Honourable senators, I’m delighted to respond to Senator Omidvar’s inquiry calling the attention of the Senate to the link between Canada’s past, present and future prosperity and its deep connection to immigration.

Honourable senators, allow me for the next few minutes to tell you my story and how, as an immigrant, my life has been impacted by coming to Canada.

I was born and raised in the Central African country of Rhodesia. My parents were Indian migrants. We lived in a small community in the Eastern Highlands, a farming community, and 50 Asian families — the majority of our people — were in retail trade. Life was absolutely blissful for me as a child. I went to a two-room school, I had a wonderful, supportive community and a family and siblings who loved me dearly.

However, hidden in the background was a system of apartheid, which I only began to think about through my formative years. I began to realize as I grew older that it was my ethnicity that determined where I went to school, what restaurant I could sit in, where my parents could own property, where we lived and how our entire lives were lived. I began to bear the burden of my ethnicity in a manner that led to periods of deep melancholy. I began to be weighed down like the ancient mariner of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s beautiful poem. My ethnicity became the albatross around my neck. It impacted every decision I made. However, the support of my family and friends was that education was the way out of this and that one day apartheid would end and that life would be better.

I was fortunate enough to be accepted into medical school on completion of my high school at an Asian and coloured boarding school but continued to reflect on these three parallel streams of life — White, brown and Black — with so little opportunity for any form of social integration.

I recalled the history lessons where we learned about Pericles addressing the Athenians 2,500 years ago about a government, a system of democracy, a government of the people for the people and by the people. I thought about this equitable state, a state that had eluded my own growing up. In many respects, this became a personal pursuit for me — a subliminal obsession that I hoped one day to conquer.

The year 1980 came and Rhodesia became the independent Black state of Zimbabwe. There was much celebration in the streets. There was much anticipation. But the wounds of apartheid were deep and the transition to a new government led to corruption, reverse discrimination, nepotism and, unfortunately, once again, the Asian community found themselves sandwiched in a position that was not winnable.

It was with a heavy heart that I decided in 1984 that in order to shed this melancholic life I had to make a difficult decision. I had to leave the land of my birth, the absolute unbelievable beauty of Southern Africa, the colours, the animals and the incredible people, but my life had to change direction. As every immigrant knows, that’s probably one of the most difficult decisions you make in your life, because you know you’re headed somewhere where you don’t know a single person and you know so little about the life you’re going to face.

I was very fortunate to get a position as a family doctor and GP anaesthetist in the little community of Twillingate, Newfoundland, on the northeast coast. I arrived there anxious, apprehensive, but also full of anticipation.

I often think about choices we make in life. When I do, I reflect upon Professor Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the Harry Potter series. “Harry,” Professor Dumbledore said to him in one of the early encounters, “it is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.” That line has stuck with me for many years.

I was struck by the remarkable rugged beauty of the landscape that surrounded me, the tantalizing allure of an angry ocean that was the source of our bounty. But what a price we paid for that bounty, with loss of life and loss of care and oftentimes loss of livelihood. I was so touched by the people who welcomed me into their hearts and their homes. They showed such clarity and definition of their history. Out of the turmoil of living in this harsh climate had gelled a fierce and proud heritage that was captured in beautiful singsong lilts and a self-sufficiency that for me exemplified an endearing spirit of survival.

As a single Muslim from Africa, a little country in the middle of nowhere, I was surrounded by 2,500 Protestants and 10 Catholics. I naturally gravitated toward the Catholics and eventually married a Protestant. It was here where I met my wife Dianne Collins, whose family had been fishing on the island since the 1600s. They could trace their family ancestry back to Devon in Eastern England. They took me in as one of their own, and I was deeply moved by their resilient spirit, their deep faith and their altruistic nature with respect to every aspect of life.

As time moved on, I suddenly felt as though a weight had lifted. I was now not judged on my ethnicity but by my ability, by my humanity and by my integration into my new home. Seamlessly it seemed that the albatross that had been weighing down on my neck for so many years suddenly dissipated.

As I explored the island, I realized there was a social justice mandate that I needed to respond to. My heart went out to those who are marginalized in my community: the single mothers, the working poor, those with mental health challenges, those with disabilities, and my brethren in the LGBTQ community.

I was so moved by the many stories I heard. I was deeply touched by the community spirit, by the incredible support I got from my colleagues in every discipline, because for us to survive in a small community in the health environment, we needed to lean on each other. And I realized early on that this endearing spirit of survival, based on a foundation of adversity and challenges, had evolved into a culture of remarkable humanity.

Over time, many opportunities came my way. I was offered an academic position at Memorial University, eventually assisting with developing rural programs throughout the province, an opportunity to partake nationally in a variety of fields, but particularly distributed medical education. I became quite involved in medical politics, and I particularly enjoyed my involvement with the community: the house calls, the remarkable stories that I heard from my elderly patients, people who had been sealers, people who knew people who had frozen out on the ice. But through all of this, with a steel glint in their eyes, they continued to venture on a path of resilience.

Rural Newfoundland has been the nucleus upon which I have built my strengths but also faced my vulnerabilities. I met international graduates from all parts of the world and quickly realized that I was not the only immigrant with this experience. Physicians from every country you could imagine — it almost felt sometimes like we were a United Nations. I had colleagues who were Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, Christian — from all parts of the world — and we built up a brotherhood and a sisterhood that strengthened us in a way that’s quite unique. I could have never imagined that this sort of profound change would happen within me and my life, on the northeast coast of a small island off the mainland in one of the most remarkable countries in the world.

My wife’s support has been instrumental in the successes that I’ve achieved, and the endearing love of my two sons means absolutely more to me than anything I could ever imagine. I have had the opportunity as a medical educator to enter the lives of many young, engaged, brilliant minds, and I am so grateful that I have been able to maintain contact with so many of them. They have moved me and influenced me in more ways than one, and our reunions are always filled with laughter, reflections and recollections that are just so touching.

Colleagues, this amazing country has afforded me a life and a career far beyond what I had ever expected when I reflect back on the humble roots of my heritage in Rhodesia. This country has allowed me to continue to practise my faith. It has allowed me to maintain, with pride, my South Asian heritage. It has allowed me to maintain my soul’s connection to the red soils of Africa, where so much blood has been shed over history.

But perhaps most importantly, it has allowed me to develop the endearing spirit of a proud Newfoundlander and Labradorian, and more importantly, of a proud Canadian.

In closing, I would like to quote former president Barack Obama:

I think we are born into this world and inherit all the grudges and rivalries and hatreds and sins of the past. But we also inherit the beauty and the joy and goodness of our forebears. And we’re on this planet a pretty short time, so that we cannot remake the world entirely during this little stretch that we have. … But I think our decisions matter. . . . at the end of the day, we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.

I will be forever grateful that Canada afforded me the opportunity to get my paragraph right. Thank you. God bless.