My Take | Why I love Canada but you may not
- If you don’t mind having sensational crimes committed near where you live, and like lots of green spaces and trees, and are fine not working or being paid low wages, the country may offer a decent deal
My family’s best friend is moving to Canada from Hong Kong. We are anticipating her arrival with joy and anxiety. Frankly, I don’t want to spend all day arguing with her about Hong Kong politics. When you write about it for a living, you want to leave all that out of the house, metaphorically speaking, since I work from home.
My friend has the distinction of having one of her books being singled out for attack by one of the two state-owned newspapers in Hong Kong. In fact, the paper took out half a page denouncing her critique of police tactics during the 2019 anti-government riots, or for her, the city’s greatest pro-democracy struggle in its history.
Ever since, she thinks “they” are out to get her. We think she is just paranoid. But then, as they say, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean …
People are always asking me if they should move to Canada. Well, I am not an immigration consultant. All I can say is, if you know what you are getting away from and what you are running to, then yes, emigrate by all means. But if you don’t know the answers or are merely entertaining some faint hope of reaching greener pastures, you are very likely to end up worse than where you are now.
I live near Toronto. Across my street, there have been two shooting incidents, one involving a Hollywood-style shoot-out from a residential balcony to a children’s playground.
I am within a 20-minute drive to where Alek Minassian mowed down 10 pedestrians and injured 16 others with his van in 2018.