Multiculturalism and Mongrels

I felt my other post today was a bit short. It was going to be a bit different, but I ended up with what I posted. So I thought I'd post another entry to make up for it...

In part this post comes out of my post about pets, more specifically mutts, also known as mongrels.

I grew up in the UK, a country influenced by its history of invasion, empire building and post war immigration. In London especially you can find people from all nations of the world (like pretty much every other major city in the western world) and this mix of cultures, creeds and colours has given the UK a wonderful mix of viewpoints, skin colours and culture.

I myself am a mix of 3 different nations (from my parents and many more from my grandparents and beyond), Scotland, Lithuania and Italy (via Israel). This doesn't make me anything unusual in terms of people of my generation born in Israel as there has been a massive influx of Jews from all over the globe to the country which led to a tumultuous mix of people united under one culture.

I grew up in Scotland, as I've mentioned before, and we were the only Jewish family in our neighbourhood for all of my formative years, we were also the only family who spoke a foreign language (Hebrew around the house and sometimes outside) and my mother was the only clearly foreign person for miles around (she still to this day speaks with a European accent even though she speaks fluent English).

Sometimes this wasn't such a great thing, I suffered some racial abuse (if you call Jews a race) and bullying, which wasn't helped by my being a fat kid for a long time (not super fat, but enough to get teased).

It took a long time before I realised that my family and my cultural mix made me more interesting than your average local who's family could trace generations of predecessors to the same insular area. I became proud to be a mongrel, rather than ashamed.

In the last 10 years, Scotland in particular has seen an influx of immigrants, certainly there were always Chinese and Pakistani populations while I was growing up (one thing that most bigots won't turn their noses at are the delicious foods that immigrants brought with them), Chinese and more recently Indo-Pakistani foods have been staples for most households, but now there's an even wider range of people and foods. Proper Mexican, Thai, Lebanese, Turkish, Ethiopian, Mongol, Caribbean, well you get my point.

As I've said, as far as multicultarlity (i hope that's a proper word) goes I'm nothing special, my parents and their parents all came from Europe, but considering the diverse cultures that developed in Europe, its still and interesting mix. What I'm trying to get at is I love multicultural societies and in Canada I've found a good one.

It took me a while to find this page and I hope it works, but just in case I'll summarise it briefly. In 2006 there were 31 million people in Canada, of that the majority are British and French, but after that most of the nations of the world are represented with a large skew to Europe, but there's more than 3 million of Asian origin and more than a million of African origin.

What can I say, I'm proud to be a mongrel and I'm proud to live in a multicultural society.

About me

I was told that I should probably introduce myself for those of you whom I already said I hope won't know me. So here goes.

I was born in 1972 in Jaffa Israel to a half Scottish, half Lithuanian father and an Italian Jewish mother. The story which lead to my parents being in Israel prior to my birth is a nicely convoluted one which was mostly to do with World War 2. Not that uncommon for "baby boomers" to use a North American term.

On my father's side his story was due to the British Empire, as was prior to WW2. His father was an officer in the British Army (Scot's Guards) and his mother was a nurse in the British Army by way of the Empire troops. From what I know of their story they already had met and fallen in love before the war, but the war split them up for a number of years, as it did for many military couples, but after the was they got together, were married and my father was born in Glasgow in 1946. My grandfather died young, when my father was 13 and his mother decided to go to Israel to be with her family when he was 15, he stayed in Scotland until his schooling was complete and then he followed her to Israel where he fell into Israeli life. In the 60s my father went through life in the Army, like thousands of other Israelis every year to this day (Israel has a policy of National Service, every man/woman over the age of 18 apart from the orthodox Jews who don't even recognise Israel (look it up)) he also travelled around Europe and the USA, taking jobs as widespread as long distance truck driver, commercial scuba diver and latterly in Israel, BOAC travel agent.

On my mother's side her family's story is a little more clouded in mystery, however her family are from southern Italy, from the saffardic jewish community. Her father was a trader in goods from Libya and other parts of north Africa and her mother was a housewife. When the fascist dictator Benito Musolini came to power in Italy and later allied with Hitler's Nazis, the jews in Italy and Libya (then an Italian colony) fled the country and headed to other parts of the world, mostly europe, my mother's family headed to Israel via Libya. My mother was by all accounts born in a cave outside Tripoli in 1944 and her family reached Israel by 1946 where they went through the birth of the nation of Israel (previously known as Palestine). Her childhood was pretty normal for Israel at that time in history, her family first lived in a tent, then an iron shack and finally a house (far from uncommon). She also went through National Service and later became a legal secretary.

Their lives didn't cross until 1970 although both had been involved in the six day war in 1967, at the time my father was in the Paratroops and was part of the force that dropped into Jerusalem and captured the city for the Jewish state. My mother was an aide in a front line artillery unit. They first met when my father moved into the apartment above my mother's family and they developed a love that lasted until my father's death in 1999. They married on December 13th 1971 and I was born on October 20th 1972. Just before my first birthday, my father, like many other men and women in Israel was called to arms as the Yom Kippur war broke out on the 6th October 1973. He did not return for 8 months as his unit at the time, part of a tank army, was stationed on the west bank of the Suez Canal. When he returned, I had grown considerably and did not recognise my father (I've been told) partly due to time apart and partly due to his huge bushy red beard (something I inherited from him). This experience changed my father greatly, he was no longer a young man with no responsibilities as he had been for the six day war, he now had a wife and child whom he loved and cared for greatly so he suggested to my mother that they leave Israel and move to the UK, ultimately Scotland. She agreed and by 1976 we were in the UK (on side note, my father, not long before the yom kippur war, was approached by the Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service, to join, due to his appearance, accent and service record, but due to his new marriage and child, he declined).

From 1976 I lived in the UK with my parents, we lived in Linwood, Scotland, for 4 years and moved to Houston, Scotland, where my parents lived for the next 19 and 25 years respectively. I lived with my parents for 23 years and moved out to my own place in Paisley, Scotland, where I lived for 11 years before falling in love with a Canadian girl and deciding to make then move to south western Ontario to be with her.

In my time I've studied many things, chemistry, biochemistry, physics, computer science (all at university level), a number of languages, French (at high school), Spanish and German (at university) and i learned Hebrew as a child from my parents' talk (they spoke Hebrew and English in the UK almost 50/50). My most recent field of study was Stained Glass Production Techniques, which I studied in North Glasgow College in Scotland. Those were 3 of my most productive years (artistically) and I found I had a great aptitude for glasswork.

I still keep myself well versed in modern science, I subscribe to New Scientist magazine, and I listen to a couple of science and tech podcasts (from Guardian Newspapers).

I guess that's most of what went on in my life, I guess I glossed over a few things, like my father's long term illness and other things around his later years of life, but those are for another time I feel.