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Welcome home: York's Welcome Centres offer new beginnings
 Newcomers learn more than just English at five centres

Yorkregion.com
April 16, 2015
By Kim Zarzour

If you are a born and bred Canadian, you have probably never noticed them before - the simple white ‘Welcome’ signs scattered at random plazas throughout York Region.

But what that sign represents, to those who have walked through the Welcome Centre doors, is often nothing less than life changing.

For newcomers, it is the portal to Canada, a place for the hopeful and the homesick, for those seeking solace and new beginnings.

Some arrive fresh from the airport, suitcase in hand, jetlagged and eager to begin new lives.

Others straggle in after struggling for months to figure out how to make it in this big bewildering country.

If you have never moved from your homeland, you wouldn’t know the drama unfolding behind these doors. We’ve stepped inside to give you a glimpse.

*****

In Richmond Hill, Reza Badiee has come to the Welcome Centre on Yonge Street to share good news.

Last week, his wife had a baby and both are doing well. He owes it all, he says, to the “angels” at the Welcome Centre.

Before Badiee left Iran, shortly before Christmas, someone gave him a stranger’s phone number.

“This guy will help you.”

Turns out, not so much.

The stranger rented Badiee and his wife a room in building filled with immigrants - at $100 a night. When the landlord found out she was pregnant and the couple had no health coverage yet, he asked them to leave.

Laden with worry, Badiee found his way to the busy Richmond Hill Welcome Centre. Within a short time he had OHIP forms filled out, access to temporary free health care, a new rental apartment and assistance finding a job that would make use of his PhD from Iran.

The centre helped him in little ways - providing five bus tickets that helped him get to doctor appointments, and bigger ways - securing child tax benefits that were deposited just as his savings depleted.

And even bigger still, when his wife went into labour early, one day before her OHIP kicked in. As her pains increased, they watched the clock and prayed the baby did not come before midnight. They could not afford to pay for this delivery.

“Each minute passing was one century,” he recalls.

She began bleeding at 11:30, and at 11:45 they could hold off no longer. At the hospital, nurses stared at her health card in disbelief. They had made it in, just under the wire.

Badiee’s next step is to begin volunteer work, striving toward his goal of becoming a teacher here, “and I’m sure I can, because of these angels”, he says.

“All lucky stars we received because of this place. For each problem there is a way and the key is Welcome Centre.”

*****

It’s a wet and windy early spring day, but inside the Markham Welcome Centre, Shih-ming Hsu and Chinchin Hsieh are basking in warmth.

This building on Kennedy Street has become their home away from home and to them, the friendly smiles and warm welcome represent all that Canada is.

It took them a while to warm up to this new land.

Two years ago, Hsu, 65, and Hsieh, 60, emigrated from Taiwan, following their daughter who’d come to Canada 10 years ago and was soon to have her first child.

The couple arrived at their new home in Markham in time for Christmas and jubilantly celebrated as a family again.

But then their daughter returned to her downtown condo and winter set in. Their English skills were minimal and despite the many Chinese-speaking shopkeepers in their Markham neighbourhood, they felt vulnerable and alone.

Something as simple as a telephone call sent them into panic. Should they just let it ring? What if it was important? They recorded the calls for their daughter to interpret when she visited, but it was far from ideal.

They also worried about how they would connect with their granddaughter, read her bedtime stories, be the doting grandparents they’d always dreamed.

Then came the day Hsu felt the full frigidity of a Canadian winter.

His wife and daughter were out of the country and he was on his own when the furnace broke down. With no English, he was lost - and very, very cold.

Wrapping himself up against the weather, he trekked through the snow to ring the neighbour’s doorbell.

“Cold!” he said, over and over, pantomiming.

The neighbours followed him back to his house, touched the cold heat vents, and solved the problem - but they also came back later with a brochure for local classes in English.

Hsu and Hsieh laugh about this now as they wait for their language class to begin at the Welcome Centre. They come here every day, learning more than English, making friends and plans for the future.

Hsieh proudly pulls out a business card, a symbol of their new venture: partnering with another Chinese newcomer to launch a photo studio with help from business workshops the centre provides.

They plan to document, in pictures, their own growth as newcomers in tandem with Markham’s growth as a blossoming city.

They have discovered the lakes of Muskoka, the joys of setting out on the highway with just lunch and a fishing pole. They’ve discovered sailing, ice fishing, the Bruce Peninsula, no longer afraid to venture because, as Hsieh says, “this is friendly country. You ask people, they help. It is safe.”

Hsieh pats her husband’s arm and they share a smile.

“He always say, ‘here, Canada, is heaven on earth’.”

*****

The language classroom in the Vaughan Welcome Centre thrums with conversation as students from Russia, Ukraine, Korea, South America, Pakistan and Syria practise their English.

Each of them shares very different challenges: Grace Jun has spent her first years in Canada isolated with young babies and now that they are old enough for the centre’s child care, she is making friends and spreading her own wings.

Souhaiel ben Jemaa has been here for seven months, having left Tunisia in search of opportunity “because in my country, there is not so much”.

Raymon Gong is a professor whose wife and children have been living in Canada while he works in South Korea. He’s here on a one-year sabbatical, at the centre to learn English and understand how to deal with the growing friction between his culture and his increasingly Canadian-ized children.

And Jelena Pavklovica, a lawyer in Latvia for 12 years, is struggling for independence.

“I feel so stupid,” she says, describing attempts to communicate in English. “But in future, will get better. People here, very welcoming, very polite.”

*****

It’s end of day at the Newmarket Welcome Centre. The community space, where clients share snacks with their children and seniors take exercise class, is quiet now. Nima Gharehdaghi is putting the final touches on the portfolio he hopes will be his ticket to a new life.

His first attempt to find a job in Canada was a disaster.

He laughs about it now, how he blanketed the region with his highly detailed resume, five pages long.

A skilled IT consultant, he got no offers.

His aunt, who’d immigrated to Newmarket 11 years ago, suggested he visit the Welcome Centre.

“They told me ‘stay calm. Don’t bombard all the employers’,” his ready laugh bubbles up again describing surprise at learning about cover letters and LinkedIn.

“Finding a job here is totally different from my country.”

Staff helped convert his science degree to an equivalent from University of Toronto and create a professional-looking portfolio.

Like eating an elephant one bite at a time, the Welcome staff walked him through each step, Gharehdaghi says, changing him from a nervous newcomer to a confident job-seeker.

“I now have a ladder to help me reach my goal.

“When I was younger, I knew I would come here. I love Canada,” he says, wide smile spreading across his face. “Its nature, the culture of the people, the point of view of the world. You’re not limited in Canada. It is a freedom country.”

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