It was a cool November evening very much like tonight. I arrived at the old Pearson International Airport, way before the billion dollar Terminal 1 addition. The Rogers Centre, then Skydome was just a few years old. There weren't that many condo and office towers in Toronto, but it was already an impressive city. As for the rest of the country, I had been to Vancouver a few times to visit my sister and my Mother, who had moved there a few years earlier. I had been to Niagara Falls as a tourists many years before, but other than that, I hadn't seen much of my new country.-
I arrived with dreams of a new life, a life with more order and tranquility. I went through a couple of rookie immigrant years, going through what many immigrants go through. Furthermore, soon after I arrived, a big recession hit the country making it more difficult to find a good job. But I persevered and slowly, gradually, I started to feel like I belonged here. I met the love of my life and four years and a month after I arrived in Canada our daughter was born at St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto - they are the best thing my life. Several years later, in 1998, after completing an MBA degree from the Schulich School of Business, I started the Canadá en Español Network, a virtual company to promote Canada to Spanish speaking people around the world.
-In the last twenty years, I have been fortunate to visit all the corners of this incredible country, albeit not enough. There's so much still to see. From the tip of Cape Breton Island to the Yukon to Tofino to our great cities - Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Halifax, Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton and Victoria, Canada is just a breathtakingly beautiful and exciting country. And while it is not the perfect Utopia we would like it to be (but perhaps someday will be), I have found that the fundamental values that unite us are far more stronger that our regional differences: our love of freedom with compassion, our belief and practice of respect for the other, our care for nature (tar sands notwithstanding), our understanding that the public good benefits us all, our love of Hockey, our mistrust of arrogance and ostentation, and our unspoken love for this beautiful country. While there are always exceptions to the above as there are when we talk about Canadians, for the most part, I have found my fellow Canadians to be some of the most - perhaps the most - polite, respectful compassionate and caring people in the world (if not always fun, let's face it, we need to loosen up a little).
-I love Canada with a passion, but also with a clear head. While my life in Canada has not always been all I would want - my business is suffering now, but this can happen anywhere to anyone - I truly found my home in this country, just like countless millions before me. I am grateful to all the nation builders who came before us and I can proudly say that I believe Canada is not just a country worth dying for, but that the idea of Canada, a place where people from all races, nationalities, cultures, sexual preferences, backgrounds, can live in peace (with again some exceptions) is worth living for.
-This November 11th remember those who paid the ultimate price for us.
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Jaime Horwitz Rodriguez
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