, you know like the business are growing up too. And um you know still we have lots of customers you know our old customer, third generation is coming too. The people they got married, they bought the stuff from my store and the outfit, wedding outfit. Now their grandchildren come. I have to choose but people like it. So people teach you, many businesspeople teach you.

[06:57]

It’s nice when you have the opportunity to buy second-hand or to borrow from friends or family. Or to learn the skills to alter things. And I feel like when you experience making something for yourself, and then wearing it, like actually wearing a lot, it feels really good because it’s like you’re proud of it but also ultimately it is just a pair of pants. A big marketing technique is like kind of like going into a store and being like “Listen this red puffy jacket is the definition of me and I need it in my life”. The, the industry in the experience of buying clothes fast and often is it didn’t just become that way. It’s that way for a reason and you can break the cycle kind of a little bit by empowering yourself by learning a new skill. That’s just awesome.

[07:50]

I don’t know, I think it would benefit everybody to like sort of just take another look at your individual relationship to your clothing, and to your sheets and to your curtains. And think a little about how you are surrounded you are by textiles in your life and to just sort of like have a different understanding of the time and the energy and sort of like the emotional weight of all of that cloth.

[08:28]

You’ve been listening to Slipstitch created by me, Lily Scriven. This piece is part of FIXT POINT Arts and Media’s Points of Empathy project, made possible by Canadian Service Corps. Special thanks to Ainslie Lahey, Bhupinder Jandoo, Jennifer Snowsill, Madeline LeBlanc, Rachel Ormshaw and Sarab Jeet Singh.

+ TRANSCRIPT

[00:01]

There’s one particular time a gentleman came in and he said uh he sings opera. We’re like, “[Kisses teeth] Whatever! You know Black people don’t sing opera!” And he started laughing and he goes, “No, I sing at the Roy Thomson Hall.” Now, mind you, the shop is literally packed. There’s about sixty-five, sixty-seven people in the shop. Slammed. And we said, “Alright, everybody, you know, turn it down, this guy’s going to sing some opera.” This gentleman gets out of his chair, with his cape on, and, for about thirty-five seconds, he starts singing tones that had every like, like their faces was like “What is going on here?” And at the end, he bowed and the whole place erupted. So everybody screaming and they were like, “Woow, this is amazing”. And the thing is like we do that all the time so customers were always like “Oh, what’s gonna happen next?” You know what I mean? I am Lowell and I am a barber.

[01:08]

One woman came in one day and she said, “You know, if you use Jell-O, if you put Jell-O in your hair and set it on with the rollers with the Jell-O, it stays in forever!” I said, “Oh, that’s so brilliant!” So she brought in some Jell-O, I said, “How much Jell-O?” She said, “I don’t know, maybe just pour the whole thing in a bowl.” Dumped it on her head, combed it through, rolled her up, put her under the dryer. An hour and a half, she’s still not completely dry but she’s gotta go. So she comes out and I have to take these enormous rollers [laughing] out of her hair, which is stuck together with Jell-O. Like Jell-O. Yeah she was a really good sport. My name is Heather Armour, I was basically a hair-washer and a hair-sweeper-upper. I did have a few walk-ins but they didn’t, they walked in, they walked out, they didn’t come back. That should tell you a lot right there.

[02:02]

I’ve got a kid named Cooper who uh comes to me for haircuts and head since he was about six. And I think that he’s like eleven now. And he came in and he was all bummed out about a couple weeks ago and he was talking about how a kid in his class said that he’s a better skater than Cooper is. And he’s like, “Yeah, he said he’s gonna get sponsored before me and, you know, it kind of makes me sad ‘cause I’m really working hard at it.” And I was like, “Well you should go back to school tomorrow and tell him that you’re the first skater on the Town Barber skate team.” And his eyes lit up and he kinda like perked up and was kinda like, “Ok well, are you, are you serious?” And so we gave him like one, we have shop t-shirts and hats and stuff and I gave him one of everything like as a sponsored skater would get. And he sends me photos of uh, of like him skateboarding in his Town Barber shirts and stuff. And he’s just like really proud and it’s cool to like to make that kid’s day like that and just have him like feel like he’s a part of something too and like you know build confidence. Not just with like you know we do that all everyday with haircuts but do it on a different level is pretty cool. My name is Chris Hammel, I’m a barber and uh shop owner.

