Immigrating To Canada: How to avoid culture shock - Tip 1

Find your tribe: Plan to make Multicultural Friends

When in a new environment your first instinct is to seek out people who are familiar. While this is a quick and easy way to feel at home in a new country, challenge yourself to make friends with people from different cultures.

It is a very challenging and humbling experience to be miles away from family and loved ones. So try to have an open mind and be prepared to learn about and befriend people from different cultures.  

As the saying goes; better a friend who is near by than family that is far away and as the Jamaican saying goes ‘good Fren betta than pocket money.’

The good news is that through social media you can start the friend making process before you even get on the plane to Canada. You can reach out to Program Coordinators to see if there is any group for incoming students in your cohort. That's a good resource for meeting your classmates/school mates virtually beforehand and establishing some rapport. 

The reality is that in order to survive and thrive in your new environment you will need to make friends and preferably friends from different multicultural backgrounds. It’s good for your well being and  good for maintaining a healthy network for job hunting and finding other opportunities. 

Plus you never know what you can learn from your new family/tribe and they from you. 

Form an Encouragement Committee

I recently got the wording, 'encouragement committee', from a friend but the concept I had to learn from experience...

If you are going to accomplish anything worthwhile in life you need to surround your dreams and plans with people who believe in them and believe that you can succeed. You need people who will listen, advise and genuinely cheer you on when you feel like giving up on your dream. In other words, you need to form an encouragement committee.

This means...
It's not the best idea in the elementary phases when you are contemplating a move to tell everyone what you are considering. You may share your emigration dream with someone who intentionally or unintentionally squashes your dream before it even gets a chance to take flight. There is much wisdom in the saying, 'misery loves company.'

Sadly, the phrase 'crab in a bucket' is very real in our Caribbean context. So avoid this pitfall. And again, surround your dream and your plans with people who can help you believe (we're not even talking about finances and funding at this point...just moral support.)

When I was planning to leave for Canada back in 2010, my mother was the only person I told. This wasn't my first attempt at leaving though...in late 2009 I was 'invited' to go to Canada and quite a few people knew and that fell through faster than the speed of lightening. My mother, however believed in my dream so when one route fell through she was on the look-out with me for another route to accomplishing this dream. She was my encouragement team of 1 in the initial stages and when my plans became more concrete I sought out more people who were able to offer advice and counsel on the journey.

Take Away: Form an encouragement committee and shelter your dreams so that they can take flight when the time is right.