Sixty-year-old María Diosdado tidies up and gets the coffee and popcorn ready for bingo.

She’s getting ready for the special day. Every Friday, 18 Latin-American women come here to the third floor of the South Vancouver Neighbourhood House to play. The neighbourhood house is tucked in between dozens of South-Asian and Chinese shops. It’s also the one place in the neighbourhood where the women can gather and speak their own language.

Maria welcomes the other women with a warm smile and “hola” – hello in Spanish.

“This is very important for them. It’s the way to get distracted in their own language,” says Diosdado. “You always have to remember its not going to be easy, but if others can make it, so can you.”

The neighbourhood house tries to reach out to Spanish speakers by offering programs, including the bingo games.

“They’ve had to focus on raising their children, support their families and work. There is just not enough time to learn English,” said Kwangyoung Conn, a staff member at the neighbourhood house.

Free English classes are available for anyone who wishes to attend, but many come just to  play bingo because it is easy to understand and it allows the women to be together and tell stories.

“When I just arrived, I pointed at the stuff I wanted to buy and started doing mimics to the cashier,” said Isabel Aguilar. The 83-year-old sits smiling as the group laughs with her.

Her story about shopping is one that all of them can relate to.

A minority within a minority

More than 18,000 people live in the 20-block area around South Vancouver Neighbourhood House, from Kingsway to 49^th and Victoria. It’s a microcosm of Vancouver’s diversity, but also its loneliness and separation.

In this multicultural world, there are 41 languages spoken in these few blocks. The majority of residents speak Cantonese. Almost full quarter of its residents do not speak English, including many of the 255 Spanish speakers. The vast majority of those with no English are women, according to Statistics Canada. In the middle of all that, the Spanish-speaking women are minorities within minorities within minorities.

This group is a living illustration of a recent Vancouver Foundation report that concluded the main concern of Vancouverites was not homeless or housing affordability, but social isolation.

For this group of women, simple things like shopping can be difficult without English or Chinese language skills.  Gloria Rodriguez smiles as she looks around the bingo room.  She described the specific challenges people face when they’re trying to buy canned fish.

“They think it’s a tin of tuna and they don’t have a clue it’s cat food, so they eat it.”

The women around her burst out laughing and begin telling story after story. This gathering is important for a group of women who spend much of their time alone.

Working life

But not everyone is able to connect.

Rosa Osorio, 54, waits alone at the bus stop near Victoria and Kingsway.

“We are just not used to this kind of weather,” she says while bundling herself up in her wool winter coat, tuque and scarf.

She is heading to her house-cleaning job in North Vancouver. Osorio, a teacher from El Salvador fleeing the civil war, came to Canada 21 years ago. Vancouver is home now, but it has been quite an adjustment.

Orosio, speaking Spanish, says she doesn’t mind working 10 or 12 hour days cleaning other people’s homes. It’s a job that doesn’t require a lot of talking.

“Hispanics are always worried about not being understood at work or afraid of their accents. Sometimes it’s easier not to talk,” she says.

She does not attend bingo or language programs mostly because, with long hours at work, she doesn’t have time.

She says she’s grateful that her Canadian grandchildren won’t have have the same trouble with English. But their improving English means that she is isolated even more by her language.

“I’m glad to know my grandchildren speak English perfectly, but I get sad when I speak to them in Spanish sometimes they do not understand.”

The site of the proposed Welcome House Centre at 2610 Victoria Dr. (Photo: Meghan Mast)

The hundreds of refugees who pour into Vancouver every year will soon get a base unlike any they’ve had before — a one-stop housing, support, and services centre in the Commercial Drive heart of east Vancouver.

The new $24-million Welcome House Centre, whose rezoning application was rapidly approved at Vancouver council recently, will provide 200 beds in short-term apartments and house several support organizations. Those groups will provide services for an estimated 2,000 refugees, nearly double the number of people served at the current Welcome House in downtown Vancouver.

“It will be far easier than it is now because [refugees] won’t have to navigate all over the place,” said Chris Friesen, the project manager from Immigrant Services Society. “They will be able to go to one place to get the support they need.”

The city has agreed to lease the land, near Victoria and Broadway, to the society and its partnering organizations for the next 60 years. The new stability comes as a relief to Settlement Orientation Services and Inland Refugee Society, which were forced to move three times in the last six years.

“For non-profits who offer social services, it’s hard to find sympathetic landlords. Another reason that a secured site will be a godsend,” explained Alexandra Charlton, Settlement Orientation Services co-ordinator.

According to the city’s report, the city sped up the rezoning and development process because of the “potential social benefit of the proposal.”

“This centre is aligned with the city’s long-term priority to cultivate and sustain vibrant, creative, safe and caring communities for the wide diversity of individuals and families in Vancouver,” said Kent Munro, the assistant director of planning.

The rezoning and development permit application was submitted on April 30 and construction is projected to finish fall of 2014.

Funding flows in

Friesen said 70 per cent of the necessary money has been raised. Vancity credit union has donated $500,000, the City of Vancouver and BC Housing have both donated project-development funds, and a number of private donors are contributing.

The Pokharels at their new home in Coquitlam. (Photo: Meghan Mast)

“Over a quarter [of the funding] is coming from ISS ourselves through the selling of the building and cash reserves that we have,” said Friesen. “We’re also intending on taking out a mortgage for part of it.”

The current Welcome House building, at 530 Drake St., is for sale for $5 million.

The idea is to have everything — financial training, primary health care, government offices, housing, refugee trauma treatment, a youth drop-in space, a food bank, a law clinic, and a community kitchen — under one roof in order to simplify the process for newcomers.

