Chapter 13: Vancouver: A landed immigrant’s first
impressions.
I arrived to Vancouver
on a rainy weekend in September 1966. Next two days were spent exploring
downtown, window shopping and looking for places to eat or buy some food. A
Chinese restaurant looked interesting so I walked in. I ordered fried rice and
Cola. The waiter looked at me curiously and after I repeated my order he
brought two bottles. “Pepsi Cola or Coca
Cola?” He asked me. It was my first English lesson.
I was puzzled by a big
store with a long counter and shelves full of various bottles. I could not
figure out what it was so I decided that it was a pharmacy. Many stores looked
big and different compared to what I was used to.
However I didn’t have much
time to admire Vancouver and on Monday morning I went to the Immigration Office.
After sorting out my immigration papers I was sent to the Manpower where I was assigned a clerk who became my
guide and advisor. He asked me about my previous work experience and education.
“You should look for a job as a junior
draftsman” he advised me. “Who are you staying with?” When I told
him that I had arrived alone and don’t know anybody, he gave me a sheet of
paper. “These are boarding houses, it is
cheaper to stay there and you will meet other people. How much money do you
have?” “Less than fifty dollars” I said. He shook his head. “I will see what I can do”.
When I came back the next day,
he gave me a cheque for $100. Then he pulled out a stack of papers and started
to call employers to arrange job interviews for me. I recall one such trip. It
was in North Vancouver and not knowing the public transportation system, I
decided to walk there, across the Lion’s bridge. Countless cars were roaring
by, the water was far below me, the wind was buffeting me and the walk was
endless. I very quickly learned how to take the bus.
I was very lucky and
three weeks’ after I arrived I was hired as a junior mechanical draftsman by Wright
Engineers, a consulting company in downtown Vancouver. I filled out some papers
and was assigned a drafting board in a big office. My new boss, Bill, was a
Scotsman with a terrible accent. He brought in a blueprint and asked me to
retrace it. It took me about three hours. Bill came, looked at the drawing,
said it was OK and left. I had nothing to do for the rest of the day. Luckily I
found a thick office manual in my desk and spent the rest of the day reading
it.
The next few days were
similar. Bill gave me a blueprint to copy and I finished it in couple of hours.
He looked at my drawing, said it was OK and left. I could read the office
manual only so many times but further searching in my desk discovered old
drawings. I spread them on my drafting board and tried (or rather pretended) to
study them. After few days I got bolder and got out my English dictionary
checking out words I should learn. Bill came by a few times, looked at my dictionary,
smiled little and left without saying a word. So I presumed reading a dictionary
was OK.
In my old country a
new employee was the centre of attention. He would be interrogated by his co-workers
about his previous job, his family, how much money he makes and filled in on
office gossip. Here nobody paid any attention to me, I was completely ignored.
Near my drafting board was a big table with drawings. Many times Bill and
couple of his co-workers gathered around it, coffee in hand and gossiped. They
gossiped about me, I could hear the word Czech.
A week, maybe more went by and I was still reading my English dictionary. I
could not believe it, there must had been some mistake in hiring me. Every day
I went to work expecting that Bill would tell me to pack it up and go home, that
there was no work for me.
Finally I became friendly
with a neighboring draftsman who was from Austria. He explained the mysteries
of my job to me. A couple of years ago a big deposit of molybdenum was
discovered in northern British Columbia and a mining company was established to
develop the mine. Wright Engineers were given the contract to design Endako Mine.
The contract was not signed yet but the company had decided to hire people so
they would have full staff when the project got under way. And Bill was not
gossiping about me. He was not saying “Czech”,
he was saying “check”, like “check the drawing, check the dimensions”.
My life improved after
I moved into a boarding house on Barclay Street. There were a few immigrants of
similar age from different countries and we developed some camaraderie. Besides
myself there was Moshe, a Jew from Israel, his counterpart Ali, an Israeli
Arab, Johnny an eighteen-year old Scottish lad from Glasgow and Fred, a true
blue Canadian who was our mentor. Fred, much older than us, had been a tail
gunner in a Halifax bomber in WW II. In 1942 only 20 percent of crews survived
30 bombing missions over Germany. Fred was one of the lucky ones to survive but
his nerves were shot and he lived on a small war pension.
At supper we shared a table,
exchanged gossips, tips for work, and discussed peculiarities of Canadian life:
·
The big
store with a long counter and many bottles was not a pharmacy but a government
liquor store. To buy a bottle of wine you had to fill out a ticket with your name,
address and date of birth. And you had to be 21 years old! You wanted to buy a
beer? Go to the beer store and do it again.
·
A pub was
divided into sections for men, women’s and couples. If a man crossed to the
women’s section for a chat, he could be thrown out. We were shaking our heads
in disbelief at the barbaric (in our views) customs that ruled Canada. Fred
offered explanations: ”We used to have
prohibition in Canada and these regulations date from that time. They don’t
make much sense now. I remember how mad we were when after finishing the air
gunner training in Saskatchewan we went to a pub to celebrate. We were refused
beer because we were not 21! Imagine, we were going to war to fight for our
country, some of us would be killed but they would not serve us beer because we
were minors!”
