In January 1964, Kam Srikameswaran flew from Bombay to Toronto. When he stepped off the plane, it was into a silent, empty world.
"It was a Sunday and it was just after a snow storm, so I couldn't see anything except white," says Kam. "When I looked around I couldn't see any human beings . . . I thought, 'Oh my God, there's nobody here.' "
It sounds like the setting for a zombie movie. Luckily, a less sinister force was there to greet the 30-year-old PhD student: an "old jalopy" filled with other graduate students, there to pick him up and take him 45 miles down the road to McMaster University in Hamilton, where Kam planned to study chemical physics.
Kam remembers being a "curiosity" in the Canada of the 1960s, years before the concept of multiculturalism would take hold. He was sometimes invited to churches to present a slideshow on India.
Other times, his reception was not so welcoming. An employee with the university's international office would set up appointments for international students to view apartments that were for rent; when the students showed up, they would often be told the place wasn't available.
"We used to take the person who called them, who was a white-skinned Canadian, with us," says Kam. "Some people still rejected us, but some people accepted us . . . Some of them became friends later."
His wife Lalitha and three-year-old daughter were back in India, living with Kam's parents. He couldn't afford to bring them with him until one year later, when they too stepped off a plane in Toronto and found themselves in a puzzling, snow-covered world.
"I remember the day after I landed," recalls Lalitha. "The next morning I looked out and saw only white, but it looked so interesting that I went down in my sari and just went out and then felt the cold and came right back in. It was very funny - I thought I could just walk around in my sandals in the snow." Lalitha worked part-time in the university library. Then, when Kam had finished his studies at McMaster, they returned to India. They lived there for several years, but Kam couldn't stop thinking about Canada.
"I made my own mental comparisons of my life in Canada, my life in India - I felt I was a lot more free in Canada," says Kam.
For instance, says Kam, in India, a junior employee would be expected to be seen and not heard. Hierarchies were set in stone, a legacy of both British rule and traditional Indian culture. In contrast, in Canada he was free to speak his mind.
"Here I could interact with people and it didn't matter who they are, whether they're younger than you or older than you, everybody talked to each other more like equals."
Lalitha was more reluctant to return. Kam's parents were growing older and she felt a strong sense of duty to stay with them. But her daughter was also yearning for Canada.
"She didn't like India at all," says Lalitha. "She was eight years old and she didn't like the education system, all that rote learning."
When they returned to Canada, it was for good. After a stint in London, Ontario, Kam was hired as a professor at Brandon University in Manitoba in 1974, and Lalitha began working in the insurance
business. The couple would live in Brandon for the next 23 years.
In 1997, they made another big decision: to move to North Vancouver to live with their daughter and son-in-law and help raise their then four-year-old granddaughter. While it was hard to leave the close friends they'd made in Manitoba, the couple say the change was good - and they certainly don't miss the long prairie winters.
"Even in May I used to shovel the snow," says Lalitha with a laugh.
Kam and Lalitha say there were advantages to immigrating when they did. People who immigrate now often enter communities strong in their home culture.
But the couple says when they immigrated there were opportunities for mingling and getting to know so many different people.
"I think of myself as Canadian now," says Kam.
JEN ST. DENIS . [email protected]