That’s something that past refugees know will make a difference.

Kewal Pokharel was one of about 500 refugees who arrived in Vancouver last year. Now living in Coquitlam and working as a janitor, he came to Vancouver after living in a refugee camp in the Jhapa district of Nepal for over 18 years. His son needed medical treatment after suffering a brain injury from a motorcycle crash.

As soon as the family landed, Pokharel’s son was checked by medical staff and immediately taken to hospital, where he remains today. The family stayed in a hotel because there was no room at the tiny Welcome House that exists now.

“Yes, of course, the stay at hotel was not difficult, but we would be missing that support and guidance,” said Pokharel. “So if ISS could have such a housing place where such families with medical needs can be housed, that would be very nice.”

Pokharel found it difficult to navigate through social services and the medical system. Simple things like banking, buying groceries, a phone card, or a bus pass, were challenging, because services are so spread out.

Neighbours respond favourably

Mari Wright lives in the housing cooperative behind the proposed site. (Photo: Meghan Mast)

The first community open house was in February. Residents’ main concern was the height of the buildings — one will be four storeys and the other, six storeys.

But many, like Mari Wright, support the project. Wright has lived in the neighbouring co-operative since the mid-’80s. She arrived in Canada from Sri Lanka when she was seven.

“I think this neighbourhood is probably more welcoming to something like this than many others I can think of,” she said.

Friesen said the community’s overall response so far has been positive.

“We haven’t had anyone come out and say, ‘This is a bad idea,’” said Friesen. “I think people listen to what we’re trying to do and they say, ‘Why has it taken so long to get this together?’ Some people are saying this may be a new model for social services.”

Nikpay: Children gain whatever their parents teach them

Sara Moghadamjoo is a young well-educated Iranian-Canadian, who recently graduated with two masters degree from Simon Fraser University and is only a year away from getting her PhD from the University of British Columbia.

She decided to stand in the upcoming municipal elections for the district of West Vancouver as she wanted to represent the thousands of Iranian immigrants who live in the area.

But after only three weeks of campaigning, she withdrew her candidacy, disillusion at the lack of support from the community.

“I wanted to be their voice,” she said. “But when I saw that they had very little interest in seeing what I was trying to do, I figured that I could use the time I was spending on my campaign to do my own work.”

The triennial municipal elections will be held on Saturday the November 19th. This would not be the first time Vancouver has Iranian-Canadians candidates for council, but it could be, however, be the first time having someone elected within this community.

Listen: Moghadamjoo on why she decided not to run

A wariness of politics

An estimated 30,000 Iranians live in and around Vancouver according to the 2006 census. The figure today could be over 50,000, estimates Behshad Hastibakhsh, an award-winning political scientist who is senior director of public relations at   TIO Networks.

Many immigrated to Canada after the 1979 Islamic revolution and many brought with them a mistrust of politics.

“The first generation of Iranian immigrants are more likely to be skeptical towards politics and politicians,” said Hastibakhsh, “because they come from an environment where basic human rights are denied, corruption is common, democracy is non-existent, and elections are fixed.”

“People can’t break the old mold,” he said.

Hastibakhsh believes that the ethnic media can help change attitudes.

“I envision a positive role of Persian newspapers, radio, television stations, and online media in explaining the rights and privileges of active participation in the democratic process,” he said, “by creating clear distinctions between the theocracy in Iran and the democracy in Canada, the mass media can help newcomers overcome their fears, phobias and mistrusts towards politics.”

This wariness of politics appears to have been passed onto the children born or raised in Canada.

“Children gain whatever their parents teach them,” said Max Nikpay, a council candidate for the district of West Vancouver. “Most of those parents come from a place where people are unable to use their voice.”

Another is Araz Rismani, an Iranian candidate in Coquitlam, who is grateful for the support from the community.

“I have a team of 50 people helping me with my campaign and there are a lot of Iranians among them,” he said. “At a fundraiser held in Red Robinson Show Theatre, a lot of people showed up and I think 80% of the were Iranians.

Yet even he acknowledges that Iranians who were raised in Canada remain detached from politics.

“We should understand that the reason Canada has stayed a democratic country is because of these elections and we shouldn’t take that for granted.”

There are many Iranian-run businesses in Lonsdale.

Local politicians point to a more concrete reason why Iranians should care about civic politics.

“Lonsdale wouldn’t do this well if it wasn’t for successful Iranian businesses,” said Darell Mussatto, the mayor of city of North Vancouver. There is at least one Iranian-run business at every intersection in Lonsdale.

Reaching the young

Encouraging young people to vote is not just an issue in the Iranian community.

Advocacy groups like Get your Vote On say there is a gulf between the youth and politicians.

“The biggest problem is that young people feel that politicians don’t speak to them, and politicians, on the other hand, don’t see that youth as voters,” said Adrian Sinclair from Get Your Vote On. “It is really a cycle,” he added.

One young Iranian-Canadian who is considering whether to vote is Afra Jashanivand, a 24-year old artist attending Capilano University.

“I am interested in getting involved,” she said. “But sometimes I need to focus on my studies and my own work.”

She says that she tries to participate in different events and elections around the campus and believes that this involvement is a good practice for her.

Even though she is no longer standing the vote, Moghadamjoo maintains that the Iranian community needs to be political active.

Listen: Moghadamjoo on changing attitudes to politics

“I think for the sake of their own businesses and their own lives, Iranian people should participate in these elections.”

“People who care about their environment should take action in the process. We can’t just step back and wait for someone else to do the work,” said Moghadamjoo.

