The Standard,
September 20, 2007
Kate Andres-Toal
Here in Niagara, I measure seasons differently than most people. The arrival of springtime isn't signalled by the sun sitting higher in the sky, the freshly budding branches or even the hopeful patches of grass poking through the snow.
I know spring is coming not from the flocks of birds that migrate north, but from the people who do the same.
These migrants are an invisible people, yet I know they're here. How? At first, just by the abundance of old bicycles in town and their conversations and laughter blossoming among the fruit trees. I know they're here and, although it took a while, now we share meals, music and laughter together. Yes, I know, but does anyone else?
Every year, about 1,000 people from Mexico and the Caribbean are hired in the Niagara region as temporary agricultural workers. They are part of Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), a foreign workforce created in the 1960s by the Canadian government to fill labour shortages on farms. Tragically, they are also largely ignored and unappreciated by the people in the communities where they work, doing the jobs for which we as Canadians feel we are "too good."
On a working trip to Kenya a few years ago, I learned that until you know the lives of those behind an issue, it won't be a reality for you. Foreign labour was never a personal issue for me, until I met the people involved and learned their names and personalities. Once they became part of my life, I couldn't turn away, because to do so would be turning my back on friends.
Making friends with marginalized people is neither safe nor comfortable, because it's real life. It's not edited or censored to make it easier for our western minds to process. Most people, including myself, prefer not to know what's happening if it will challenge our lifestyles. We like to believe we're good people within secure boundaries. Our instinct is self-preservation; we tend to shy away from anything that may cause cognitive dissonance.
There are usually two ways that people respond to social issues like this one: avoidance or guilt. Avoidance being, "I won't deal with it," and guilt being, "I can't deal with it." Being faced with the lives of these people and knowing that neither of these options is very helpful, I decided to create a third option and called it GROW (Growing Respect for Offshore Workers).
The purpose of GROW is to build bridges of respect and understanding between these essential workers and the Niagara citizenry. This group, of which I'm the co-ordinator, has been funded and supported for nearly a year by Brock University's chapter of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group. We have organized activities with the workers such as film screenings, dinner parties and music nights.
The most successful event, however, was an appreciation night organized in co-operation with another local group CWOP (Caribbean Workers Outreach Program). It was well attended by the surrounding community, including Niagara-on-the-Lake Lord Mayor Gary Burroughs and MP Rob Nicholson's representative from Canada's Ministry of Justice, Rick Johnson. It was the first event in the history of the SAWP that officially recognized the workers' contribution to our community. The first one! What's wrong with us?
Befriending people on the margins of our society has proved to be extremely worthwhile, not just in the large-scale progress like the appreciation night, but in the one-on-one connections I have made.
Last February, I was fortunate enough to travel with my now-husband and my mother to Jamaica, where we visited several of our friends we'd met over the previous harvesting season. Winston became Brother Winston as we stayed at his home and walked to church in the tiny mountain village of Grants Bailey, St. Ann. We met his wife and children, to whom most of the money that Winston makes in Niagara goes in order to pay for food, clothing and education.
Now whenever he rides his bike past my house or stops in for a cold glass of juice, I'm able to say, "How's Pamela managing back home?" or "How are Shantae and Adrian doing in school?" and when Winston answers, I can see their faces and hear their voices as vividly as my own family's.
Our family bond was strengthened this past summer when I married my soul mate, Josh Toal, in the company of more than 100 supportive Jamaican men and women. I can't imagine it happening any other way now that these people have transformed from being ghosts, to friends and now to my brothers and sisters.
Kate Andres-Toal is a Niagara-on-the-Lake resident in her third year of communication studies at Brock University. She is a member of The Standard's community editorial board.
