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In a new land, old prejudices are left behind
A Record special report on multiculturalism in Waterloo Region
by LIZ MONTEIRO
The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario)
May 7, 2005 Saturday Final Edition
Every year on April 24, Ara Baliozian pauses to reflect on the past
with other members of his family.
For Baliozian, 68, an Armenian-Canadian living in Kitchener, the date
is important. In 1915 it marked the beginning of a genocide in which
1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey were slaughtered while living
under the Ottoman Empire.
Among those killed were Baliozian's grandfather and some of his uncles.
This year, Armenians commemorated the 90th anniversary of the mass
killings. In Canada they took out ads in Canada's major newspapers
to call attention to the massacre.
In March, the Ontario vice-president of the Armenian National
Committee, Aris Babikian, spoke to local students about the genocide
during an anti-racism gathering at Kitchener City Hall.
Some countries, including Canada, have formally recognized the mass
deaths. The House of Commons recognized the genocide last year and
denounced the Turks for committing atrocities, but the United Nations
has not yet acknowledged the deaths.
Inci Kuzucuoglu, a freelance interpreter, said Canadian politicians
hastily accepted the Armenian position but she says she, too, is a
Canadian and feels attacked.
"The politicians should not be involved. Let the historians decide,"
said Kuzucuoglu, who emigrated from Turkey 36 years ago.
"It's bothersome to see politicians siding with one group of people
against another," she said.
For some local Turks, the commemorations stir up deep-rooted
grievances.
You won't see public displays such as protests in the streets or
violent retaliations, but the collective hurt is felt by some local
Turks.
Some immigrants carry longstanding conflicts with them when they
come to Canada, says Rich Janzen, research director for the Centre
for Research and Education.
The past pains sometimes simmer, flare up but eventually peter out,
says Janzen.
Similar animosities have existed for centuries between some groups
such as the English and the Irish and still continue today.
These historical conflicts are a delicate subject and some people
like to avoid them all together.
Augie Fleras, sociology professor at the University of Waterloo,
said it's idealistic to think immigrants can discard or park their
hostilities and get on with being a new Canadian.
"In a democratic society, there is a continuum of opinion where you
should be able to voice your concerns without violating others," he
said. "We can't be too cavalier with a history of hurt, dispossession
or annihilation."
Myrta Rivera of the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre, said
animosities between groups must be addressed in order to create a
country of acceptance.
Many cultures come with historical baggage and as Canadians we can't
expect they can "leave the bags at the door and come here and do
things differently."
We need to acknowledge historical conflicts but then encourage the
immigrants to talk about what is beautiful about their countries and
cultures, Rivera said.
"How long do we carry the hurt?" she said. "What are we going to
unpack, the good things or the battles?"
But in most cases, immigrants choose to come to Canada to live in
peace and harmony and work hard at living side by side.
Yakup Baykan and his family came to Kitchener nearly four years ago
from Turkey.
As a young boy, Baykan recalls playing with children in his
neighbourhood in Turkey. Some were Armenian, some were Turkish but
as a child he never knew the difference.
"We never called them Armenian. He spoke Turkish and I saw him as
Turkish," he said.
Baykan said the problem lies with the politicians because members
of the general public get along. In fact, in the short time he has
lived in Canada he has made friends with local Armenians, including
his mechanic.
Baykan said he hopes the past hurts get resolved.
"We feel sorry for our history, our culture. It makes me feel sad, but
we can't do anything now," said the 43-year-old father of two children.
But there are occasions when animosities come to the surface.
About two months ago, hostilities resurfaced after two fundamentalist
Sikhs were found not guilty of the 1985 Air India bombings in which
331 people died.
Some Canadian Sikhs said justice had been served after 20 years
involving a lengthy criminal trial, while some members of the
Canadian East Indian community felt evidence had been suppressed in
investigating the terrorism.
During the trial, the prosecution argued that the two men were
motivated by revenge for the Indian military's 1984 raid on the Golden
Temple in Amristar, Sikhism's holiest temple.
In another example last month at a summit in Indonesia, Japan
apologized to its Asian counterparts for its wartime behaviour.
The apologies to China have been aired in the past, but some Chinese
say Japan's remorse is insincere and the bitter hurt continues.
China is opposing Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the United
Nations Security Council.
In China, there are public protests and earlier this week Chinese
Canadians took to the streets in Vancouver.
*
Locally, Turks and Armenians say they live peacefully and that many
are friends because they share the same culture.
Although their perspectives on history may differ, they say they
remain united despite a major historical fact they can't agree on.