“This is a very important issue and I think we all have a certain responsibility to help create a new culture which would fit our new lifestyles,” she said, “and I think is really important to educate people about this issue.”

Led by the controversial Imam Fode Drame, the Zawiyah Foundation has recently moved into a commercial property off Southeast Marine Drive in Vancouver.

Imam Fode Drame: The whiteboards filled with Arabic text from his lessons.

In 2005, The BC Muslim Association fired Drame from a prominent East Vancouver mosque. The highly educated and multilingual Islamic scholar from Senegal believes he was dismissed to his inclusion of women in Qur’an classes and his efforts at interfaith dialogue.

The BCMA did not comment on the reason for the decision.

Shortly after his dismissal, Drame and his followers established their own organization.

As the new Zawiyah Foundation spent the past half-decade attempting to plant roots in Vancouver, they moved among many temporary and borrowed locations in the Fraser Street area.

Drame says many other Muslim groups in the city are facing similar challenges.

As of the 2006 census, Vancouver was home to 72,000 Muslims. Statistics Canada projects that immigration will triple Vancouver’s Muslim population in the next 20 years, reaching over 230,000 by 2031.

One option for newcomers is to blend into Vancouver’s major Muslim associations. The other is to find real estate in Canada’s most expensive city.

Prayers from behind the Quiznos

After six years of struggling with terminated leases, environmental damage and unsuccessful bids to purchase, the Zawiyah Foundation has now leased on a commercial space off Southeast Marine Drive near the Knight Street Bridge.

From the exterior, it appears to be nothing more than a delivery door behind a Quiznos restaurant. Inside is a busy place of worship.

The walls are painted entirely black, a remnant from the previous occupants. “We found it here!” Drame says of the colour. He says he would have preferred green, the symbolic colour of Islam, but there will be time to paint later.

Many members conveniently work in the nearby industrial parks. “Their jobs are here,” says Drame. “They are happy that this place is here. It is easy for them to come from work, pray and go back to work.”

Technically, the space cannot be called a “mosque” until it is a permanent establishment. For now, they call it a centre.

Drame’s goal is still to eventually buy a property in Vancouver, a city where the price of an average home currently exceeds $750,000. He hopes to raise the funds over the next few years.

Common ground

Derryl MacLean does not foresee an increase in splinter groups or religious conflicts, even amidst the cultural and ethnic variations in Vancouver’s growing Muslim community.

The new meeting place of the Zawiyah Foundation: An inconspicuous door behind Quiznos.

MacLean is the Director of the Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures at Simon Fraser University.

He identifies a particular tendency for Vancouver’s major Muslim groups to embrace Canada’s ethos of multiculturalism and “look for commonality” among the many cultures represented.

MacLean says Muslim newcomers to Vancouver will encounter a religious culture that focuses on “shared experiences of Islam” rather than “ethnic or localized interpretations.”

“When conflicts do arise,” says MacLean, “they often coalesce around individuals rather than interpretations, although they may subsequently be framed in ‘Islamic’ terms.”

Where two lines meet

Despite his controversial exit from the BCMA, Drame has many supporters in the city.

One is Mohammed Naseer Pirzada, managing editor of Miracle, a Surrey-based Muslim community newspaper. “I respect him a lot and his vision,” said Pirzada.

Drame descends from the Jakhanke tribe in West Africa, a group known internationally to produce exceptional Islamic scholars. According to him, African cultures will often have a less regulated, more spiritual approach to the faith.

He blames “narrow views” on the part of the BCMA for his dismissal but holds no grudge. “It’s the same Islam but people have different takes on it,” he says simply.

Drame says he chose to call his group a foundation because it represents solidness, or “something that has roots.” The word Zawiyah is a Maghrebi term that he says literally translates to “corner,” or more philosophically, “where two lines meet.”

The Goddess of Democracy at UBC.

A group of researchers at the University of British Columbia is readying the launch of a new educational website that aims to offer an interactive history of Chinese Canadians.

More than two years in the making, the site, Chinese Canadian Stories is due to be unveiled in January.

Henry Yu, who heads up the project, said he wanted a way to use a digital medium in order to make Chinese-Canadian stories more compelling.

“History textbooks aren’t sufficient enough nowadays,” said the professor of history at UBC and director of the Initiative for Student Teaching and Research in Chinese Canadian studies (INSTRCC).

Video games, maps and more

Chinese Canadian Stories is a co-project among three North-American universities. UBC focuses on the research side, while Simon Fraser University covers its technical aspects. The third is Stanford University, whose Spatial History Lab maps the different paths taken by early Chinese immigrants to Canada.The Masters of Digital Media Program at Great Nothern Way Campus and the Critical Thinking Consortium are also part of this project.

The Canadian federal government’s Community Historical Recognition Program granted Chinese Canadian Stories $1.17 million in funds.

The new website will provide educational resources aimed at both pupils and teachers. Among other interactive tools, it features a video game for children between six and 12 years old: “Gold Mountain Quest” stars a Chinese-Canadian teenager living in an early 20th century mining village.

A digital collection of photos, videos, newspapers and historical documents is featured, as well as a map that displays the different historical Chinese communities throughout Canada.

A database has also been created containing the information of early Chinese immigrants. This research tool is based on the head tax, an entry fee that the Canadian government required for each Chinese immigrant between 1885 and 1949. It can be searched by name, profession, Chinese city of origin, where and when they arrived in Canada. It already contains almost 97,000 names.

The site will also a feature a selection of private letters from among those immigrant families. Researcher Joanne Poon sought the help of Chinese Canadian elderlies in order to translate them into English from Toishanese, a dialect spoken from Guangdong, China, from where most of them hailed.

