MadameAssia
ENJOYING SMALL TOWN LIFE IN LINDSAY W
FRIENDS & NEIGHBOURS WITH JAMIE MORRIS
hat a difference an hour-and-a-half drive can make. Toronto is one of the most multicultural and diverse cities in the world. Over half the population was born outside of Canada and over half of Torontonians belong to a visible minority group. Lindsay? Not quite so diverse. But that’s slowly changing, and though everyone has a story to tell, maybe we should be paying particular attention to the stories of those who have come here from other countries and cultures. What has brought them here? What fresh perspectives do they offer and how are they shaping and being shaped by our community? With that preamble, meet Assia Bah — “Madame Assia” to the kids at Leslie Frost Public School, where she is a French monitor, assisting the teachers by working with a few kids at a time to improve their ability to speak, understand, read and write French. Assia, who is now 26, was born in Guinea, a West African country that is one of the 21 French-speaking countries on the continent. She is the eldest of three children. Her parents, Muslim Peuhls (members of the Falu tribe), were both professional engineers and two of her grandparents were teachers.
But there was a different kind of froideur (coldness) as well. She was the new kid at school and it was hard to make friends. Assia explains: “In Guinea there’s warmth between people. Everybody speaks to everybody and nobody is left out. It wasn’t like that in Quebec.” Her French accent was different from the Quebecois, so it took a while to make that adjustment, too. Meanwhile, her mother was facing different challenges. She had to navigate the immigration and citizenship process (which was complicated 10 years later when Assia’s siblings arrived and the family was reunified). She took additional engineering courses but couldn’t find a Montreal engineering position. Instead, she worked in a daycare and did lots of volunteering, helping new arrivals and assisting at a centre that advocated for renters’ rights. CONT’D PAGE 17
In Assia’s culture, as girls approach puberty they are expected to undergo excision (female genital mutilation). Her mother was determined to save her daughters from this. She wanted a different, better life for her children, and when Assia turned 10 made the decision to seek refuge in Canada, known for its freedoms and safety. Montreal was the obvious choice: francophone, and already home to some of her mother’s relatives. Assia and her mother left her siblings and father behind. They arrived in Montreal in November. What hit her first, coming from the tropical heat of Guinea, was the cold. November in Canada, eh?
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ASSIA WITH AFRICAN-MADE FABRIC. www.lindsayadvocate.ca
