Growing up Canadian While Living Abroad by Geraldine Mac Donald-Moran

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Raising Canadian children in a foreign country

Raising Canadian children abroad-- protecting, preserving and promoting the heritage-- is a challenge. These challenges are magnified when the home environment is bi-cultural: when parents come from diverse cultural backgrounds and when, as the years pass, one is rapidly distanced from a Canadian childhood and obtusely affected by adaptation to the host culture.

How am I Canadian today and which cultural persuasions will affect my children tomorrow? This is a meaningful examination; since one's cultural background is the foundation for the development of many characteristics: a set of values and beliefs born from the society in which we were raised and thus impart on our children.

How do others perceive Canadians when we live or travel in a foreign country and how do we see ourselves? What implications do our principles have on how we raise our children at home or abroad, whether married to one of similar or paradoxical cultural background? Some broad-spectrum Canadian characteristics come to mind but are they accurate or suitable to presume for the generations of today? Are they truth or fancy: Ideals we may have once wished upon our country folk, kinsmen, families, ourselves?

Canadians are funny. They are respectful, humble and informal yet cultured and well- read. They are enthusiastic and easygoing. They love a good mashed potato and a good joke. Canadians do not pride the superficial but take sustenance in hard work and can endure harsh climates, figuratively and literally. They care about their neighbors and they love dogs, cats and small children. They call their parents Mom and Dad, eat barbecued hamburgers and hotdogs in summer and they swim in their shorts, at the lake. Canadians converse over a cup of coffee or tea, year round. They accept other cultures and welcome friends at their kitchen tables. If they have Religious or Political tendencies they won't tell you about them unless you ask. Canadians don't punctuate every sentence with eh! Eh! They have thick skin, thicker than most, and they almost always know how to skate. They are musical, poetic and artistic. They are activists, working for a better world tomorrow, somehow and in some way. They recycle. They care about litter. They're nice.

Now, by the sounds of things, wouldn't you want to be Canadian?

The fourth generation has special significance for any person raised in the country four generations removed from those who first settled there. Dad's Great-grandfather came on a boat from Scotland: Mom's Great-grandfather from France. These families, inherited strangers to one such as myself, settled in the first lands they came upon: dividing up territories on Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia where they worked diligently.

The women, at home raising future generations and tending the hearth over wood stoves, never studied much at school, never wore pants, voted, smoked or drank. They never imagined birth control.

The men worked in the coalmines or labored in some way. They fought as Allies in World War II.

This is what I know: they never dreamed of the opportunities their hard work would provide for us, in a Country that would become ripe with opportunity and replete with prospects for one and all. As well, I am sure they never realized that their multi-cultural unions, this blending of traditions and characteristics, would have historic consequences in the foundations of how and why we call ourselves Canadians today.

How much of this heritage do my offspring carry; particularly, when they live in a distant world and are parented by a Father who was born and raised in Mexico? Which aspects of that long forgotten past do I wish to substitute and which to portray? How much of my Canadian heritage has gone missing through the years? What characteristics have I, the Canadian among us, permitted to lapse or stray?

Still, the depth of my "Canadianism" is observed and commented on with frequency, when interacting with my children in a public atmosphere. Some characteristics are difficult to thwart and traditions endure, perhaps more so in alien territory.

The most intuitive course of action (to protect and preserve your heritage) when raising children in a foreign place is to maintain favorable habits: customs, which have had memorable impact in the way you celebrate your cultural identity. These could be holiday celebrations, specific gastronomic fare and particular family customs but not exclude the more subtle ways in which we sub-consciously identify with the process used to condition us as children, into Canadian society: for cultural identity is a multi-faceted issue, comprised of both intrinsic factors and external influences.

Mannerisms, habits, dress codes, languages spoken and viewpoint are some of those idiosyncratic social markers that make up the profound educational experience of learning how to belong to one's culture.

The most logical course of action to follow (to promote our heritage), when raising children in a bi-cultural environment, is to adopt the most positive aspects of one's host culture (or that of the co-parent) while rejecting the negative aspects of both backgrounds. And although, it may be difficult to practice certain patriotic celebrations, when distanced from one's Native home, it can be done with a little creativity (red and white crayons or acrylic paint can help too).

Active implementation of the innovative cultural combination-conducting a new lifestyle-- is a daunting task for some but well worth the effort when you consider the healthy consequences for your children's (as well as your own) identification with every ancestral angle that helps to create their dynamic sense of self.

Growing up Canadian in Mexico, or Mexican in Canada, is merely a sign of the global times in which we live; the effects of which, hopefully, will be the grouping of those positive aspects of each set of cultural values, beliefs and traditions and offer children, like ours, the best of two worlds with a broader vision of the human race tomorrow.

How are my kids Canadian, you ask? Besides the obvious physical characteristics of green eyes, brown hair and a splash of freckles across their noses: they are the product of the home environment in which they are raised. You can take us out of Canada, but never entirely take the Canadian out of us. Long live the maple leaves!

No birthday celebration could pass without cake and ice-cream (as well as a Piñata), no Christmas without a visit from Santa (as well as baby Jesus) and a tree with the trimmings (as well as a Nativity Scene). We gather in the kitchen. We befriend our neighbors. If English is their first language, Spanish lags not far behind on my children's tongues (and French lessons, as a measure of ancestral pride); and although they are prone to French toast and pancakes with Maple syrup for breakfast, they may equally partake of a burrito filled with scrambled eggs and beans on any given day. They are humble and sometimes timid. They read, they are diplomatic and they show signs of budding environmentalism.

How are they Mexican, I wonder?

These traits, I must admit, could easily be mistaken for a universal motherly fascination devoid of any cultural associations but time spent in both countries has provided us with ample opportunity to observe the greater Mexican atmosphere and analyze some notable differences.

Mexicans exhibit an exuberance and vitality in their passion for living. They politely salute every person when entering or exiting a room and they have a wonderful, colorful way to express themselves and to creatively resolve problems. They give and receive great pleasure from socializing among friends or gathering frequently with family. They brush their hair before they leave the house and they dress up when going to a party or special event. They are Catholic, an attribute rather than a simple choice of Religion in Mexico, and are not too inhibited to tell you about it.

Whether nature (inherent) or nurture (learned) all of these characteristics, and more, are gradually defining the personalities, traditions and beliefs that my children will behold in their future, no matter the geographical boundaries that frame their existence.

I have two Canadian flags, having taken them out of their cellophane wrappers once or twice, presuming to hang them high and never allowing them to touch the floor as a measure of respect learned in childhood.

I was taught to sing the National anthem (the original version not the politically corrected one) while standing, rim rod straight with hands at the sides, to face a faded photograph of the Queen of England. But it's the red and white that evokes the sense of Canadian in me today. Only time will tell if my children will some day have the same notion, the same sense of Canadian self. Meanwhile, frequent trips home could help to reinforce our collective identification with the land so free and wild.

Here the flags will fly, one day soon, just as soon as we have a proper pole: a sturdy stick that won't sway in this gusty, Mexican, desert wind.

© Geraldine Mac Donald-Moran


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