Some Turks deny the deaths.
Instead, they believe the Armenians were forced to leave the
Ottoman Empire because of civil war and were not equipped and died
of starvation and sickness, said Koray Kuzucuoglu, president of the
local Turkish Cultural Association.
Deputy Chief Matt Torigian with the Waterloo regional police is of
Armenian ancestry. He was born and raised in St. Catharines, far from
the homeland of his grandparents, who fled the former Soviet republic
in the 1920s.
But as a child, he recalls his family members talking about battles
and events his family had lived through.
"On Jan. 6 we acknowledge Armenian Christmas. We focus on food,
family and the music," said the father of two. "Our history was
important but the genocide did not play a prominent role."
"We were never raised to have animosity or hatred towards the Turkish
people," he said. "The message was treat everyone else the way you
want to be treated."
Inci Kuzucuoglu said she has translated for many Armenians and feels
no hate towards them.
"I trust them and they trust me," says Kuzucuoglu, the former board
chair for the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre.
"I'm a Canadian and then I'm a Turk. I choose this country and I
want to live in peace and harmony," said Kuzucuoglu, 55, who has two
adult daughters.
"This has been put on our shoulders and we must defend ourselves,"
she said.
*
Araxi Baliozian was two years old when the deaths of the Armenians
began. Her father tried to get his family, which included Araxi,
two brothers, a sister and her mother, out of Turkey.
Today the 91-year-old Kitchener woman says very little about the
past. Her son, Ara, says his mother's father was killed and his widow
was left with four children.
Araxi and her sister were sent to Beirut to be raised by French nuns.
Araxi was there until she was 17.
She then moved to Greece, where she was reunited with her mother and
later married.
The Baliozians came to Canada in 1957.
"All my life, I suffer so much," said Araxi. "I have two children
and they are angels."
Ara Baliozian said he remembers his father, who died in 1962, speaking
about a Turkish neighbour who had saved his life.
After living in Canada for more than 25 years, Baliozian said he
doesn't carry grudges. "We need to be friendly with the Turks. Many
of them have Armenian blood," he said.
Baliozian, who has written many books on the genocide, said he isn't
political and hopes differences among the Armenians and Turks can
be resolved.
*
Some conflicts may have occurred 90 years ago,while others continue
to this day.
Fourteen-year-old Makey Gany is used to watching his back.
The Kitchener teen lived in a refugee camp with his mother and eight
siblings in Kenya. For a few years, they were homeless and took
shelter under trees at night.
The Ethiopian-born teenager became used to watching out for thieves who
would take the firewood his mother had spent all morning collecting.
The thieves were his own people. But for Gany it's not a grudge he
holds against them.
Civil war is something he has lived with all his life. It's what
he knew.
Today, life is very different. But the pain of the past still comes
to him daily in his thoughts.
"It's stamped in my heart," said Gany, a Grade 9 student at Eastwood
Collegiate Institute in Kitchener.
"Here I can go to school and I have lovely teachers and students who
help me," he said.
"I would never believe I would be happy. There I thought what was I
going to eat, what was going to happen next," Gany said.
Eastwood principal Agnes Dufournaud said the high school has one
of the largest English as a Second Language programs at a public
secondary school in the region.
In September, there were 110 ESL students.
Now there are 150 and it's projected that number will rise to 200 by
next fall.
Carolyn Vander Schaaf, a guidance counsellor at Forest Heights
Collegiate Institute in Kitchener, said many of the ESL students she
sees speak with respect about their peers from other cultures.
"They themselves are the 'others' in the North American culture and
they are grateful for the acceptance," she said.
Wendy Weinberg, principal at Winston Churchill Public School in
Waterloo, said there are 34 languages spoken at her school.
Weinberg said at the school level, students are more open to talk about
racism and prejudice and how stereotypes can typecast some groups.
"The more we can see beyond the stereotypes, the more we can connect
with people and understand people," she said.
[email protected]
GRAPHIC: Photo: PHILIP WALKER, RECORD STAFF; Araxi Baliozian, 91,
shares a home in Kitchener with her son, Ara, and daughter, Dianna.
Her father was among those killed in the 1915 Armenian slaughter.;
Photo: PHILIP WALKER, RECORD STAFF; "I'm a Canadian and then I'm
a Turk," says Inci Kuzucuoglu. She says she objects to Canadian
politicians taking a stance on Armenia's genocide claims, but says
she personally feels no hate towards individual Armenians.; Photo:
Myrta Rivera, of the K-W Multicultural Centre, says it's unreasonable
to expect immigrants to leave all their historical baggage behind.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
A Record special report on multiculturalism in Waterloo Region
by LIZ MONTEIRO
The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario)
May 7, 2005 Saturday Final Edition
Every year on April 24, Ara Baliozian pauses to reflect on the past
with other members of his family.
