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A Friday night subtweety story. More than 100 years ago, my paternal Jewish grandparents arrived in Alberta from what was then Russia. They met here, married & moved to Round Hill, Alberta.
Round Hill, near Camrose, wasn’t big. But like many small prairie towns it was hugely multicultural. There were Ukrainian families. Norwegian families. Polish families. Métis families. English families. I believe there was a Chinese cafe - likely pronounced to rhyme with safe.
And there was one Jewish family: my father, his siblings, and their parents. Theirs was no ethnic homogeneous community. There were Protestants in the town - but lots of other faiths were represented. And still - there was community cohesion.
The people supported one another through bad times. They joked together in the English few spoke as a first language and picked up colourful phrases in other people’s mother tongues.
They played hockey on the slough in winter and baseball in summer. They held community socials. And when my grandparents eventually moved to Edmonton, they stayed in touch with their Round Hill friends.
And the family moved to a vibrant immigrant neighbourhood in central Edmonton, where their friends and neighbours and classmates were Lebanese, Lithuanian, Chinese, German, Ukrainian, Métis, etc, etc
Our diversity in Alberta is our strength. It gives us resilience and creativity. It endows us with cultural and economic energy. We are greater than the sum of our parts.
Racists? We’ve always had them here. Systemic injustice? We’ve had plenty of that, too. But our community is at its best, not siloed into ethnic enclaves, but working together to build a better Alberta and Canada for us all.
Sitting with my dad now. He’s 88 and in failing health. As I watch him gently slipping away, I think about the city & province he helped to build and the values he taught my brother and me - about standing up against injustice, about speaking out and about embracing difference.
I’m proud to be his daughter.