[03:08]

I found it all extremely intimate, that’s what started happening for me. It’s very intimate when you tip somebody’s head into the bowl and you put the hot water on their scalp, the smell of that person hits you.

[03:20]

I would say that we kind of become like therapists in a lot of ways. Like I’ve had cuts where you know a client has told me about their brother that’s passed. [Different voice] Uh, graduations, weddings, funerals. [Different voice] And I’d been like crying behind the chair like, you know, relating and understanding and, and, and, and figuring that stuff out.

[03:43]

The intimacy is astounding to me. [Different voice] Job promotions. Child births. We had a gentleman that came right after his baby was born in St. Michael’s Hospital to come and get a haircut and go back, you know what I mean? Like he’s like, “I have to get a cut because the pictures are going to be crazy.” [Different voice] It’s probably impossible to describe the type of people in like one sentence. [Different voice] Um, community that, that Salon was in was very Jewish. And so these women would come in and get the same hairdresser, the same hairdo, and they were terribly nice to me ‘cause they could see I was struggling. [Different voice] I mean we’ve got like everything from CEOs of companies, to, to young punk kids on skateboards. [Different voice] Picture a flapper and those waves that are close to the head. So we learn to do finger waves, we learn to do cuts, meh sort of. [Different voice] A customer came and he said, “Look, I wanna do a mohawk.” I was like, “Mohawk?” I was like “Punk rocker mohawk?” And he’s like, “Yeah, mohawk.” [Different voice] It will always be my favourite to get asked to do a mohawk just ‘cause of my punk-rock roots. [Different voice] I said, “Okay”, so I gave him a mohawk and now he’s like, “Put some designs on the side”. And I really wanted to work on it. [Different voice] Tease the hair until it breaks and then spray it. And then lay it down, loop it, stick little pins in it. [Different voice] And then he goes to Montreal to see a Cher concert. [Different voice] Spray it again and tell the woman, “Go home, wrap this in toilet paper every night”, which was gross.

[05:11]

And he said Cher picked him out from the concert. She said, “I love your hair.” She brought him up on stage. They were on stage together. He’s like, “Yeah, this is, this is it.” He’s came back, obviously he gave me a big tip. And he’s telling me “Yeah this is such an amazing time. So thanks for the haircut.” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m glad you met Cher! Like, seriously?”

[05:40]

I heard some uh some yelling matches outside that I didn’t agree with and some language that really bummed me out hearing in this community. And so I had my, my friend is a sign painter I had him paint this giant sign right when you walk in the door. Um and it says, “If you are sexist, racist, hommophobic, transphobic, or an asshole, come back when you’re not.” And I think that that was kind of like the nicest way to give everybody the finger that I don’t want in here. [Different voice] Our background is Christian so people know that you know there’s are certain things we don’t wanna encourage. So there’s no cursing in the shop, uh no drinking, no smoking, like all the things that in some barber shops would be allowed, we’d, like, there’s no way. [Different voice] If this existed when I was ten, eleven years old, you know, I probably wouldn’t have been such a shithead. [Laughing] You know? [Different voice] The generations that we see coming through the shop right now, um you see that there’s a lot of obstacles that they’re gonna face. A nd what we try to do is prepare them for them uh by talking to them, whether it’s in the shop or through community initiatives uh that we host outside of the shop. And you know let them know what they can do to lead a better impact on their, not just their immediate community, but the community at large which is the world.

[07:01]

Especially now we have to kind of like take more of a stance and, and, and show people what, what kind of community we want to create. [Different voice] I really hope that the economics state of Toronto and other big cities and, and small towns too like continue to recognize the importance of, of barber shops and coffee shops and like staples in a community that brings people together. [Different voice] We don’t necessarily get together, we text each other, though, and phone each other, we do all sorts of other ways of connecting. [Different voice] The more like kind of disconnected and detached that we get in getting burying our faces in our phones and stuff, it’s nice to have human interaction whether it’d be a half hour haircut or an hour of just sitting in a coffee shop, listening to music or something, you know?

[07:44]

Our hopes are to, well it doesn’t have to be honest, but it definitely has to be something or someone that we’ve touched to do some amazing things. I mean, building up self-esteem gives someone the opportunity to open those doors, to explore them. So I know that that’s what we get to do everyday.

[08:06]

It is kinda nice, when you uh let your hair down! And someone says, “Sadie, that looks fabulous on you!” [Different voice] And when I get a haircut, I feel great. I love getting my hair cut when I was a kid because I couldn’t pay for it. And that’s why I started cutting hair, ‘cause I was like I need to be able to feel good about myself. Not just by the way that, you know, that I look. But it internalizes something in me to make me feel like I can do anything. So, my concept is “Look good, feel good. Look great, feel great.” If you feel great, that’s not just inside, that’s outside too. And you, you could do a lot. You can do a lot, you could do a lot when you feel great. I know that um something else is coming along and someone else is coming along and do something great. And I’m, I’m hoping that those seeds are being planted right here, in the chair.

[09:01]

You’ve been listening to Started from the Shop created by me, Laura Stradiotto. This piece is part of FIXT POINT Art and Media Points of Empathy project, made possible by Canada Service Corps. Special thanks to Lowell Stephens, Chris Hammel, Brian Brock, and Heather Armour.

+ TRANSCRIPT

[00:05]

Community. [Different voice] What’s community? Uh it means a group of people with some feeling of familiarity or kinship. [Different voice] How to say? It’s kind of a family thing, you know. You know they're there they're your friends, they’re part of you. [Different voice] And everyone exchanging hellos and “Hey, how’s it going?”. There’s hugs and like high-fives and that weird like bro-hug that dudes do. [Different voice] The community should come from within. If we haven’t got a community outside then make we’ll the community from within. [Different voice] A friendly place, I think. Very accepting. [Different voice] Space to be held with open ears and open hearts.

[00:45]

Community. Is it a place or a group of people? A feeling? We’re hearing from six Torontonians who access community through an artistic hobby. Whether it’s acting, writing, music, movement or visual art, there’s something about coming together to be creative that allows community to flourish.

[01:16]

The Nags or what now we call ourselves Nags Theatre or Nags Players. A local community putting on shows and performing and entertaining a general public. We only really produce light-hearted stuff. We don’t really try to make a political statement or any statement whatsoever quite frankly. But once a year we do a traditional English pantomime, we do a comedy and we usually do a um uh a thriller or a suspense play.

[01:45]

[A group of people beginning to sing with ukulele music playing.]

[01:53]

[Singers and music in background] Another weekly ukulele jam is UkeZac. So I’ve been going since the beginning. We usually do a warm-up song. Changes every week, it’s not the same song. Uh then we do review of skills and songs that we learned um previously. And now you would hear the open mic and uh the jam songs which is fun. Just sing your heart out and play along if you can.

[Singers in the group go from being in the background to being only thing heard in audio]

[02:28]

So the Five Lovely Guys are an art and drinking collective I guess. [laughing] Kind of an artsy social group but certainly what connects is drawing. So open-life drawing. Where the model is bare-clothed and then we just can’t [laughing] wait to go to town. To uh continue the night.

[02:54]

[Male voice singing a sea shanty]

[03:00]

[Singing continues in background] I run a quarterly sea shanty night. The name of the event is Shanty, Shan’t We. So we all get together, uh and print out the lyrics to this old music sung on boats uh for the past couple hundred years and we sing them all in a group. And we get progressively worse at it as we go through the night. [Sea shanty singing intensifies then fades out]

[03:32]

LARP stands for live-action role-play. When I need to explain what LARPing is, you can kind of answer it one of three ways: it’s improv on steroids, it’s Dungeons and Dragons but in real life or the make-believe that you played at recess in like primary school? It’s that but for adults.

[04:00]

It’s on Fridays so it’s catchy name Friday Night Writes, a yoga-meditation class that is really linked around creativity. And we finish the class always with an eleven-minute write. There are no prompts, sit in silence, we just write stream of consciousness.

[04:31]

Just the humans, like it’s really cool to be among humans. [Different voice] I am a AI and machine learning researcher. [Different voice] I’m retired, I’m a retired teacher assistant. [Different voice] And I work as a IT specialist. [Different voice] I am a full-time yoga and meditation teacher. [Different voice] I am a local handyman. [Different voice] I work in accounting, I work at a bookstore and as a freelance copy editor. [Different voice] Always new faces, there are regulars. [Different voice] Some people I’ve been around for a long long time, other people are new. [Different voice] Their professions let me just say they’re varied. I mean some people work for the city, some people work as an electrician. [Different voice] Military vets, doctors, I’ve seen a priest. [Different voice] People are retired, people are teachers. [Different voice] Construction workers, engineers, writers. [Different voice] Friends of friends of friends at this point. [Different voice] I think he’s maybe ten and he sat in the back of the room and wrote. [Different voice] I’ve seen a sixty-five-year-old do it. He was great. We all called him Gramps. [Different voice] Covers a whole range of people. [Different voice] I didn’t know who they were but I had the just a fabulous time. I didn’t want to leave. [Different voice] The people who come are just curious people. That’s, I think, my favourite quality in anybody. [Different voice] Well I’m surprised anybody comes at all. But people do. And we’re hoping people will continue to come.

[05:50]

You could have a whole bunch of people hanging out in the room and it doesn’t, it couldn’t be a community. [Different voice] Coming from Prague here, the social life here was pretty cold. [Different voice] It had been a while since I kind of had people check in on me like that. [Different voice] Was looking for a group partly to kind of find warmth in the city. [Different voice] Not even checking on me but checking in on each other. [Different voice] Went in with these people and they were so welcoming. Like oh my god. [Different voice] Just kind of pulling them aside and like “Hey like we’re good, right?” Everyone’s like “Yeah, we’re okay.” [Different voice] Like it felt like Christmas for me. [Different voice] I truly began to realize like how much of a community it was. You definitely find family here. [Different voice] The Lovelies were the first ones to kind of welcome me. [Different voice] This is a way good of - we’re reaffirming that this is a community that I want to be a part of. [pause] One of the things about doing something silly and dumb like singing a bunch of songs is that it makes it feel very communal. You’re all getting together and being foolish and that’s a very easy way to have allyship. [Different voice] I think of a lot of us crave community. [Different voice] And of course with it you need everyone to be honest with you. [Different voice] We don’t need to go to a cave to do this stuff in isolation anymore. [Different voice] It’s not just what happened on the stage, it’s building this set, it’s getting the props, getting the costumes. [Different voice] When we work together, we amplify the experience for everyone involved. [Different voice] Acting is like rugby, it’s a team game, you know so… [laughs] [Different voice] It’s a very easy way to feel one in the same with a bunch of people from all over the place.

[07:17]

The sea shanties I think have a lot to offer. Getting together and singing stuff and in a group. It’s uplifting and it’s enjoyable and it’s always a good time. [Different voice] To learn and practise and get better, you form such a bond with these people. [Different voice] So LARP’s a good place to learn what you can be that you might not currently be. [Different voice] Like I’ve met hundreds of people playing ukulele over the years. Never really met an asshole. [Different voice] Rule number one: don’t be a dick to each other.

[07:49]

There are as many reasons why people make art. [Different voice] Bringing together a group of people. [Different voice] That’s away from whatever it is from whatever you need to run away from. [Different voice] ‘Cause otherwise six days a week, I was like this very dry life. [Different voice] You just can’t be in a bad mood. [Different voice] It’s just such an amazing feeling. [Different voice] Group energy is the real deal. [Different voice] As there are people who do it together. [Different voice] Nicholas Frosst [Different voice] Susan Baberio [Different voice] Anupa Khemadasa [Different voice] Krista Schilter [Different voice] Martin Edmonds [Different voice] Sarah Desabrais. [Different voice] So find some folks and get creative.

[08:21]

You’ve been listening to 6 Torontonians, Crafting Community by me, Madeline Smith. This piece is a part of FIXT POINT Arts and Media Points of Empathy project, made possible by Canada Service Corps. Thanks to everyone who shared their passion with me and now with you. Thanks to UkeZac Ukulele Club, Shanty, Shan’t we, the Nags Players, Friday Night Writes, the LARPing community, and Five Lovely Guys.

+ TRANSCRIPT

[00:00]

My first memory I guess was when I was living in Thorncliffe. And I remember going to a daycare every day after school while my parents were at work. And um a person, one of the daycare workers named Sheila, who used to draw on me Ninja Turtles and I really like her for that.

[00:28]

Summers growing up, we would all gather at my aunt’s house in Scarborough. And uh that felt like home because we were there, we were having fun, we were playing together. You don’t notice it as a kid but it really lays a strong foundation for your relationships when you grow up.

[00:49]

When I think of home, umm [pause] what initially comes up is a difficulty in picturing what home is for me. Like literally, it’s this place I’ve been living at since February in Toronto.

[01:14]

When I think of home, I think of a place where I feel comfortable, I feel welcomed, I feel safe and I feel protected. [pause] So um that’s a picture of home for me is where very strong and healthy relationships are created and fostered

[01:36]

And then, home here we used to have this like big oak or walnut I think walnut like big wooden table and like eating dinner together and having tea late at night. Like that’s such an experience of like my family is like late-night teatime and sweets. And just like talking about life.

[01:57]

And then my dad had describes the moment of like landing in Toronto as kind of like falling from Mars. Like suddenly being in this totally new place. And having to like figure their way around.

[02:08]

THREE. TWO. ONE. IGNITION. [pause] We have liftoff.

[02:16]

[Loud engine noises in the background] I arrived in Canada when I was six years old. It was a little jarring because I mean I was so far away from home and it was such a long journey. But I did have to leave a lot of my family behind. So having to I guess kind of adjust without them was I guess a little hard for me.

[02:31]

[Loud engine noises continue] It was July of 2013. It was just me and my mom. From Portugal. Once I did start school, it was just a completely different world. [Loud engine noise fades away] So I thought that this is really gonna take some getting used to. [laughing]

[02:46]

Ooh so I was born here but I am the daughter of two immigrants. So my parents both came here when they were super young. And my dad did a bunch of odd jobs um while my mom was in school. And my mom did a bunch of odd jobs while my dad was in school. And basically yeah I think we’ve got like a pretty sort of like cliché immigrant story, where like your parents come as like these dreamers, these people with very big ideals and like notions of what it means to be Canadian and then they like put it all on you as like a first generation kid.

[03:15]

As an immigrant daughter, I can say that it’s tough. So it’s a lot of sacrifice, sacrifice for your parents and also sacrifice for yourself. Sometimes, you don’t have what other people have, right? It’s not easy being an immigrant daughter, it’s not. Sometimes, you wanna ask your dad for like fifty dollars or even twenty, and he doesn’t have it. Not because he doesn’t wanna give it to you, but because he’s keeping it for something that’s way better than going out and eating at Moxie’s.

[03:43]

I think that there’s like an audacity that comes with like kids who are born here. We don’t see the differences between us and like the white kid whose family has been here for like eight generations. Because it’s like the nerve, like we got the nerve to exist.

[03:58]

When your parents come here, it’s like finding a job is not easy especially with the language barriers. They need to learn a new language, they need to learn a new lifestyle, it’s very hard. So from zero, from nothing [pause], right?

[04:15]

I had a little bit of an identity crisis. Um because when I’m here they ask me who am I and I say I’m Canadian but that response is not accepted. But even when I went to Congo, um they were asking me “Who are you?” and I would say “I’m Congolese!” but they would say “No, you’re not!”.

[04:35]

Our parents are very quick to acknowledge their difference but we sometimes we [stutter then pause] forget. And I think that’s a luxury. I think that’s a luxury to forget that your different.

[04:46]

The immigration system in Canada is deeply flawed. It doesn’t make it easier on any type of immigrant to come to Canada. You already need to have resources or even connections in Canada for you to be able to come here. That can be worrying for some people.

[5:04]

A lot of people had very different much harder experiences finding a way in Canada, due to no fault of their own, that were barely adults. Many of us have come because our parents came and it’s not easy to make a life here. Like I understand that I had a pretty easy journey being my parents were born here, my parents had jobs here, my parents could find jobs here and then live here.

[05:27]

There’s always the issue of race and religion. That doesn’t really make me question my place in Canada but I definitely see why it would make other people question it.

[05:45]

There’s [sic] not a lot of people of colour who are in management roles. As a young millennial in the workforce, what we experience in the workplace is not necessarily overt. It’s just you feel that you're being underestimated in one way or another at times. Therefore, that sets the tone for your experience when you're working. It’s very strange, I’m born here but I don’t feel like this is my home.

[06:10]

Like growing up Canadian, I’m more um reluctant to engage in its Filipino practices. There’s, there’s like a lot of tension between the two things that I identify with nationally. It’s, it’s almost like I left behind my Filipino identity for a Canadian identity.

[06:30]

I am Bangladeshi and you know like I still engage with that culture as much as I can. You know family get-togethers and I eat the food and at the same time you know I’m living in Canada, I’m still being immersed in my in the Canadian culture as well.

[06:45]

Belonging to a place could be very subjective. I feel you kinda have to make your own place.

[06:54]

When I define myself, first I would say that I am you know I’m Canadian-Bangladeshi. And through those things I’ve been able to kind of combine both those things to truly understand who I am as a person. As immigrants, we have always kind of faced a kind of hesitation from a lot of people. But it doesn’t give me pause, if anything it actually makes me more motivated to not to fight back but to show people that I have the merits that it takes to succeed wherever I am. I know my morals, I know what it means to be a good person, what it means to give back. And just to go with people toward a brighter future.

[07:35]

Toronto is so multicultural, I’m just happy to have all these different kind [sic] of people. There’re all, they’ve all you know helped me be who I am. And then it kind of opened my eyes to be really open about all other culture [sic] and even religion too.

[07:52]

And it’s not something that’s replicated easily in other places. But it always is this strange sense of not [sigh] like not really tapping into that. There’s kinda like the imaginary of the city which is very upper-middle class, largely white and this idea of what Toronto is or like what the proper way to do things is. And there’s so many different experiences running under that that are different ways figuring things out, different ways of doing stuff. And that’s not seen in the way the way it should be.

[08:24]

You’ve been listening to The (Kid) Immigrant Experience created by me Zawadi Bunzigiye. This piece is a part of FIXT POINT Arts and Media's Points of Empathy Project, made possible by Canada Service Corps. Special thanks to all of the interviewees: Andrea Leduc, Claudie Ndombele, Furqan Mohamed, Gbemisola Akerele, Jareeat Purnava, Joanna Makutsa, Lilly Wiersma, Marisa Robeiro, Mical Kasweka, Ralph Tungol, Syntyche Kasweka, Temitope Akinterinwa, Tijana Spasic. Thank you so much for listening.

+ TRANSCRIPT

[00:00]

The cliché that life is a life-long learning process, is one of the only clichés that I probably agree with.

[00:12]

Throughout our life, we don’t stop learning. [Different voice] I’m certainly never gonna stop learning or doing research.

[00:21]

Even if down the road I was older, had graduated, gone through the whole schooling system, I’d still consider myself to be learning things every single day. The things I learn outside of school I wouldn’t necessarily learn in school.

[00:39]

I was just talking to uh colleagues the other day and there was this student that was not in a digital program. But he had learned to do some data analytics stuff. And they asked him, well, where did you learn this? Because it wasn’t part of his program at school, but he learned it while he was in school. “Is there something in Hamilton that provides this for you?” He said, “Well no, I go to school in Toronto but I live in Hamilton. I commute between the two cities and my commute every day has allowed me to watch videos on the GO train to and from work and school and home. And then I’d been able to go and get the program and then practice everything that I had been learning in the videos.” And so he taught himself, as a commuter. So that’s one example, how you can creatively uh develop these skills and learn these skills.

[01:28]

In high school, I started playing Super Smash Bros Brawl with some of my friends. I thought this game was a lot more fun and I was really intrigued by figuring out how I think of creative ways that can coach myself into believing that I can actually win. When my opponents play and their behaviour becomes predictable, it allows me to predict what they’re gonna do next. And if I can use that to ensure that I can land a hit on them or punish them for doing something that used to work for them. When you’re able to think of things in these concrete terms, that makes it really easy for me to see success because now I know exactly what I need to do.[Different voice] That’s what really a community of learning is about. It’s to engage others in the same goal.

[02:10]

Driving is a very cooperative activity. There are millions of drivers in Canada and we’re all trying to work toward the same goal, which is to get home alright and to get to work alright and take our kids out. And the whole point to a driving school is to prepare the new generation how to drive with the rest of us. The key to that really comes down to patience. [Honk honk] Remembering that everybody used to be sixteen or at least at some point learned how to drive. They didn’t just suddenly become expert drivers.

