Early Immigrant Days-7

One of the central things for us single young immigrants... in making our "I am somebody now" statement... was... after being "up North" for a while...making the triumphant trip "back home". The hall-mark of your success...was if you returned
not just alone...but with a pale-skinned northern companion. The bluer the eyes and the blonder the hair the better. That...
accomplished in the shortest time after leaving Guyana, for a young expatriate...in those days...was the "big one". If you were
a young Guyana man returning with an Ojibwa princess...no-one would look twice at you. Ojibwa princesses...look too much like the dark beauties that bloom everywhere in the Land of Many Waters. With "Bwana" and "Mem Sahib" as your hero and heroine all through those years of colony moulding...bringing back one such was the angel on the Christmas tree. I must confess to delivering on this one. She was from Nova Scotia. More Scottish in some ways than the people I was later to meet in Scotland. She could speak Gaelic...play the bag pipes...and was a very fine Highland dancer. Her working class parents had brought her to Toronto...to put the finishing touches to her dancing career. My appearance on her scene...was met by a behind the scenes resistance that achieved its highest flowering...when one of her parents was heard to say..."Girl...if you keep going out with that guy...I'd rather go to your funeral than your wedding!". I think we left for our Guyana visit around this time one Christmas. Back in Guyana...the working class girl from Nova Scotia...was looked upon as a princess. The night she did her Highland dancing...the young women were left with their jaws slack...and the young men with their eyes wide. Some of the older folk had a look of pride on their faces. Looking back...I would say this pas-de-deux in the southern immigrant's dance was delivered almost flawlessly. There was one uncomfortable moment...when on the first night my father called me aside and asked me..."what my intentions were to this young woman". I sheepishly mumbled something and stumbled off to my solitary bed. It wasn't long after we arrived back from Guyana...she told me she was going away to Florida to become an airline hostess. She did and that was the end of our time together. Years later...remembering her...I wrote a song called..."Waitress in the Sky"......................Quester.