For Baliozian, 68, an Armenian-Canadian living in Kitchener, the date
is important. In 1915 it marked the beginning of a genocide in which
1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey were slaughtered while living
under the Ottoman Empire.
Among those killed were Baliozian's grandfather and some of his uncles.
This year, Armenians commemorated the 90th anniversary of the mass
killings. In Canada they took out ads in Canada's major newspapers
to call attention to the massacre.
In March, the Ontario vice-president of the Armenian National
Committee, Aris Babikian, spoke to local students about the genocide
during an anti-racism gathering at Kitchener City Hall.
Some countries, including Canada, have formally recognized the mass
deaths. The House of Commons recognized the genocide last year and
denounced the Turks for committing atrocities, but the United Nations
has not yet acknowledged the deaths.
Inci Kuzucuoglu, a freelance interpreter, said Canadian politicians
hastily accepted the Armenian position but she says she, too, is a
Canadian and feels attacked.
"The politicians should not be involved. Let the historians decide,"
said Kuzucuoglu, who emigrated from Turkey 36 years ago.
"It's bothersome to see politicians siding with one group of people
against another," she said.
For some local Turks, the commemorations stir up deep-rooted
grievances.
You won't see public displays such as protests in the streets or
violent retaliations, but the collective hurt is felt by some local
Turks.
Some immigrants carry longstanding conflicts with them when they
come to Canada, says Rich Janzen, research director for the Centre
for Research and Education.
The past pains sometimes simmer, flare up but eventually peter out,
says Janzen.
Similar animosities have existed for centuries between some groups
such as the English and the Irish and still continue today.
These historical conflicts are a delicate subject and some people
like to avoid them all together.
Augie Fleras, sociology professor at the University of Waterloo,
said it's idealistic to think immigrants can discard or park their
hostilities and get on with being a new Canadian.
"In a democratic society, there is a continuum of opinion where you
should be able to voice your concerns without violating others," he
said. "We can't be too cavalier with a history of hurt, dispossession
or annihilation."
Myrta Rivera of the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre, said
animosities between groups must be addressed in order to create a
country of acceptance.
Many cultures come with historical baggage and as Canadians we can't
expect they can "leave the bags at the door and come here and do
things differently."
We need to acknowledge historical conflicts but then encourage the
immigrants to talk about what is beautiful about their countries and
cultures, Rivera said.
"How long do we carry the hurt?" she said. "What are we going to
unpack, the good things or the battles?"
But in most cases, immigrants choose to come to Canada to live in
peace and harmony and work hard at living side by side.
Yakup Baykan and his family came to Kitchener nearly four years ago
from Turkey.
As a young boy, Baykan recalls playing with children in his
neighbourhood in Turkey. Some were Armenian, some were Turkish but
as a child he never knew the difference.
"We never called them Armenian. He spoke Turkish and I saw him as
Turkish," he said.
Baykan said the problem lies with the politicians because members
of the general public get along. In fact, in the short time he has
lived in Canada he has made friends with local Armenians, including
his mechanic.
Baykan said he hopes the past hurts get resolved.
"We feel sorry for our history, our culture. It makes me feel sad, but
we can't do anything now," said the 43-year-old father of two children.
But there are occasions when animosities come to the surface.
About two months ago, hostilities resurfaced after two fundamentalist
Sikhs were found not guilty of the 1985 Air India bombings in which
331 people died.
Some Canadian Sikhs said justice had been served after 20 years
involving a lengthy criminal trial, while some members of the
Canadian East Indian community felt evidence had been suppressed in
investigating the terrorism.
During the trial, the prosecution argued that the two men were
motivated by revenge for the Indian military's 1984 raid on the Golden
Temple in Amristar, Sikhism's holiest temple.
In another example last month at a summit in Indonesia, Japan
apologized to its Asian counterparts for its wartime behaviour.
The apologies to China have been aired in the past, but some Chinese
say Japan's remorse is insincere and the bitter hurt continues.
China is opposing Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the United
Nations Security Council.
In China, there are public protests and earlier this week Chinese
Canadians took to the streets in Vancouver.
*
Locally, Turks and Armenians say they live peacefully and that many
are friends because they share the same culture.
Although their perspectives on history may differ, they say they
remain united despite a major historical fact they can't agree on.
Some Turks deny the deaths.
