A woman reports a series of reasons which pushed her to emigrate to Canada.
RES.: And for what reasons had you decided to come to
Canada?
ΑΝ.: If you ask me right now… exactly eeh… exactly I
cannot answer. Even though if I stayed, I had finished junior high school, so
I would do something. I don’t know. A spontaneity, a prompting which was about
at the time. Various reasons. And one morning I decided aah… My father in fact
had, because I wasn’t 18, he had to sign. Two times he didn’t want to sign.
The third, the third time I tell him “You’ll either sign, or I’ll leave”. And…
I don’t know if… I haven’t regretted anything I’ve done, let’s say, because
I’m very, very proud. But many times, I do wonder. I think even if I had
stayed in Greece this period, it would have been good for me.
RES.: Really?
ΑΝ.: I think so, but it’s an answer you cannot answer.
(Laughs)
RES.: And this move you’re talking about then, how had
you seen it? Where had you seen? Did you know people who had left?
ΑΝ.: No. It’s just… I always liked to read various
magazines and stuff besides school books and I saw one… advertisement that…
you had to have finished the third year of junior high to come to Canada. I
made the application. I thought… that I’ll come here and… I’ll find something…
better. Even though the start was very difficult. Later it was alright.
Spontaneity? I cannot answer. I told you that I can’t exactly answer. And I
haven’t regretted it… because… here I’m alright. However… within me there’s
nostalgy still. Eeh… I’m a hundred percent Greek. That is, I live and…
whatever I do is always Greek. Always in… Greek. Am… I’m in the Greek
community. I’m proud. I’ve remained Greek… but I’ve remained Canadian also.
RES.: Yes. In understand. And in this advertisement,
what exactly did it say about Canada?
ΑΝ.: It said that… am… that it’s a third country…
which… you can have prospects for a better life. And at the time, in ’62,
after the war, Greece wasn’t the way it is now. There was poverty, there was…
Eeh… There was political stuff and... eeh… many children they kept behind,
because the parents said they had… they were, that they weren’t communists,
therefore… they didn’t have prospects. And… I cannot… I think that… more… it
was my spontaneity, because my father along with my mother… they helped two
children study at the time, and not in the village down in Vrachati, and they
were paying rent and this and that, but I think at that point was the moment
when myself and my brother had to decide who of the two would continue. Or I
had to get married. I wasn’t one of those people who wanted to get married and
stay in the village. Therefore, I left and afterwards I assisted my father and
my mother and my brother and they lived a better life.
