Confused Steps in the Canadian labour Market
Hikmat Alhabbal
Syrian journalist and photographer based in Toronto, Canada.
I waited in Istanbul –the stopover city for all immigrant dreamers– for my Canadian application to process. At the time, I learned that my friend, a pharmaceutical graduate, was working as a cashier at a modest grocery store in Toronto. I was confused. With a naive judgment I thought that she did not put in enough effort to find a better opportunity. I was certain that journalism awaited me, since I was a journalist for years in cities like Damascus, Beirut, and Istanbul. “Canadian Journalists for Free Expression” was even one of my sponsors.
A month after I landed in Toronto, I reached out to the organization. I met the CEO at one of Yorkdale’s posh bars. He arrived on his bicycle, a young elegant man. I had imagined him older simply because he was a manager. My experience with the managers I had met and worked with previously — they were definitely not as young and fun. As we talked about life in Canada, I expressed my desire to work with the organization in almost every sentence. The meeting ended with a volunteering opportunity as a photographer, due to the lack of funding, as he indicated. He did offer me a chance to sell organic juice with his wife, she was marketing a certain brand. I chose to volunteer, my first step into the Canadian job market.
Five Hours Cooking Experience
I told Mary, the restaurant owner, that I was hoping to observe daily life to gather stories, to document them in writing or photography. She started telling me the story of her mother, whose newborn was stolen from her, with the help of doctors and a nurse, in one of Toronto’s hospitals 60 years ago. They claimed the child had died, but never gave Mary’s mother a death certificate or his body.
Many of Mary’s stories seemed magical and fictional to me. The important thing though, was discovering my passion for cooking. I learned how to make Italian tomato sauce with basil and garlic, how to prepare a cream sauce, how to boil the perfect pasta. Add pasta to steaming boiling water, leave for 8 minutes, then cool with ice-cold water. And drain. Sprinkle some salt and drizzle some oil.
In the midst of every small conversation, I would reiterate to Mary that I am a journalist and photographer with six years of experience in the field. I wanted her to understand that I merely accepted this job, which was offered to me through a youth services organization, because of my desire to understand life in Canada and getting to know Torontonians. As she was about to carry the pot of hot water to boil the pasta, she told me, “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to the heat.”
I said to myself: I will never get used to the heat, as I won’t even spend another day as a chef’s assistant in this place.
I was trying to show her that I was someone. That I have valuable experience. That she would not boss me around, as is the case where I come from. The owner or boss is treated like a god there. To be honest she was nothing like that. As I wiped my hands with my apron or bagged the customers’ portions, I would tell her about myself.
I remembered a friend of mine who had a similar experience in Prague while studying cinema. She gave me the best advice: “embrace the struggle.” This friend had worked as a receptionist in a hotel, selling watches at the airport, and as a nanny. She used to tell me, “Do not look at these jobs from a typical Middle Eastern point of view. In the West, everyone goes through this stage before finding a career they love. Life there is more mature and flexible because of experience.” When I told her the night before about my experience, she tried to persuade me to keep an open mind to every door I come across in my life. These opportunities would teach me so much and I would recall them fondly in a few months.
At the end of my first day, five hours long, Mary asked me, “Is this a good job for you?”
I did not hesitate for a moment and answered confidently: “Yes, I loved it!”
But on the way home, my heart clenched. I wasn’t convinced of this job, not one bit. My mind started having these frightening debates, I wished I could throw my heavy head from the train. As soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, I called Mary to tell her, “Sorry, don’t wait for me, it’s not the right job for me.”
Samurai Sales
If you live in Canada, you must have used or at least heard of Indeed. Through this application, I sent my resume to thousands of companies and positions. As a result of my despair and restlessness, realizing how useless it was, I began submitting job applications to most random positions; a Quran and Tajweed teacher, a Japanese language teacher, a shawarma chef in an Arabic restaurant. Most of the responses seemed fraudulent. I was hired as an operations manager for a job with a tempting salary without any demand for an interview. From my long experience, the most responses were for jobs as a sales representative, who receives a commission after each customers’ purchase. This is not written in the employment advertisement, but will be referred to by a sentence saying that your profits may reach up to two thousand dollars per week.
