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The Multi-Culti Smorgasbord at Whole Foods Market in Mississauga
Canadian Flags are decorating the store for the upcoming Candada Day on July 1. My table is the one where the chair is visible, at the bottom left of the photograph.
I was calmly getting ready to drink my coffee and work on my computer during one morning at the Mississuaga Whole Foods Market when a woman sat at the table in front of me and started to talk in some Asian language (I knew it was from the Indian sub-continent, but I couldn't identify it). Instead of telling her to stop talking so loudly (actually, to stop talking at all in that alien language), I started to bump my chair against hers. I did this partly because I was mad, and partly because she was talking in another language besides the English we speak in Canada, and I wasn't going to give her the courtesy of talking to her. She moved a little more forward, and kept on talking. I repeated the action. This got her attention, and she looked up and said "Excuse me" or some such thing.
"I don't like to hear your ugly language," I said to her.
"You don't have to listen to it," she replied.
I started to laugh. "So you agree it is ugly!"
"I didn't say that."
"Yes, you did!"
She went back to her cellphone.
I resumed bumping her chair.
"Can you stop!"
"Well, if you talk a little quieter!"
She knows the "language" of multiculturalism.
"This is Canada. This is multiculturalism. We can talk what we want!"
"No, this is Canada. We speak English!"
I continued to bump her chair.
She got up and left.
Soon after, a manager of some kind came over. He shook my hand.
"Hello, I'm Kevin. I understand you had a problem with one of my workers."
"Oh, I didn't realize she was your employee. Well, that makes it worse then, since she should know better. She was talking loudly in a foreign language and disturbing the peace, as I was drinking my coffee. She was also taking up the table for actual paying patrons."
K: I'm going to have to ask you refrain from treating my employees in such a manner in the future.
Me: Look, I apologize to you, and I don't like behaving like this, but what about her? What are you going to do about her?
K: I'll talk to her later. But, everyone can talk whatever language they want.
Kevin was mimicking the woman's response. He really does believe this!
Me: No, this is Canada. We are in an English-speaking country. We talk in English here.
Me: Also, how do I know what she's saying? She may be saying things about me, about you, that are negative or uncomplimentary. She could be maligning me. What are you going to do about her?!
K: Yes, well, she is very upset. She was on an international call.
I looked at him, and started to laugh. I think he began to realize that everything I was saying made sense. This woman was on a cellphone to a foreign country (probably Sri Lanka), holding a loud conversation in her foreign language in a Canadian restaurant.
Kevin had sat down, and seemed to want some kind of interaction with me, so I told him a little about myself, that I come to Whole Foods to have coffee and to use my laptop in this pleasant environment, that I take photographs, that I observe visually my surroundings, and that I am working on a book called Reclaiming Beauty. He seemed interested about my book, and was actually quite insightful, saying that probably materialism had a lot to do with the unattractive clothes people are wearing).
I then asked him: "Are you originally from Mississauga?"
K: Yes, Scarborough, actually.
Me: Do you still live there?
K: Well, we moved when I was younger to Markham, then to Halton. I've also lived in Ottawa. But I live around here now. My parents owned their home in Scarborough when I was growing up.
I looked at him and laughed again.
Scarborough used to be a middle-to-working class white English borough of Toronto. But, eventually, South Asian and African immigrants started to take over. White flight changed the neighborhoods, leaving them to immigrants from India, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Somalia, etc.
What Kevin was talking about is the white flight from the Toronto boroughs, where families started to move further out into smaller towns to avoid this invasion of foreign, non-English-speaking, people.
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Photo By: KPA
Whole Foods' junior staff is almost exclusively non-white. It is as though the managers decided that they were the only kinds of staff they would hire for that level (Out of charity? cheaper labor? Mandated by employment affirmative action policies? A combination of all that, I presume). But ALL the managers are white. I wonder if Kevin had a say in hiring this Sri Lankan woman, as though to expiate for his sins of his early days when he (must have) felt bitter and angry at having to leave Scarborough to get away from the Third World invasion of his home town.
I felt his relief as I was saying these things. Clearly no-one else has said, or dares to say, such things to him. His Orwellian world was temporarily cleared with our brief conversation.
At the end, I said, "I apologize to you for disrupting the peace of your lovely place. I don't usually behave this way, but this woman was clearly getting away with a lot. I'm not sorry for how I acted towards here. She had no desire to behave with courtesy, and with due respect to the patrons around her, and this is especially grievous as she is an employee of this store."
I then showed him a photograph I took of peonies on sale in the store (I've posted it below) and how one of the staff had given me the number for the marketing department at their head office to submit the photograph. I told him I take photographs as a way of recording my environment.
"That's a good shot," said Kevin. "So you observe things around you."
"Yes. And so you see, I do like this place. I want to show it in its best light!"
He shook my hand, and left.
Addendum:
I returned today (the next day), and there was a large group of Chinese, obviously there to "celebrate" Father's Day. They were interacting in Chinese. I put on my headphones and listened to music as I worked on my laptop and drank my coffee. I'm avoiding confrontations now, unless it's absolutely necessary. I feel that people are realizing what they're having to put up with. I think that I have more on my side than is apparent.
How wonderful Canada is! All kinds of people can just show up and sit in civilized, clean, pleasant coffee houses and restaurants and enjoy the good food and environment, and the pleasant holidays. And no-one will tell them to quiet down, or to speak English, or to follow the country's customs, or, God forbid, to be Canadian.
What do they have to offer in their glorious multiculturalism other than to pull us back to their failed societies and cultures, which they fled to come and live the good life here?
How long before we become another of their failures?
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[Photo By: KPA]