I'm sheltered

I'm a minority. Okay, maybe I'm not right now, or even 99% of the time. But on Friday, I was a bit of a minority.

I guess I should contextualize this a bit more. I come from a pretty homogeneous area of the world, culturally speaking: Southern Alberta. Living in Lethbridge my entire life, I was secluded in a number of senses. I guess you could say that Lethbridge isn't exactly a hotbed of cultural diversity. In other words, it's a more or less suburban, Christian, middle-class town with little else beyond the wide open prairies and a sea of Conservative voters for miles around. The Alberta separation party still exists. It's true.

So, on Thursday I was at a new jobsite meeting a franchisee I hadn't met before. "A", the new manager, greeted me and introduced me to his crew of 5 guys. All of them were from different cultural backgrounds, but all were good buddies who went to school together. A was born in Malaysia, two of the guys on his crew were of East Indian descent, one guy's parents were Iranian, another was born in China, and another was from the Phillipines (if I'm not mistaken, that is). The day before that, I was working with two guys on another crew, and one was from Indonesia and the other was from Iran. A girl I worked with yesterday was born and raised in Columbia. And I was a little astounded. I found it to be pretty interesting that in the period of about 2 weeks, I'd met more people from more diverse backgrounds than I had in 3 full years in Victoria, and pretty much the rest of my life in Lethbridge. And I loved it. It was one of the moments that I was somewhat proud of my education... I actually knew a touch about where each of the people were from (or where their parents were from).

And all the while, even though I know that there's no fundamental difference between any of us and we were all generally raised in the prairies, it was fascinating that Canada can carry on in a fashion that seems to be conducive to such an experiment. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his mid-19th century book Democracy in America, talked about the great democratic experiment of the United States. I think he would be completely fascinated as well if he were alive in 2006 to see where the great North American experiment had come to. This is not to say that there isn't a great deal of intolerance and problems among different cultural groups (or between white and non-white more generally), but it just made me realize that the world around me is a lot more diverse than I could ever imagine. The travel bug is awaiting another indulgence. Europe was the trip of a lifetime 4 years ago... but who says that we have to be satisfied with only one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences?

-T