I went to Woodbridge, about 25 kilometres from Toronto, for a job interview. The city, like so-called ‘greater’ Toronto, brought me nothing but sadness with its vast lonely spaces, devoid of the warmth of old, worn out walls. “Nothing attracts me” I said to myself, as I passed gigantic, arrogant streets, with boring, endless straight lines, empty and passionless.
A year and a half later, I still feel a dreariness just a few kilometres away from Toronto’s downtown. The small community I became a part of is downtown. Downtown is now my home. The farther away I go, the stronger my estrangement. My soul shrinks with every kilometre and my fears appear before me… as a samurai. The samurai is sharpening their sword on my neck. The farther I go from the city’s centre, the drier the air, the more suspicious I become of the ever-changing faces. The samurai too. They stare at me and their eyes say “dry air dulls my blade.”
I met the director of the company, a kind-looking Jordanian woman. Instead of discussing the job offer, we got caught up in talking about Syria, Canada, and Jordan. She told me about her arrival in Canada in the 1980s. The woman separated from her husband after 3 children and 26 years of marriage, then moved to Dubai and worked there for more than a decade. She married a younger man, whom she described as “handsome” and returned with him to Canada. It was all as if she was trying to make up for the time she had lost. After praising my good looks, she apologized for not being able to give me a job. According to her assessment, I would not succeed in persuading customers to buy the alarm systems sold by her company. I do not have “the talent to hypnotize customers.” We exchanged numbers, and she gave me her card. I threw it out as soon as I left her office. It felt like I was tossing a heavy stone off my Sisyphean back.
From furniture to cannabis
One night, my friend and I were talking about alienation and homelessness. She told me that her best friend lives in Toronto, and that she would arrange a meeting to introduce us. She hoped that might be useful in my job search. I met him on a hot June afternoon at the University of Toronto. We exchanged cigarettes, chatted for two hours. As soon as we parted, he called me, as I waited for the subway to take me home, and told me about a job opportunity in his parents’ furniture store. The work was in the field of e-marketing, and as soon as I got home, I found the contract in my email.
I started working as their social media coordinator. I was also responsible for the online shopping website, in addition to shooting and promoting ads. The silence in the furniture store, broken only by the sound of an old clock, brought me back to being a little girl. When I used to try to sleep at my grandmother’s house in Damascus, her only 20 years my senior. Rusty, the shop owner’s dog, was dozing by my desk, the sounds of his warm breath completing my sad scene.
Yvonne, the manager and mother of my friend’s friend, took care of me. She brought parsley and lavender from her garden with the pastries she had made for me the night before. She never hesitated to give me recipes like lemongrass herb pickle from her secret cookbook, the result of years of experience.
With her I had the chance to shoot an ad about the steps of making a solid bed of walnut wood, from design to execution. I accompanied Frank, Yvonne’s 73-year-old husband, a South African background, to the lab in Elmira, Ontario, about 113 km from Toronto. The workers were Mennonites, they had no electricity, no cars, and no modern telephones. It was a beautiful organic environment, far from noise and pollution. A sober peace overwhelms everything, it soaks your skin with contentment and serenity.
I was so content. I photographed the hands of the workers skillfully carving and decorating the furniture. Before returning, I bought eggs and baskets of berries and organic strawberries, without knowing the face of the seller. I only found a sign in the humble store: “Take what you want and put the money in the box.” That was the best day in Canada since I arrived. Despite the low wages I was paid, the warmth of the place, and my work in a field that I love, made me satisfied.
“Marry a rich man,” Yvonne said to me. “Volunteer in a hospital to catch a doctor. Junior doctors make about $45 an hour, or else you’ll be an extension of me and waste your life trying to get customers to buy.”
Working in a family business with a nice family was not without its daily struggles. I gratefully worked with them until the moment the coronavirus spread, and they had to shut down. They bid me hearty kisses and sincere tears, with a congratulatory card attached with their names, not forgetting the autographs of their two dear dogs, Rusty and Leo, and an envelope in which they left a few dollars in compensation till I find another job. It was my last day at the furniture store on the venerated Queen Street in downtown Toronto.
The store will transform into a cannabis supplier in a few months. The family sold it due to the pandemic, in a world where the labour market and human choices are ever-changing.