·
Why do we
sleep between two bed sheets? Fred had an explanation: “Most early settlers were poor and slept under an itchy horse hair
blanket so they put a bed sheet underneath the blanket.”
Some boarders had
strange table manners. They would cut their meat into small pieces, put the
knife aside and used a piece of bread to push food onto the fork. “Many settlers had just a jackknife. They
could only cut their meal with it and then used bread. Some habits die hard.”
Said Fred.
One weekend I heard a
big parade going through Vancouver’s streets, so I went to investigate. There
were music bands, pipe bands, majorettes and some celebrants in cars. A big
crowd was cheering them on. I stood on a platform close to a big hotel and
suddenly SMASH! A beer bottle exploded near me. I looked up and could see the
thrower on perhaps the tenth floor leaning out of the window, yelling and
cheering. “It is the Grey Cup Parade;
Vancouver won the cup” Fred told me, “Sometimes
the celebration gets out of hand”. I was baffled, the Grey Cup? What is it?
Christmas came and I went
to see Franta in Seattle. The bus stopped at the border and a bored US custom
officer stepped on. He asked each passenger a couple of questions. He perked up
when I told him that I was born in Czechoslovakia. He gave me a slip of paper
and told me to go into a booth outside. There another officer questioned me for
ten minutes. After I assured him that I was not a KGB agent and was just
visiting a friend for two days he let me go. When I got back onto the waiting
bus, the other passengers gave me suspicious looks and my neighbor would not
talk to me anymore.
Franta lived in a cheap, run down hotel but he
was doing well and had recently bought a pick up truck. He worked as a
machinist in the US Navy shipyard. The Vietnam War was in a full swing, navy
ships docked for repairs and there was no limit on overtime. He showed me his
pay slip and I almost fainted. He had made over $1200 in previous month. I was
scraping by on $300. He had also met couple of other Czechs and they were
planning a climbing trip to the Rocky Mountains. I could sense that we were
parting ways.
New Year’s Eve arrived
and Johnny was going to a Scottish party. I had no place to go so he asked me
to come along. At the party the radio was blaring Scottish music, beer was
flowing freely, people were singing, telling jokes and remembering previous
celebrations in Scotland. As the party got lively, some of the recent young immigrants
got homesick. They were arguing and yelling, a couple even sobbed. Then somebody
started to blame all their recent problems on their new country, Canada.
“Let’s go and beat up some Canadians” one hot head shouted. “Let’s do it, let’s go!”
Others joined in. So about seven drunken Scottish lads and one observer
(me) prowled Vancouver streets at three o’clock in the morning looking for Canadians.
Fortunately for them (or maybe for us) we didn’t find any. I didn’t remember
how I got home, but I my hangover lasted for days.
The film showed
the town situated on a big fjord, surrounded by mountains and glaciers, rivers
full of salmons, grizzly bears and moose in the forest and boats sailing in
clear blue waters. I was thrilled. This was what Canada looked like in my
imagination. “One day I will go to
Kitimat,” I promised myself.
On the way to work one
rainy day I noticed a guy carrying an ice pick and climbing rope. A mountain
climber! I rushed to him and started to ask about mountain climbing. He told me
there was a mountain climbing club in Vancouver, they went on climbing trips
and gave me a telephone number to call. I was all excited until that night when
I realized that I didn’t have any gear, not even boots, no climbing buddy and
no holidays. I complained to Fred. “You
should go to Calgary” he advised me, “you
will find climbers there, Vancouver is too far from the mountains.”
I missed my mountain
climbing trips and my friends. My job was simple and boring. I couldn’t see
myself spending years behind the drafting board. Vancouver was nice but how
about other places in Canada? It was time to move. I gave notice at work, said
goodbye to my friends and took a bus to Calgary.
“There is no work for mechanical draftsmen in Calgary, we are having a
recession here” said the clerk in the Manpower office, “you should go to Toronto”. I spent a futile week in Calgary
looking for work and when my savings started to look worryingly low, I took a
train to Toronto.
The train arrived in
Toronto in the afternoon and I was again standing alone on the platform, with nobody
greeting me. But I had made some progress. Instead of carrying only a cheap immigrant’s
suitcase, I also had a duffle bag. I left the suitcase in a locker, threw the
duffle bag over my shoulder and walked out into Toronto’s streets. I was not
impressed by Yonge Street but my priority was to find a place to sleep. I was
aimlessly walking from one street to another when I saw “Room for rent” in the
window of an older, decent looking house on Isabella Street. I knocked on the
door and five minutes later I was in my new room, sitting on a bed, wondering
what I was going to do tomorrow, next week and next year…
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