The Second Generation Loses Its Roots

The first generation of Goans trooping into Canada from Africa, Pakistan, India and the Gulf came with great expectations for their children. Except where they came in to escape expulsions and persecution, they immigrated to a man because of the common hope that their children should live in a country that was stable, permanent, orderly, peaceful and rich.

Like Goans elsewhere, and generations before them, they wanted their children to face a better future than they did, and to that end, they were willing to face uncertainty in employment, a different, much unfriendlier culture than their own and the harsh vagaries of inclement weather. They were ready to miss the fish, the feni and the feasts so that when the time came for them to pass, they had something to show for their sacrifice. This was their culture right or wrong - that no matter how much you had missed in life, whether education, comfort or anything else, you would be determined to ensure that your children would miss nothing.

The Gulf Goans were the most to suffer. They had choice, they had money and they had a country to return to, where they could enjoy the rest of their lives in wealth and ease. But they forsook all this for what they had reckoned was the betterment of their children. They left well paying jobs, but without the education or the skills that were required for the Canadian market-place.

In those material hopes for their children, they were not disappointed.

The little tykes went into their public schools, fresh-faced and incredulous at their new surroundings. They quickly picked up the Canadian accent and bravely faced the cold of winter. Their teachers for their own good refused to let them stay in the warm classrooms at recess and shoved them into the playground cold. Red as tomatoes their cheeks turned. Bullied in many instances, they were. Used to the new teaching styles and curriculums they became. But before you could say Jack Robinson, they got to be Canadian like everybody else. Of course they were brown and not white, but in the multi-colored sea that is Toronto, they were as much at home as anybody else. The fact that by the 80s Canada had become completely non-racial, worked to their good.

In the years that went by, their native Goan genes gave them the edge they required. More than anyone else, the Indians and the Chinese filled Toronto's Universities and these young Goans became the engineers, scientists, business execs, doctors, bureaucrats and entrepreneurs their families wanted them to be. They got good jobs at Canada's leading corporations and they earn the money at 25 that exceeds what their parents struggle to earn at 50. They had made it and the future was bright under the Canadian sun and the snow.

But there is another side to all this. It was too optimistic for the Goan to expect that their children would become Canadian while still retaining what was good in the Goan. Children rebelled against their fathers. They disrespected them, seeing what they viewed as people just off the boat. The blame was not all theirs. The first generation immigrant wanted to foist their values and traditions on the second and the second would have none of it. In backlash, there was sullenness, anger and resentment. And the fathers said to themselves "And I came to Canada for all this." In their early teens, the children would have none of this thing they heard from their parents about being Goan. They rejected the food cooked by their mothers who cooked it the only way they knew and they settled for the burgers, the pizzas and the pastas. Must have made the Italians happy.

But as they grew, loved and married people from other cultural and racial backgrounds, they changed a little. They wanted to find out more about their being Goan. Going to see Goa, the land many of them had never seen before or couldn't remember, became de rigeur. Some of them even wanted to have their weddings there. Goa after all was for them an exotic destination. They came back wide eyed and happy. They loved the people, they loved the land and even more importantly, their spouses loved it more than they did. They promised to go back again and when they found the time, they do.

As their children in turn became parents, the old resentments healed. But the parents are smart now. They know these kids would never become Goan again.