A better focus on Chinese Canadians’ history

Allan Cho: Stories of Chinese Canadians' contribution to the country have largely focused on the railway and the Gold Rush.

Allan Cho, a UBC librarian in charge of some of the technical aspects of the project, said that traditionally, stories of Chinese Canadians’ contribution to the country have largely focused on the railway and the Gold Rush. They made little mention of everyday life in Canadian Chinatowns.

“For instance, we rarely talk about market gardens, laundries and mixed marriages between Chinese and First Nations,” he said.

Prof. Yu said the idea for the site was prompted back in 2008 after the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the anti-Asian riots in Vancouver in 1907. But he stresses in an introductory video that the project is “not about what was done to the Chinese, but what they were doing.”

He said that the notion of Canada as a solely bicultural country is no longer resonant.

“The idea that Canada has been built only by the British and the French isn’t relevant anymore,” said Yu.

“It prevents people from being interested in Canadian history, mostly because they don’t recognize themselves in it.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

“I am the only son and I believe we have waited for much longer than normal,” Patel said. “I should have considered this before I applied for immigration. But now that’s already done and I have to see how I can move back sooner so my parents can be with me.”

Patel’s parents live in India. As an immigrant, he can sponsor them to join him here.

Sponsoring is a two-step procedure. First, Citizenship and Immigration Canada checks to see if the immigrant qualifies as a sponsor, which includes an income threshold. This step takes about 42 months, according to CIC.

Second, CIC assesses the parents themselves, which involves, among other tests, a thorough medical examination. The time it takes for this part varies depending on the country of origin. The expected wait time for sponsoring parents from India is 30 months, according to CIC.

Adding that up then, the total wait time for Patel and his parents would be about six years. But this is too long for Patel.

“When I applied to immigrate, Canada was encouraging families to move here and promoting family reunification,” he said. “Having moved to Canada now, I feel like I was lied to.”

Listen: Satish Patel’s experience

Patel immigrated to Canada in 2003 as an information and technology expert. For the first few years, he worked low paying jobs. After two years, he found a job that provided enough income to sponsor his parents for immigration. He applied in 2006 and the wait began.

While in Canada, Patel got married and had a son, who is now two and a half years old. But his parents are missing all of this.

“It’s really hard for my parents because they only get to see my child on webcam,” he said.

So Patel made a tough decision to reunite with his family in India.

‘Irresponsible and inhumane’

Satish Patel’s story isn’t an anomaly. There are 147,768 other families also waiting for parents or grandparents to join them in Canada, according to an access to information request obtained by immigration lawyer Richard Kurland.

The wait will be over for about 11,200 of those families in 2011, according to the same documents. But this is a 19% decrease from the number granted permanent residency in 2010. Canada issued 11,486 visas to parents and grandparents in 2010 between January and September alone.

“[The government] lured more applicants into the system by posting on the website this historical processing time,” Kurland said, “knowing full well that the real processing time would be significantly longer.”

If the current backlog and approval rates continue, Kurland estimates that the average processing time will be at least 10 years. Just across the border in the U.S., it takes about one to two years to sponsor parents.

Johanne Nadeau, spokesperson for CIC, said it would be impossible to process parent and grandparent applications any faster.

“Priority is given to certain immigrant classes, and this can mean longer processing times for others,” Nadeau said in an e-mail. “For example, our aim is to process applications from sponsored spouses, partners and dependent children within six months of receipt.”

While in government, the Conservative party prioritize economic migrants over senior immigrants who might not make any contributions. A reduction in visa targets reflected these priorities.

“There are trade-offs, and this government is focused on the priorities of Canadians which are economic growth and prosperity,” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told the House of Commons in February when he announced the new visa targets.

“We need more newcomers working and paying taxes and contributing to our health-care system. That is the focus of our immigration system.”

Regardless of who gets in first and when, the wait is simply too long, said Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh.

“When the Liberals were in government, parents were waiting three to four years and I was ashamed we couldn’t do a better job,” Dosanjh said. “But I didn’t know that this government has no shame, that they can make them wait 10 years.”

“That’s irresponsible and inhumane,” he added.

Three-tiered immigration process

Many immigrant families are eager for their parents to join them in Canada. Some would even consider footing all of their parents’ bills and not take a single penny from Canadian taxpayers.

“We don’t want the medical facilities for them or the pension. We can take care of them,” said Jagdeep Sandhu. “Just let them come here.”

Jagdeep Sandhu immigrated to Canada in 2006 to join her husband. She has a Bachelor and Master degree in education and taught for a while in Winnipeg. She stopped teaching so she could stay home and take care of her one year old and three year old.

She applied for her parents to immigrate to Canada just over three years ago and is still waiting.

Listen: Jagdeep Sandhu’s story

“The most important thing is we love them. I want them here. I want to see them everyday,” Sandhu said. “They are alone there. There’s no one to take care of them.”

“And the other reason is that they can take care of my kids and I can go to the school as a teacher,” she added.

But for now, Sandhu would rather stay at home than to leave her children at a childcare facility.

Lawyer Kurland agreed that it would be possible to shorten the processing time if some families were allowed to cover all their parents’ future expenses.

“This problem can be fixed, and it’s better than 15 to 20 year waiting periods,” Kurland said. “It’s better than shutting off all together.”

The solution that Kurland proposes is a three-tiered immigration system. The first tier would allow families who can afford it to opt out of the social security system completely.

These applications could be processed quickly. This way, the government wouldn’t have to consider the economic burden that older parents might have, he said.

The second tier would be the current system. Families would apply and wait, but since some families would be processed in the first tier, the processing time would theoretically decrease.

