SHEILA FLOOD
Around this time of year in 1991, we returned from seven years in a foreign country, with two barely school-age children in tow.
We moved from a tropical island to, of all places, Quebec. Even in June we froze, holding our hands over the stove because the heat was turned off, even though it was officially summer. The transition was far from easy — physically and mentally.
In another sense, however, it was good to be back “home,” even though neither of us is from Quebec. The food, the orderliness, the decency, the politeness, the sense of practicality and hospitality were welcome after the years abroad. Every province might celebrate its differences, but it was the similarities that were glaringly obvious to us.
We were intensely grateful for another reason as well — egalitarian attitudes supported by law and by culture. My husband was born handicapped, with arthrogryposis, a rare condition affecting the growth of tendons and ligaments in his extremities. Although non-degenerative, it required that he learn to walk four times during a total of 36 operations before the age of 13. His four older siblings roughhoused with him and his parents challenged him constantly. There was never time or room for self-pity, only new ways to figure out how to cope with life.
Living in another country was his first experience with a culture that didn’t accept him as equal, competent and capable of full participation. Total strangers would argue with him, saying of course he didn’t really have children, and of course he couldn’t work. With whatever greater or lesser degree of patience he managed to muster that day, he’d explain to them that, well, he did have children, did work and that they were the ones who had something wrong with them if they thought otherwise.
In Quebec, he applied for jobs and got an interview as a technical writer at a fibre-optics firm. He scored so high on the test (where only the receptionist saw him) that they hired him over the phone. When he went in, they were visibly taken aback. There were a few moments of awkward silence. They got over it.
Eventually Jim earned a six-figure salary, and no one again questioned his abilities. Partly it was his attitude that got him where he is, but another part is the pure good fortune to have been born in this time and in this country.
We’re believers in the future of Canada for a few good reasons, one of them being the existence of founding ideals that persist despite all odds, and another being our religious beliefs. We’d both joined the Bahá’í faith at the age of 20, attracted by its egalitarian acceptance of all faiths. As odd as it may seem that religious scriptures would have anything to say about a young country, there’s not just a statement but a prophecy on record, from this faith that is itself just 170 years old.
It was first uttered in Quebec in 1912, when Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the Bahá’í faith and by then a venerable old man, visited Montreal. He said, “The future of the Dominion of Canada … is very great, and the events connected with it infinitely glorious.” Later, he added, “Again I repeat that the future of Canada, whether from a material or a spiritual standpoint, is very great. Day by day, civilization and freedom shall increase.”
With all the challenges this country faces, most shared with the rest of the world and some all our own, those words still ring true.
Sheila Flood practises the Bahá’í faith, is active in interfaith work and hosts a monthly potluck discussion on spiritual matters. Jim’s autobiography can be found at thosefloods.com/jimmy.html.
