Different Hues and Different Views

Ameer Shash | Contributor

Featured image courtesy of Ameer Shash

It’s dead as night at 12:32 a.m. on a small street, proximal to Toronto’s Don Mills and Eglinton intersection. Most are asleep—you do have the occasional loiterers around the plaza across the street. And shopkeepers who stay until the late hours of the night are closing their shops for the night.

Right across the street, however, is an array of Beck and Co-op taxicabs lined up vertically. Balcony lights from the nearby high-rise apartments bring about a sense of nightlife to the otherwise quiet neighbourhood.  No other cars can be seen driving by, except for these stationary taxicabs.

Anyone can stand in awe of the vibrant taxicab colours. Blue-white, green-orange, and red-yellow is all I can see. While I am seeing everything so colourfully, the aging folk operating these cabs are living life in grey and black. 

In the driver’s seats of these taxicabs are former doctors and engineers. They are immigrants from South Asia and Africa primarily. These parents held high-ranked titles of such professions, but their dreams were interrupted in the trek to improve life for their children here. In their native countries, education was made emphatic by their parents. They worked hard and earned their doctorates and law degrees. Coming here meant sacrificing what they worked hard for while working a job that would be frowned upon by their relatives back home.

To make matters worse in this day and age, kids who have never worked a day in their lives are making situations worse for these hard-working parents. These kids do not understand the value of money and how much work needs to be put in to earn just the bare minimum to survive. Parents feel obliged to cater to their children’s happiness by buying those expensive tech gadgets, but this causes parents to choose between their child’s happiness, and making ends meet.

These parents have come to Canada and their disadvantages bring them to work precarious, low-wage jobs. Not only that, these parents put a lot of money into a job that pays next to nothing, and it doesn’t come easy. To support their families, they will work feverish 10 to 12-hour shifts a day and that still does not suffice.

To make matters worse, many of these parents struggle with their physical health. Everything from diabetes, physical injuries or mental scars from their war-inflicted countries. Knowing how the work dynamic is built, I can say that being a taxi driver is physically and mentally demanding. It’s not limited to taxi drivers, but also factory workers, sanitation workers among other jobs. The people working these jobs are undervalued and rarely given a second thought; we tend to forget that they’re people working these jobs. They are people who have to tend to their children, loved ones or other delegations at the end of the day. Bills need to be paid, love needs to be given for the family, and comfort for one’s self comes last.

I, as well as anyone else who attends York, should feel proud to be a member of this community. Your parents, irrespective of their status or earnings, have shelled out massive amounts of their time and money for you to acquire a quality education so you don’t have to repeat the misfortunes they had to go through. York is reputable in many regards, so we shall not dismiss that you’re a part of cutting-edge research and learning. There is a reason why they’re so harsh when they are emphatic on studying ethics. “Only get the A plus,” my mom would embed into my head. Following a brief pause, she would continue: “This roof is above your head so you can work in a safe space to learn what you need to, and we can hopefully live better.”

After hearing stories about how my parents came to Canada with virtually nothing, it gave me a sense of remorse for all the times I have complained about the smallest of things.

A school like York is diverse not only in ethnic backgrounds and religion, but in income bracket as well. I, myself, have met many students who come from struggling families, and what I enjoy most is our heartfelt conversations about some of the systemic issues that we go through that others would just not comprehend. I remain hopeful that life will allow them to work to live, rather than live to work.

To all the parents out there who are feeling stuck, irrespective of what you work as, let this be a form of reassurance that your work and constant efforts never go unnoticed. To students who ask their parents for the latest tech gadget, think of the priorities at-hand. What is a new iPhone to you if it means no paid electricity bills to use that very phone tomorrow morning?