The third tier would be for families who don’t satisfy the income requirements to sponsor their parents. For these families, the province could step in and take care of the family’s medical and social expenditures.

But Kurland isn’t convinced that the government would consider implementing such a system.

“The immigration ministry would have to be courageous politically to go this way,” Kurland said. “But if they do nothing, they’re going to be in trouble, you can’t have increasing processing times like this.”

Cultural values

Lolita Cristobal, centre, visits Canada and attends mass with her daughter Julie Bulosan and grandchildren.

Not being able to live with parents is a reality for many immigrant families. But it is particularly troubling because the cultural values for immigrants often differ from Canadians’, according to critics of the long wait times like Raminder Kang from Progressive Intercultural Community Services, an organization that supports South Asian imrant communities.

“Here, the families are made up of only the husband, wife and children,” Kang said. “But people live in extended families back home, and immigrant families have to ask friends and others to help take care of their parents overseas.”

“And when grandparents are retired, they do take care of the grandchildren when there’s a need,” he added.

Sue Zhou, a Chinese immigrant, wanted to sponsor her parents when she was pregnant, but decided not to. She said she was worried about the long processing times and the risk of rejection.

“Canadians have been here the entire time for hundreds of years, so obviously they wouldn’t need to talk about reunifying,” Zhou said. “But everyone who immigrates would want to be with their family and reunify. It’s a human nature.”

Listen: Sue Zhou’s story:

Immigrant families often obtain multiple-entry visas so their parents can visit regularly, instead of applying for permanent residency. But these visas restrict the length of stay to six months, sometimes up to one year, and are costly to maintain.

Bills piling up

Julie Bulosan immigrated to Vancouver almost 13 years ago and currently works at the Vancouver General Hospital. She still hasn’t applied for her parents to move here from the Philippines because she’s worried about the long wait and the potential of a rejection. Instead, she brings them to Canada as visitors.

“It’s nice having them here,” Bulosan said. “It’s not just them watching over our kids, but we can watch over them too.”

Between airfare and medical insurance, the bills to allow her parents to visit are piling up. Buloson is adopting a son and said she hopes her parents could watch him grow up.

“We read in the paper that the immigration is taking fewer and fewer grandparents, they’re not approving a lot,” she said. “It’s hard, but if we can sponsor them then they don’t have to go back there.”

Listen: Julie Bulosan’s story:

Unlike Bulosan, some immigrant parents send their children to their home country so the grandparents can help take care of them while the parents work in Canada. The children then return to their parents when they attend elementary school.

This has created some adjustment problems and separation anxiety among families, said Kelly Ng, chief operating officer at S.U.C.C.E.S.S., a settlement services provider.

“They miss the grandparents very much and they have attachment issues to their own parents because of the long separation,” Ng said. “So we are creating another whole segment of difficulty here.”

For most families, the wait might be worth it. But for some, like Satish Patel who is returning to India, it isn’t. Patel said he hopes other immigrants would learn from his mistake.

“They need to make a decision upfront on how badly they want their parents to be with them and they need to be aware of the gains and losses,” Patel said. “Things might change in the future and it might become more friendly for parents to join their kids, but I didn’t weigh my options and I was too positive.”

Four Bhutanese seniors who relocated to Canada during the past three years, recently gathered in one of the men’s Coquitlam apartments to swap stories. The group sat together on Laxmi Narayan Subedi’s living room couches and sipped tea. They told tales of their past lives in Bhutan and Nepal, and of their latest adjustments in their new country.

Gatherings like these are a frequent ritual for many elderly here.

Their stories ranged from tragic to nostalgic. Subedi, 96, recalled how a fire in a refugee camp in Nepal gutted everything in 2008, including his bamboo hut. His nephew, Parmananda, 81, shared fond memories of life on his farm in Bhutan, rising at 5 a.m. to plow the fields with his pair of oxen.

But health issues dominate the conversation when these seniors meet.

Subedi’s asthma has been keeping him awake at night.

“Maybe death is calling me,” he said to the group. “I could not sleep even for a while. Sometimes it feels like my breath is going to stop.”

Subedi fled his home country of Bhutan in the early 1990s, when the Druk government outlawed thousands of Nepali-speaking people like himself. He was 76.

Laxmi Narayan Subedi, 96, moved to Vancouver in December 2010 to begin a new life.

Almost 100,000 ethnic Nepalese fled Bhutan to Nepal as Subedi had. More than 44,000 of them found a home for a third time after the United Nations introduced in 2006 a plan to help Bhutanese refugees resettle permanently in other countries.

Subedi arrived in Canada last December.

“I did not decide to come here,” he said. “It’s destiny that brought me here.”

Senior citizens like Subedi and his new friends, face exceptional challenges as they near the end of their lives in an entirely unfamiliar atmosphere.

In addition to natural health problems, they are frustrated by a lack of access to religious services, grapple with a foreign language, and more than anything, they must learn to cope with the greatest pain: loneliness.

By the time Subedi and his family arrived, a Bhutanese community, albeit small, had already formed in Vancouver.

Meetings like this help make life in Vancouver tolerable, Subedi said.

The resettlement program

Before arriving in Canada, Subedi suffered a traumatic journey of struggle, uncertainty and statelessness that lasted almost 20 years.

He and his family escaped Bhutan after their government cracked down on the country’s ethnic Nepalese.

“Everything was good in Bhutan,” Subedi said of the time before the crackdown, “but something went wrong behind the curtains and we were forced to flee.”

They then spent nearly two decades struggling to survive in one of Nepal’s seven refugee camps.

