Seeing that this Sunday is the Remembrance Day and finding myself in the vicinity of my first residence in Canada, I took a quick spazier through those places.

I arrived in Canada in ‘92 (possibly ‘93) in September (possibly October). Immediately, I was taken on a “community tour” where I was to meet what seemed like every single Romanian immigrant. All I wanted was to get some good sleep, but that didn’t matter and I was far too tired to oppose any resistance. ‘twas as if “moastele Sf Zamo” were carried around so that “drept-credinciosii” could touch for good luck.

I then went to start school, but the neighbourhood school, George S. Henry Academy was too full with recent immigrants. All the counsellors were trying to convince me to go to Early Haig S. S., as it was apparently better equipped to enrich my genius and had a swimming pool as well. I didn’t want to do that, because GSH was within walking distance while EHSS was several bus stops away. The counsellors told me that having finished (more or less) grade XI in Romania at St Sava would qualify me to go straight to OAC / gr. XIII (which has been eliminated, school being reduced to 12 grades in the meantime), but they were too full so if I wanted to stay, I’d have to go to gr XII instead. I fully embraced that option, to the counsellors’ dismay, who thought I would want to get out of their school as soon as possible. I took a bunch of courses – all electives and had some great fun.

There are many differences between Canadian high-schools and Romanian counterparts. In Romania, starting with grade I and to my near-graduation, I spent most of my time in the same desk (“banca”), where I had a colleague right next to me. At GSH, every course / teacher had their own class or lab. In a Romanian school, teachers came to your class, each class taking 45-50 minutes with a 10 minutes (sometimes 5 minutes) break; in Canada, you’d have courses lasting 1, 1 1/2 or even 2 hours with 10-15 minutes break, when you had to run to your locker, switch books / notebooks, then run to your next class. In Romania school books were slim, condensed and sparse; in Canada they were huge and very detailed, with colors, bullet points, highlights and various other artefacts, much like the “for Dummies” series. There were also many special events which consisted of gathering people in the auditorium for announcements. Other than the large swimming pool, we also had a huge library with a full-time librarian, a photo lab and various other enhancements only dreamt of in Romanian schools. Did I mention that you had a large number of electives to choose from?

Meanwhile, as much as the “career counsellors” didn’t like me, Ms A, the head of the ESL Department, seemed to take a special interest in me. [to be expanded].

Sources / More info: nov-dec-mem