Marlena Guzowski
Northern News Services
Published Friday, January 11, 2008
YELLOWKNIFE - Xe Hua Chen, an office administrator from China, cried for seven months out of sheer loneliness when she first arrived in Yellowknife.
Miho Izumi, an accountant from Japan, can't even find a meaningful volunteer job in the city.
Xe Hua Chen, left, from China, Thanh Nguyen from Vietnam and Bintia Towre from Guinea take in one of teacher Gavin McConville's classes for English as a second language. - Marlena Guzowski/NNSL photo |
"We just study English here and then we go home," said Bintia Towre, an English as a second language student at Aurora College and a recent arrival from the west African country of Guinea.
"I live with a friend. I just have one friend," she said
Forget weather. A number of immigrants taking language classes at Aurora College say their sense of isolation and inability to enter their careers of choice is the main reason why they want to head south.
The students in Gavin McConville's English as a second language class are all female and are studying English full-time during the day. They all hope to work but at this point have no jobs. The students' nationalities range from Japanese to Brazilian. One is a former psychologist in her home country, another a certified accountant and one was a store owner. Most of these women came because their husbands were offered jobs here.
Chen, who has one young child at home, describes the monotony of her days. In the mornings she goes to school and after school she comes home and takes care of her child - alone. She has no friends and no social support network.
"These are my classmates," she said, pointing around the room. "I have no friend (outside of the classroom)."
She said it's difficult enough to find anything to do during the day and any programs that are available, such as the Yellowknife Family Centre, most often close at 5 p.m.
Students say they can't even find meaningful volunteer work, never mind jobs they find fulfilling. Volunteer jobs that are offered to them mainly involve "factory-type" tasks, they say.
In 2006, 2,185 people living in the NWT were foreign born, and 76 per cent of them lived in Yellowknife, according to Statistics Canada's most recent census data. McConville said at any one time he has 30-35 students in his Language Instruction for Newcomers (LINC) classes, which means a couple hundred might take part every year.
"The lucky ones have strong cultural communities that are already in place in Yellowknife and these communities absorb them," said McConville. This is not necessarily a good thing in the long run, he said.
"Those who are hoping to make a real transition into life here, I think it would be helpful for them to have some more outside contact."
Having low language skills leads to difficulties finding friends and jobs. Without these social networks, one does not get the chance to practise English in everyday life, leading to little improvement in language skills, he said.
English instruction at school is obviously very useful. However, it's no substitute for actual participation in a community. In addition, McConville said Yellowknife's comparatively small number of newcomers creates another problem. In LINC schools in larger cities - such as Ottawa - one can find five levels of instruction in each school. In Yellowknife there are only two - one advanced, one for beginners. Many of his students fall in between.
The students say they don't expect miracles. They realize that their English is too low for the time being to get work in their fields of choice.
McConville said part of the problem is the lack of staff at the college to help students find resources. For example, many newcomers don't know what they need in order to regain certification in their fields or have the cultural know-how to find out. There is generally one "settlement officer" at Aurora college responsible for helping immigrants find all the necessary information - from finding apartments to re-certifying qualifications. The college is currently trying to hire a replacement settlement officer.
Most in the class said they would stay in Yellowknife if they had a little more help. Life can be happy here - if only they had some friends and a job they enjoyed.
Marta Ranzanni, a psychologist from Brazil, provided the following parting line: "You can live the life you choose or the life you have."