When the UN launched the third-country resettlement plan, Subedi jumped at the opportunity to relocate to North America.

The United States accepts the majority of Bhutanese refugees, and has offered to resettle up to 60,000 of them. It has welcomed 37,000 so far, according to the International Organization of Migration.

Canada has pledged to accept up to 5,000 Bhutanese refugees under its government-assisted refugee settlement (GARS) program. It provides financial support to the new immigrants from the federal government in the first year and from the provincial government thereafter.

Meeting community members is a way for the seniors to beat loneliness and to pass time.

It is one of nine countries to have invited these refugees for permanent settlement. Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, the UK and Sweden have also opened their borders.

Nearly 2,500 former Bhutanese refugees have resettled in Canada. Over a hundred have landed in British Columbia. Of them, only five are over 65 years old, and 33 are children under 15, according to the Immigration Services Society of British Columbia (ISSofBC).

The nonprofit organization helps the new immigrants adjust to their new setting through orientations and counseling, said Subrath Shrestha, a counselor with the society.

Of the nearly 20 Bhutanese interviewed for this story, each said they were grateful to the Canadian government.

“We had brought nothing with us,” Subedi said. “They (the government) have provided us with food, clothes, shelter and everything.”

Subedi`s neighbour, Kharsila Kafle  agreed. “It is perfect here. We have come to the right place. We have left all the suffering behind.”

Kafle.67, is among the first group of Bhutanese refugees to have resettled in Vancouver in March 2009.

“It would be ungrateful if we start complaining,” she said.

Yet despite that they appreciate the country’s support, starting a new life has had its challenges.

A new language, limited access to religious services

Parmananda Subedi, 81, wishes he could talk to the people living in his building. But his inability to speak or understand English prevents him from being able to get to know them. His interaction with his English-speaking neighbours is limited to brief exchanges, a mere “good morning” and “good evening.”

It’s unlikely that the elders will learn English.

Unlike the children of the Bhutanese community, who learn to speak English quite quickly, or the adults in his family who attend ESL classes, seniors generally stick to Nepali.

“We elderly cannot learn a new language,” Kafle said. “Over time, we may learn a few words, but that won’t be of much help. This is reality and we have to live with it.”

Parmananda has developed a better strategy. He has learned a few English words: “hello,” “yes,” “no,” “good morning,” “good evening,” “good,” “fine,” “okay” and “thank you.”

He pulls out one of these phrases whenever someone says something to him. He guesses at a person’s intention based on their gestures and tone of voice.

“That is all I have learned so far,” he said.

Reading religious books like the Ramayana is the favourite passtime of Parmananda Subedi, 81.

With many Bhutanese families living in clusters, the seniors rely on the younger generations to learn English.

Many of the Bhutanese who have settled in Vancouver have said they are also somewhat disappointed by the lack of access to religious services.

They wish they could have a temple and a pundit – that is, a Nepali priest – in their community.

At home, Laxmi Narayan begins his days with a morning worship ritual. Unlike in Bhutan and Nepal, he doesn’t have a temple to go to nearby, as there is no Hindu temple in Coquitlam.

He recites the Hindu epics like Ramayana and Krishna Charitra in the afternoon whenever there is no one to talk to or nothing to do. Reading religious books is also a favourite pastime of his nephew Parmananda, especially on afternoons when his family members go to work or school.

Seniors who cannot read have an alternative: they can watch DVDs of films based on the epics.

“It is sad that without a Nepali priest we cannot properly perform life rituals,” Kafle said, including naming ceremonies, weddings or death anniversary rituals.

“In a new place we knew that we would not be able to perform elaborate rituals,” Kafle said. “But we have not been able to perform even the minimum either.”

Some members said they are thinking of raising funds to establish a temple but the idea has not taken shape yet. Perhaps over time as the community grows.

Messages of hope were compiled for each of the refugee speakers at a recent Red Cross event

By Kate Adach

Ori Garcia lived in constant fear before fleeing Mexico. She suffered homophobic violence and humiliation in a country often considered safe for queers.

“As a transgendered woman, every day that go by in my life, in my country, was a matter of life or death,” she said.

Garcia applied for refugee status in 2008 in Vancouver. Two years later she still waits for a hearing in to her case.

Despite the delay, she may be lucky to have sought status before Canada’s new refugee laws are enacted next year.

Advocates say queer claimants — people who face persecution for their sexual orientation or gender identity — may struggle to defend their cases under Bill C-11. The reformed act is intended to streamline the country’s lagging refugee process.

The Conservative government introduced the Refugee Reform Act to address a backlog of 63,000 pending claims.

In 2011, refugee cases will be determined within two or three months depending on the country of origin. This is a significant change. Previously, claimants have had to wait much longer.

However, many fear this fast-track system won’t allow enough time for sexuality or gender claims to be made sufficiently, and that pre-designating countries could have dangerous consequences.

“It’s a complex picture on the ground,” said Sharalyn Jordan, a PhD candidate at UBC whose research focuses on queer refugees. “No country is completely safe or completely unsafe for queers and trans people.”

Listen: Ori Garcia shares her story

Mexico has legalized same-sex marriage, for example, yet homophobia is prevalent throughout much of the country.

Too fast for comfort

Garcia’s two-year wait is not uncommon. Most cases take an average of 21 months before claimants learn whether they’ve been accepted or rejected.

Advocacy groups, including the Rainbow Refugee Committee and the Canadian Council for Refugees, have long pushed for an expedited process to prevent claimants from waiting in limbo.

“Compared to the current system where people are waiting up to two years, yes I want to see a shorter system,” Jordan said.

