Call her Rosa M. Five years ago, she left Russia for a new life in Canada. Rosa was a trained doctor, who had run her own paediatric unit in a Moscow hospital. But in Canada, she could not find work that suited her skills. So while her teenage son attends school, she does menial jobs. As soon as he graduates, she says, she will return to Russia.
There are thousands like Rosa: professors driving cabs, engineers working as janitors, doctors packing groceries at supermarket checkouts. Rosa has given up, but most still see Canada as a land of opportunity, so they wait. Nicolay Villa is an electrical engineer who came here from Colombia two years ago. He is earning the minimum wage as a carpenter, because he cannot get licensed in Canada to do what he does best.
'It's a never-ending circle,' he says. 'You don't have the job because you don't have the licence; you don't have the licence because you don't have the job.'
But the immigrants swallow this bitter Catch-22 pill. In the end, through sheer grit, many succeed. A recent survey found that one-third of immigrants in Vancouver with a university degree are working in low-skilled jobs. They earn much less than Canadian-born workers. Yet, still the immigrants come.
It would be tempting to believe that all Canadians are cut from the same cloth as these immigrants. Tempting, until you meet another class of Canadians - the Shantytown People of Toronto. Recently, 20 young homeless people decided to make a 'home' on public land under a bridge near the city's famous Skydome.
One was photographed, sitting in the sun in an easy chair with his feet up, surrounded by rubbish. As young as 16, they have chosen, for reasons of their own, not to work, or to live in shelters or government housing. Recently, one of them threatened a television cameraman with a knife. Not only do they refuse to leave; the squatters now want the city to come and collect their rubbish, and to provide a portable toilet. 'This is our home and we're taking a stand,' said their self-styled 'mayor', 18-year-old Joe Dale. 'We are as much a part of this city as anybody else.'