Instead, they believe the Armenians were forced to leave the
Ottoman Empire because of civil war and were not equipped and died
of starvation and sickness, said Koray Kuzucuoglu, president of the
local Turkish Cultural Association.
Deputy Chief Matt Torigian with the Waterloo regional police is of
Armenian ancestry. He was born and raised in St. Catharines, far from
the homeland of his grandparents, who fled the former Soviet republic
in the 1920s.
But as a child, he recalls his family members talking about battles
and events his family had lived through.
"On Jan. 6 we acknowledge Armenian Christmas. We focus on food,
family and the music," said the father of two. "Our history was
important but the genocide did not play a prominent role."
"We were never raised to have animosity or hatred towards the Turkish
people," he said. "The message was treat everyone else the way you
want to be treated."
Inci Kuzucuoglu said she has translated for many Armenians and feels
no hate towards them.
"I trust them and they trust me," says Kuzucuoglu, the former board
chair for the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre.
"I'm a Canadian and then I'm a Turk. I choose this country and I
want to live in peace and harmony," said Kuzucuoglu, 55, who has two
adult daughters.
"This has been put on our shoulders and we must defend ourselves,"
she said.
*
Araxi Baliozian was two years old when the deaths of the Armenians
began. Her father tried to get his family, which included Araxi,
two brothers, a sister and her mother, out of Turkey.
Today the 91-year-old Kitchener woman says very little about the
past. Her son, Ara, says his mother's father was killed and his widow
was left with four children.
Araxi and her sister were sent to Beirut to be raised by French nuns.
Araxi was there until she was 17.
She then moved to Greece, where she was reunited with her mother and
later married.
The Baliozians came to Canada in 1957.
"All my life, I suffer so much," said Araxi. "I have two children
and they are angels."
Ara Baliozian said he remembers his father, who died in 1962, speaking
about a Turkish neighbour who had saved his life.
After living in Canada for more than 25 years, Baliozian said he
doesn't carry grudges. "We need to be friendly with the Turks. Many
of them have Armenian blood," he said.
Baliozian, who has written many books on the genocide, said he isn't
political and hopes differences among the Armenians and Turks can
be resolved.
*
Some conflicts may have occurred 90 years ago,while others continue
to this day.
Fourteen-year-old Makey Gany is used to watching his back.
The Kitchener teen lived in a refugee camp with his mother and eight
siblings in Kenya. For a few years, they were homeless and took
shelter under trees at night.
The Ethiopian-born teenager became used to watching out for thieves who
would take the firewood his mother had spent all morning collecting.
The thieves were his own people. But for Gany it's not a grudge he
holds against them.
Civil war is something he has lived with all his life. It's what
he knew.
Today, life is very different. But the pain of the past still comes
to him daily in his thoughts.
"It's stamped in my heart," said Gany, a Grade 9 student at Eastwood
Collegiate Institute in Kitchener.
"Here I can go to school and I have lovely teachers and students who
help me," he said.
"I would never believe I would be happy. There I thought what was I
going to eat, what was going to happen next," Gany said.
Eastwood principal Agnes Dufournaud said the high school has one
of the largest English as a Second Language programs at a public
secondary school in the region.
In September, there were 110 ESL students.
Now there are 150 and it's projected that number will rise to 200 by
next fall.
Carolyn Vander Schaaf, a guidance counsellor at Forest Heights
Collegiate Institute in Kitchener, said many of the ESL students she
sees speak with respect about their peers from other cultures.
"They themselves are the 'others' in the North American culture and
they are grateful for the acceptance," she said.
Wendy Weinberg, principal at Winston Churchill Public School in
Waterloo, said there are 34 languages spoken at her school.
Weinberg said at the school level, students are more open to talk about
racism and prejudice and how stereotypes can typecast some groups.
"The more we can see beyond the stereotypes, the more we can connect
with people and understand people," she said.
[email protected]
GRAPHIC: Photo: PHILIP WALKER, RECORD STAFF; Araxi Baliozian, 91,
shares a home in Kitchener with her son, Ara, and daughter, Dianna.
Her father was among those killed in the 1915 Armenian slaughter.;
Photo: PHILIP WALKER, RECORD STAFF; "I'm a Canadian and then I'm
a Turk," says Inci Kuzucuoglu. She says she objects to Canadian
politicians taking a stance on Armenia's genocide claims, but says
she personally feels no hate towards individual Armenians.; Photo:
Myrta Rivera, of the K-W Multicultural Centre, says it's unreasonable
to expect immigrants to leave all their historical baggage behind.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress