The Difference Between Canada And the U.S. – Pat II

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

The Difference Between Canada And the U.S. – Part II, Leaving Canada

Leaving Canada

So as I am writing this I realize just how subjective and emotional this really is – not all of it; Part I was pretty factual however <span style=”text-decoration: leaving Canada ;”> was a very emotional part of my life.

Emotional because it deals with leaving a home I had never thought I would have to leave – as a 17 year old, it was a big deal.

Canadian Recession

My father lost his job during the Canadian recession in the 70s.  One day, he just came home at lunch time with briefcase and went into the bedroom.

He had been laid off.

We lived in a beautiful wooded suburb, where we owned the least spectacular house on a wonderful crescent.  Looking back, I realize that although my father was a sought-after professional (as we would learn soon after) who had worked tireless for months at at time, away from home in freezing little mining enclaves in Saskatchewan we didn’t really have a lot of money.

As kids never felt it because we were subsidized by my Dutch grandmother in Amsterdam; my mother came from a very affluent family that had lived as Dutch colonialists in Indonesia before the war.  (more on that later)

So although my parents never had a lot of money, we wanted for nothing and were the best traveled children in our school – spending the summers in Amsterdam and Paris.  We were very privileged children.

But when my father lost his job a dark cloud settled over our home. My father, being a very traditional man from the “old country” felt that his biggest and most important responsibility was to take care of his family.

To a 16 year old he seemed like a broken man,  his self esteem shattered, the humiliation  devastating.

It would be fair to say that while my dad was a brilliant engineer, he wasn’t an aggressive businessman.  In today’s colloquial we would say he didn’t know how to position himself.

He remained unemployed for a year during which time he applied for positions in all 4 corners of the earth.  As a teenager, I was worried about leaving Canada and moving away from my friends.

My Father: Leaving Canada

One day, out of the blue (or so it seemed) he was offered a great position by an engineering company in Omaha, Nebraska.  When he accepted they immediately began processing green cards for the entire family and couldn’t wait to get my Dad on board.  My Dad wanted me to have the opportunity to finish at least high school in Canada and my sister to finish primary school, so for a year, he lived in a little boarding house in Omaha, working while we wrapped things up in Canada.

While I was full of youthful negativity about moving to the U.S., and had hoped to to go to U of T (University of Toronto) with my best friend, my Mother was returning from Omaha where my parents had received a signing bonus which allowed them to buy a new house; a house that was comparatively a huge step up from the home of my childhood.

I looked begrudgingly at photographs of the new home and realized that my father had had an enormous financial boost – in fact, his salary had doubled.

So while I feared for my moral demise (moving to the U.S.) and was desperately inconsolable at the thought of leaving a wonderful city like Toronto for a “where the heck is Omaha Nebraska” I began to consider the forces that had put our leaving Canada into play.

Why had my father been laid off so dismissively after 8 years of tireless work out in the boonies of Canadian mining towns?

How was it that the compensation in the U.S. was soooo much better than in Toronto?

Why was an American company bending over backwards to get my Dad and his family there?

Understand that as immigrants to Canada, companies treated my father as a work horse.  My father was simply an immigrant who could be taken advantage of (as so many others were at that time)  and he was.  His designs and patents were taken over as “intellectual property” by the companies he worked for without the slightest bonus or remuneration.

The Difference Between Canada and the U.S.

And so I finally reached the conclusion that the American companies placed a higher value on my father’s experience.  They appreciated  the talent he brought to his job and they were willing to compensate him for it.

And so it was.  Leaving Canada was the ticket to my father’s financial and professional success.  He left Omaha after a  year, for Colorado where he was a partner in a consulting firm. That first year my parents spent in Omaha, I spent in Lausanne, Switzerland studying in a French program at the university;  this was my father’s compensation to me for leaving Canada not going to U of T. (And  for having completed the last 2 years of high school in 1 year).

While clearly my parents moved into an entirely different income bracket and their financial struggles were over, for me the biggest issue was my Dad’s feeling of self worth.  Finally, so many years after leaving Poland  he was recognized (and rewarded) for the brilliant man that he was.  Leaving Canada was the best thing that could have happened to them.

He didn’t tell them to go to hell – he just said , “thank you but I am happy where I am.”

Leaving Canada, Emotionally

I resented Canada.  Yes, it’s irrational and emotional but the resentment remained.  I felt we had been discarded by our chosen homeland, I had been ripped out from the womb of security that was made up of old friends and school and all that was dear to me.  (Never mind that the end of high school usually is the first break anyway).  It had been forced on me rather than being my choice.

Most of all I was angry that there had not been the appropriate appreciation for my father’s talents.

Although my older brother still remains in Montreal and while I am still very close with the friends of my youth (we now call ourselves the “sisters of choice” and see each other every 2 years), that feeling of detachment never went away.

Canada was a wonderful place to grow up and the U.S. has been a wonderful place to live out my adulthood.

There are  lots of things I disagree with here.  I am still firmly ensconced in the liberal values that I grew up with in Canada, but I have many like-minded people around me. And many who aren’t whom I love nonetheless.

I became an American citizen, as had my mother and my sister (the only natural born Canadian!

The United States is my home.

But I have lots of Canadian friends in the Empower Network!

Or JUST GRAB A SPOT ON MY TEAM BY CLICKING !

Live from Monterey, California…