While making small talk with locals on a recent trip to Innsbruck, Austria, many of the people I met were surprised of my nationality because as they did not perviously consider that individuals of African ancestry called Canada home. I told them that historically, Canada is in many ways a nation of immigrants. I proudly described that our borders house an ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous population and was the world’s first nation to adopt multiculturalism as official federal policy.
I recalled the case of Sikh RCMP officer Baltej Singh Dhillon who was the first Mountie to wear a turban after the Canadian Federal Government removed a ban on this religious headpiece from being worn instead of the traditional Stetson.
While I was giving an unexpected but brief history lesson to the Austrian ski instructor, 6000km away in Montreal, Rania El-Alloul was denied her right to be heard in the courtroom of Judge Eliana Marengo.