Early Immigrant Days-2

I can't speak for other immigrants, but in answering the question "Why did you come to Canada?", I cannot respond only
with the cliche about the "higher standard of living". It is true that the economic imperative, to head for a First World
country, that flourishes in developing countries of the world, played a part in my coming to Canada, but for me, there was more to it than that. In what was then called British Guiana, Empire Day was honoured in our little school, on the banks of a
river, almost on the equator, and thousands of miles from Stepney and Wapping, by us brown and black children singing the
Empire Day hymn: "Father hear us we thy children of the Empire here today...Praying that thy holy city join us in one family".
When poetry time came we would parrot: "Children of the Empire clasp hands across the main...and glory in thy brotherhood
again and yet again". Suffice it to say, we got the central message in these lines, which was that we were joined with our brothers and sisters of the Empire. These pieces of our early brain washing, were not accompanied by sobering lessons,
even later in high school, on the reality of immigration policies and procedures, and the cruelty and hypocrisy often
associated with political expediency, that might chop us away later, from our Mother Country and her Empire. We drew the
only natural conclusion that could be drawn from being taught in these and so many different ways, that in our vast Empire,
anywhere, is where we belonged. There were times when we would gather around a map of the world, the better to focus on
how far and wide "our Empire" stretched. In those days pink had a different connotation from the one it later developed, as it
represented the far flung reaches of the British Empire. Although the occasional child would point at the lower right hand
corner of the map, where Australia and the best cricketers of that time lay, most of the fingers pointed to the top of the map,
"The North", some pausing at the spot where the zero degrees longitude line, divided the world into two halves, like a
beckoning cleavage... the bosom of our Mother Country. As for Canada...you couldn't miss it...it was the largest patch
of pink on the map...and some of us filed it away for future reference. We were colony people...trained to head North...and as
time went by...unerringly...many of us did...................Quester.