More Canadian Ramblings

Cross the Lion's Gate Bridge, that monument to permanent roadworks that crosses the Burrard inlet and links Stanley Park to North Vancouver, and you meet Marine Drive. You follow it West in to West Vancouver, through the forested coastal suburbs of Hollyburn, Wadsley and Sherman. This winding road parallels inland, the BC railway of Pacific Starlight Dinner Train fame. Just after Sherman, you cross the railway and it's just houses between you and the inlet. South are Vancouver and University Hill, West is Queen Charlotte sound and Vancouver island, and North is Cypress Provincial Park. Almost unnoticeable on your left is a sign for Lighthouse Park, named after the Point Atkinson Lighthouse that guards the rocks off the promontory.
This was the place where the first non-native resident of West Vancouver was born to the then lighthouse keeper's wife just a couple of hundred years ago. Lighthouse Park is crossed with Forest trails leading past rocky outcrops and towering Douglas Firs. Cool under the canopy you can escape the noonday sun, or the worst of the BC rain showers. The trails lead you down to coves where you can watch the pleasure boats in the summer or just the waves in the winter.
A few minutes further west, and you reach the Ferry Port of Horseshoe bay. Here the BC Ferries run over the Queen Charlotte channel to Vancouver Island. I stopped for the inevitable Cappuccino and cake here, and chatted for a long time with a "New Canadian"; an Indian Dentist called Neeta. She seemed fascinated by all things British, while her companion, a stony- faced bearded man of uncertain central European origin pretended to be uninterested, soaking up the sun without saying a word. I think Neeta was just happy to have an intelligent conversation for a change, a contrast to her daily life of staring at the world down the throat of her patients. There's just so much of a conversation you can have with someone with your surgical gloves in their mouth.
Neeta told me of her experiences of moving as a very young child from Braintree in Essex first to the East Coast, and finally to the Pacific West of Canada. I contemplated the contrast between her arrival and the arrival and life of the lighthousekeeper's wife. Neeta confided that she had a fascination with the British Royal Family, and that she had helped her son to study them in History.
"What did I think of the Queen Mother?" "Did I think Prince William would make a good King". I gave her my view that most of them were descended from 15th century robber barons but she seemed unfazed if a little surprised. I think I may have shaken her "All British people wear bowler hats" syndrome. Clearly, some Indians of my generation in Canada still have that peculiarly mixed view of their former colonial masters. Maybe it's a class thing. Undoubtedly Neeta was educated and probably fairly wealthy. A descendant maybe of the hugely successful middle class that developed during the Raj, a system which matched the ancient caste system so well. This rosy view of the British was painfully accurately observed by the "Goodness Gracious Me" TV team. The wonderful monologue to a slightly out of focus camera where and elderly upper class Indian woman speaks wistfully and happily about "the old days" while recounting stories of her abuse by British Officers.
Neeta had not been abused though. We chatted about immigrants, ethnicity and the importance of multiculturalism in the modern world. She enthused about how bright and intelligent the children of mixed race families were, probably based on her observations of her own. We wondered whether it was purely a matter of biology, the mixing of widely different genetic backgrounds, the opposite effect of the problems of inter-breeding, or whether it was just the stimulating environment that is available to children today if they just can be shown it and have the common sense to see it. I become more convinced, the more I travel that multiculturalism is the only hope for humanity. We have to throw away our petty nationalism our monoculture "ours is the only way" and realise that the world is a very small place these days. We've had enough warnings, Auchwitz, South African apartheid, Bosnia and Rwanda to name but a few of last century, and Fiji has the potential to be this century's example.
I know it's a cliché, but the 21st Century has seen the final arrival of the much-vaunted "Global Village". I pondered on the fact that just 24 hours ago, I was literally on the other side of the world, and I could get this essay with illustrated photographs to anywhere on the planet in seconds from my hotel room or my mobile phone.