immigrants

Vyertolyet - or wooden helicopter toy - a word I often forget in English

Apparently, there are words I still don’t know in English. Like apron.

Immigrant Experience, Personal Essay /

I forgot the word for helicopter the other day. For the rotor, actually. And I didn’t forget so much as remember it in the wrong language. My brain froze up and then offered me nothing but a very Russian “vyertolyot“. The end result is that I have a toddler who will never know what those non-airplane things in the sky are called. I actually have […]

Apparently, there are words I still don’t know in English. Like apron. Continue Reading

No Frills flyers, illustrating multiculturalism at No Frills grocery stores in Canada

No frills, but plenty of multiculturalism

Food, Immigrant Experience /

While I was ranting about $8 chocolate bars yesterday, I got to thinking about No Frills, where we get a lot of our groceries. What Canadian doesn’t like to rave about our open-minded multiculturalism, and especially the eating part? It’s easier than trying to dissect international politics, or talk critically about the ways in which multiculturalism has failed us, or marvel at the many times

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Soviet and Jewish and stateless

Personal Essay, Soviet-Jewish History /

1980. I was just barely two years old, but already a stateless refugee when my family arrived in Canada that winter. Six months earlier, we’d left the Soviet Union, travelling first to Vienna and then, by train, Rome. That year, we were among the 50,000-odd Jews who’d been permitted to leave the USSR. We were part of a wave of emigration that took place between

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