But the Rainbow Refugee Committee, an advocacy group for queer claimants, warns that there’s such a thing as too fast.

Queer refugees “have spent many years concealing their sexual orientation, their gender identity,” said Chris Morrissey, co-founder of both the committee and the Lesbian and Gay Immigration Taskforce.

Though Mexico is often considered a safe place for queers, many, like Ori Garcia, have stories of homophobic violence

Their needs go beyond those of other refugees, she said.

Queer claimants must provide evidence of two things:

• Their sexual identity or orientation, and
• That they face persecution because of it

Both can be a challenge.

Claimants have a difficult time getting documentation to prove their sexuality or that they are in danger, Jordan said.

Photographs, love-letters and evidence of a queer lifestyle may help their case, but these don’t always exist.

“In many other kinds of claims there’s more documentary evidence,” she said, “so less depends on the narrative that people tell.”

Queer claims tend to rely heavily on verbal testimony.

Advocates say queer claimants need time to find the courage to share an identity they have long repressed, especially to somebody in uniform.

“They are not likely to (develop) the kind of trust that they’ll need,” Jordan said.

Fear of government officials can inhibit all refugees. But even talking to lawyers is “virtually impossible” for queers who worry that exposing their identities or divulging intimate details will put them at risk, Morrissey said.

One man stayed in detention for 27 days, she said, “because he was afraid to tell his duty council that he was gay.”

‘A two-tiered system’

Under Bill C-11, a case like Garcia’s may be processed in two months, depending on whether Mexico is added to the “designated country list.”

Canada has not yet published which criteria it will base the lists on, but it has proposed sorting countries based on safety levels.

An applicant from a “safe” country will be processed faster because the government anticipates that  a non-threatening case would be rejected.

But the refugee board has not announced which countries will receive designation.

The Rainbow Refugee Committee members are concerned by the prospect of putting broad labels on nations.

Jordan warns that a ranking system doesn’t work because up-to-date information of country-conditions is not always available.

“Extreme forms of homophobic and transphobic violence often co-exist with constitutional protection … on paper,” Jordan said.

It’s a myth that some countries – like Mexico – are safe for queers, she said.

Traumatic story

Garcia’s experience is an example of this.

Standing at a podium in Vancouver’s Central Library, Ori Garcia, 26, faced a large crowd that had gathered to hear her share her story at a recent event sponsored by the Red Cross.

She recounted some of the trauma she experienced in Mexico. She stood tall, wearing a snowflake-patterned toque and hoop earrings.

“People would laugh and point at me in the streets,” she said.

Garcia said she was not only stigmatized, she was continually threatened with violence.

“After being rape for a stranger,” Garcia said, “…(the police made) very painful comments of how much I deserved that and how much I was probably begging for it.”

Her hearing is scheduled for January.

Related: Upcoming Queer Stories of Migration events and workshops

Ner visits her mother almost every day since she fell into a coma

Update: Edna Ner passed away on Dec. 2.

Brigita Anastasia Ner, alone by her comatose mother’s bedside, waits for Citizenship and Immigration Canada to decide whether her father can visit Vancouver from the Philippines.

Her father, a pastor, applied for a temporary resident visa on Nov. 8 after his wife, Edna Ner, 47, suffered a cardiac arrest. Ner said the question of whether to keep her on life support cannot be answered without him.

“We have the letter from the hospital, we have the letter from my mom’s doctor, but I don’t feel that the immigration office feels that urge or that urgency that he has to be here, so it’s like they keep delaying it,” said Ner, 23, a Canadian citizen who moved to the Philippines and came back to be with her mother on Nov. 6.

She added, “He has family who can help him, but they’re making it an issue now that he needs to get a letter and prove that he’s not going leech off the government when he gets here.”

Ner is not alone. Filipino families struggle to get the temporary resident visas required during times of crisis, said immigration lawyer Virginie Francoeur of the West Coast Domestic Workers Association.

“It is – generally speaking – very difficult for family members in the Philippines to get visitors’ visas to come to Canada to visit their families,” Francoeur said.

Listen to Ner speak of her frustration with visa process

Francoeur, 80 per cent of whose clients are Filipino, said the main reason is that visa officers think they will overstay the authorized period.

Former Filipino caregivers, now legal support workers at the DWA with Francoeur

Guidy Mamann, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, agrees.  “As soon as you see a country that is experiencing an economic downturn, political stresses, political conflict, right away – the people want to get out, they want to go to ‘greener’ or calmer pastures,” he said. “That’s when the visas stop being issued.”

Proof that they’ll go back

Applicants need to prove that they have a place to stay and have sufficient funds to maintain themselves in Canada.

With Regulation 179 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, CIC can refuse applicants it suspects might stay too long.  The Philippines is one of 145 countries subject to Regulation 179.

CIC exempts 53 countries, most of which are developed, from applying for a visiting visa. Mamann said CIC doesn’t worry that someone from a rich country “is going to sneak in the underground economy and start working illegally in Canada.”

Johanne Nadeau, a regional media spokesperson for CIC, said, “If someone is coming to visit a sick family member or a funeral or what not, those details need to be written out in the application, so that we’re taking that into consideration.”  When asked where online are the specific criteria for entry, Nadeau replied they’re there, even though they’re not always in black and white.

Alfredo Santiago had nothing to complain about. It took the retiree from the Philippines a month to get his visa to Canada to see his 27-year-old son in the hospital. But he had urged a CIC official in Manila to call the doctor tending to his son in Vancouver General Hospital to get his application stamped.

He applied in September for a visa when his son was hospitalized. A month later, his son John, a temporary foreign worker, was diagnosed with malignant brain and spinal tumours.

