By Tony Deyal
Even before I ended up at Carlton University, Canada, one of my favourite writers was the great Canadian humourist, Stephen Leacock. What I liked most, even then, was what Stephen Leacock said about himself, “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” Of course, my colleagues in Canada Hall of the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, despite my being their Hall leader, had to say, “What Tony? You getting advice from a Leak Cock who is just like you? All you have to do now, is crow!” Unfortunately for them, I was not the only one to do so. Students with us at the University created a “Black Power Movement” and crowed us out of school. All our studies for the year ended.
Fortunately for me, I got a scholarship from the Trinidad government and was off to Canada where the seasons are almost winter, winter, still winter, more winter and briefly, road construction. When I asked the Canadian colleagues in my group if that was true and I had to live like that for the three years I would be there, one of the students said, “Not true at all. We just have two seasons in Canada. Winter, and July.” The one I liked most was an Englishman teaching Journalism, “Tony,” he said, “don’t trust any country that looks around a continent and says, ‘I’ll take the frozen part.’”
Initially, the first month was great and my having to find a place to live was far too easy. A group of students and older folks, took us under their wings and had us checking out places, told us about costs, and on couple left me in their house for a weekend when they went out. They left food for me but growing up in Trinidad we liked hot food made hotter with pepper, onion, salt and a mix of what we call “spice in your rice”. Fortunately, they has some bread in the fridge and it kept me going. By that time too, from the first day I got there, especially my asking questions in my Trinidadian language and not Canadian, or even total English, I got a lot of “Eh?”
In Trinidad, if someone drops an “eh, eh”, we quickly and loudly respond, “But eh, eh, why you ehing so?” And added, “Listen, if you continue like that we will have to tell you to “haul youh ehse.” Unfortunately for me in Canada, on the first day, I reached in the University and went to a place where a group of students were waiting to help us get a place to rent, settle down and get ready for school. However, anything I and any of the other foreign students said, we kept hearing, “Eh?” It took a long time for me to understand what and why they kept on giving me an “eh” full until it went into one ear and immediately out the other.
First, I was told it was the Canadian way of ending an opinion or an explanation for the speaker to express solidarity with the listener. It’s not exactly asking for reassurance or confirmation, but it’s not far off: the speaker is basically saying: “Hey, we’re on the same page here, we agree on this.” I found even more in the “Canadian Eh?” that meets the air. It was “right?”, “you know?” or, a tough one initially, “innit?”
Typically, I gave them an “Eh?” full every time they said things we found funny. For example, “Canuck” is Canadian for “Canadian” and there is a “Johnny Canuck” who was a cartoon hero, a superhero, a politician cartoon, an in the Second World War as an action hero. Right now I’m waiting to see what “Johnny Canuck” will do about the US determination to take over their country. It definitely won’t be Trump and follow suit.
More difficult to understand were words like “Clicks” which is a slang for kilos per hour; “Hoser” who is an unsophisticated person for Canadians but for us it was all of them; “Keener” is a boot-licker, brown-nose or suk-up; and almost the same; “pogey” is welfare or freeness and while that, in the Caribbean, means “sweet, cand-like treat”, “pogey bait” was used in some Canadian regions to refer to unemployment insurance; and, the one they love and Caribbean men don’t mind, “Molson muscle” or “pot belly” which is a brand of bear. In my case, I prefer a “Mickey” (13 oz bottle of liquor) and “Two-four” or a case of 24 bottles of beer.
During my three years in Canada, my friends said “Tony knows how to grin and beer it.” My Trinidad and African friends rented rooms in the University and locked themselves “innit.” They used the closed-up, totally enclosed, areas under the University to come and go to class. I rented a room and found out that it was a place for extremely old people put there by their families and not the best to eat, breathe or sleep. I lost a month’s money (it could have been worse) and went to another place with a lady whose son was drunk.
Fortunately, I eventually got a three-bedroom house with two Canadian students from the far west of the country, one a chef and the other in business administration. I learnt to cook from one (who died several years ago but not by my food) and am still in touch with the other who took whatever was left in the fridge and ate it, regardless of how cold it was. My room remained hot, night and day, and my head was on the side of the unit. I tell people that the reason I have lost most of my hair was because of how close it was to the heat.
It was not easy walking from a distant area to a place about a quarter mile away to get a bus to reach the University and go to my classes. Still, it was a great place to be. I ended up with a First Class Honours in Journalism and was hired to manage two groups in the journalism programme for two years. In the meantime, I decided I would enjoy Canada night and day, cold or colder. I would learn ice skating. I wore several sets of clothing one on the other, not for the cold but the number of times I fell down in the very hard and heavy ground or what one of my friends said to me, “Man, you’re in the wrong job. You should be working in a club as a bouncer!”
*Tony Deyal told people that why he drank alcohol and beer so much in Canada was because when he went to get something to drink for breakfast, they told him they had “homo milk.” It is only much later that is what Canadians call “whole milk.”
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