[02:44]

Community, education is very important.

[02:51]

I wish that I hadda stuck with piano ‘cause as a musician now, I find that there’s so many times where I would have had more to give to my music. I didn’t think piano was cool. [Different voice] I started learning piano when I was in grade three. My mom was amazing she didn’t let me quit. That worked for me, I needed it so much. And even inthat I felt like I learned about what it means to give love to somebody. And I think she knew that I needed that.

[03:35]

[Mellifluous singing]

[03:58]

When I am playing piano and I’m singing those two things connect. You know that there’s sometimes in which my music when the sound of my voice blends in with the piano or it’s the same similar quality. So just thinking about the piano as an extension of my own voice is really interesting.

[04:10]

[More singing]

[04:16]

When I think about music and learning, and singing, dancing, like these things are your birthright and it’s something that you do. And if you don’t do, you sometimes find yourself a little bit lost.

[04:27]

[Singing the end of the song]

[04:34]

You can lose yourself in the shelter program. If you are not stable, you become taken for granted. You are disrespected. You are considered a lesser person. Why? Because you are not an independent.

[04:52]

However, for me, it has been a plus in that it has given me the freedom to find myself, in another area of my life. It has made me know that I am stronger than I ever thought I was. Recognizing in order to survive. You have to stay focused. If you lose that focus, you lose your life. That again came from my mother because she brought us up not knowing, literally knowing the faith, but being very staunch in her faith.

[05:32]

It’s me alone that’s been through what I’ve gone through. I’ve had a few rough patches in my life where you will see the bottom of the barrel. But I’ve rised and I’m, I’m still rising to the top of the barrel.

[05:45]

I’m interested in learning how to develop my skills in health, self-care.

[05:52]

When I first diagnosed with diabetes, I cried, I saying I’m going to die the next day, I’m gonna die soon. Every time I go for my checks up and my sugar is high, I would cry and cry. And one day, to myself, “‘Kay, know what? I’m going to manage my diabetes!” If I had known these things before, I wouldn’t have gone on medication so fast. First of all, you have to manage you diets, OK? After every meal, you have a snack, OK? Then again you have to watch your weight, exercise plays a good role. Exercice is where you take the time to breathe in, breathe out, either by running, dancing, you know? You check your blood level, right? After every shower, make sure that between your toes is dry. Because the foot could be amputated as a diabetic because sometimes it won’t heal.

[07:03]

Knowledge isn't that useful unless you can use at the right time and place. [Different voice] When it comes to driving, this is especially true for technology. Our cars are changing rapidly like nothing else. And a lot of people learned how to drive a long time ago and they’re buying new cars that have technology that they don’t know how to use. And so that life-long learning comes back to understanding that laws change, rules of the road sometimes change, and your car has changed. And you need to take the time out to learn about what your car does. So that you can operate it appropriately. There are apps now that are going to be able to collect data on how we drive. And assess how we drive in real time. And be able to make that available to our insurance carrier. And that will actually affect our auto-insurance rates moving forward. That’s happening right now.

[07:53]

I wish that I’d known earlier that the more I know. [Different voice] I feel like as though I know nothing at all.

[08:04]

Being social creatures, we always have the capacity to learn things. [Different voice] The point of gazing into that abyss of yourself is to treat the world around you much, much more humanely. Much more compassionately and with greater empathy. That's the point. [Different voice] I keep thinking about this line in a song that I heard India Arie sing: “All the things I thought I figured out, I have to learn again.”

[08:30]

And even though she’s been gone, I still certainly have recognized and become so much more my mother. She must be cackling in Heaven, just and saying “I told ya, I told ya”. She gets the last laugh. [Laughs]

[08:54]

You’ve been listening to In the Making—Lifelong Learning created by me Karen Young. This piece is a part of FIXT POINT Arts and Media’s Point of Empathy project, made possible by Canada Service Corps. Special thanks to Anita, Brian, Chris, Colin, Gehan, George, Jannel, Nasir, Nicole, Sang, Sharon, Shayan, Tayyab, and Vishal.