“First and foremost, I don’t have relatives here,” John Santiago said. “My father always sleeps here in the hospital so it’s a big help for me. It’s also a big relief for my condition to be with my dad.”

Alfredo Santiago was approved for a six-month visa. His wife, who has a history traveling to Singapore and returning to the Philippines, will join them on Dec. 4.

Francoeur said a history of traveling to and from other countries and complying with stay requirements can help a person get a visa.

Fear of rejection

Alfredo Santiago prepares meals for his son John in the VGH

Armin Patulan, an engineer originally from the Philippines now working in Dubai, applied for a visa to attend his cousin’s wedding in Cambridge, Ont., in August 2009.

“The immigration officer reviewing my application deemed that I will not be going out of the country at the end of my allowed stay,” he said.

Patulan said he was upset because he paid a non-refundable processing fee of $400 – and was initially rejected. His second application was approved two weeks later when he sent a letter from his employer indicating that his visit is part of his annual vacation.

But that cost him another $400.

He plans to return in 2012 and is afraid of getting rejected again. “Attached papers are not convincing for them, you know, because they always think this might have been copied somewhere – it’s your word they’re going to back on till there’s no interview,” he said.

As far as Mamman is concerned, he is calling for CIC to be more transparent in dealing with temporary visas. CIC’s online application form “doesn’t come close to telling you whether or not you’re just throwing your money away or not because all this does is give you static information,” he said.

“It should say, ‘If you don’t have a job, if you don’t have a career, and you’re not in your third year of Harvard law school, or if you don’t have a business, don’t bother applying.’ That’s what it should say,” he added.

Meanwhile, nurses and doctors at Burnaby General persistently ask Ner when her father will arrive.

Bhatti, 80, volunteers three or four days a week at the Sikh temple on Ross Street. Most of the time, he’s busy with work related to two projects: construction of a monument and of a museum in memory of the Komagata Maru incident.

Senior vice president of Khalsa Diwan Society of Vancouver Kesar Singh Bhatti.

The Canadian government agreed last year to fund the projects to commemorate the 1914 incident in which Canada invoked laws that discouraged immigration of Asian people and denied entry to 352 Indian immigrants on board the ship Komagata Maru.

“The incident has been a sore point among Southeast Asians, particularly Indo-Canadians and specifically Punjabi Sikhs,” said Bhatti, the senior vice president of the Sikh organization.

Besides a formal government apology in the parliament, Bhatti said he wanted a museum and a monument in memory of the incident so future generations could know about the injustice.

Related: What is Komagata Maru incident?

Sahib Thind, the president of the Prof. Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation of Canada, and others want the Canadian government to apologize in the House of Commons. The foundation, formed in memory of the Sikh literary figure, has been lobbying for the apology.

“A memorial … before an apology in House of Commons would further insult, mortify and demoralize the South Asian community,” Thind wrote in an open letter published in the South Asian Post in October.

Museum at Sikh temple

When the government invited applications for funds under the Community Historical Recognition Program, Bhatti, on behalf of the society, applied for $2.5 million. The government agreed to provide $1.5 million — $750,000 for the monument and $750,000 for the museum.

Now the completion of the projects by the March 31, 2012 deadline has become the most important task in Bhatti’s life.

“Older people are going and mostly they are gone, ” Bhatti said. ‘‘There are very few people who know about those things like Komagata Maru. It is important to establish something so it’s there all the time for our generations to see.”

This building at the Sikh Temple on Ross Street will become the Komagata Maru museum

A retired engineer, Bhatti said the building on the east side of the temple will be converted into a Komagata Maru Museum. The building now houses a library and classrooms. The temple has two stories, with the big prayer hall upstairs, and society offices, kitchen, dining hall and meeting hall downstairs.

Bhatti said the museum will pay tribute to the Komagata Maru incident and to Sikh pioneers who fought for their rights. He said it also will record the history of Khalsa Diwan Society and its pioneers who supported the Komagata Maru passengers in 1914.

Meanwhile, the process for the erection of the monument is underway. The first phase of the work includes site selection and design conceptualization.

The Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation is leading the process of site selection, design preparation and construction. The Khalsa Diwan Society, however, will control the project funds.

Board commissioner Raj Hundal said the location for the monument has not been approved. He said the park board has hired Lee+Associates to select the site and design the monument. The consultants are expected to recommend the location after talking with the public around the proposed site, before they move ahead with the design.

The Society favours Brockton Point at Stanley Park for the monument because it’s close to Burrard Inlet, where Komagata Maru was anchored.

Demand for apology in parliament

The society takes the government funding for the monument and the museum as a recognition of the injustice. But it has not given up the demand for an official apology in the House of Commons.

Brockton Point at Stanley Park near the Burrard Inlet is one of the proposed sites for the construction of a Komagata Maru monument.

“Yeah, they should apologize for the wrongs done to the Indo-Canadian community,” Bhatti said. “But we also wanted something more than a simple apology. We wanted to erect some monument in memory of the ship. We wanted to establish some sort of museum in memory of our pioneers who put up the fight 100 years ago.”

The demand for formal apology and compensation for the incident grew after the size of Indo-Canadian community swelled to nearly 1 million by 2006 in Canada — largely in Vancouver — and after the federal government in 2006 formally apologized and provided compensation for past discrimination against Chinese immigrants.

The B.C. legislature and Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the Komagata Maru incident in 2008.

However, many Indo-Canadian community members rejected the apology. They said they wanted the apology in the House of Commons, because the government had apologized in the parliament for abuse suffered by aboriginal, Chinese and Japanese people in the past.