newcomer bulletin spring 2013

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SPRING 2013 | VOL. 2 | NO. 3 BULLETIN newcomer www.newcomerbulletin.com SERVING THE NEWCOMER COMMUNITIES IN DURHAM, NORTHUMBERLAND AND PETERBOROUGH IMMIGRANTS MEAN BUSINESS In Buckhorn village, immigrants keep the wheels of the economy spinning

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Newcomer Bulletin is a magazine resource for newcomers and longer-term immigrants to Ontario, Canada.

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Page 1: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

SPRING 2013 | VOL. 2 | NO. 3

BULLETINnewcomer

www.newcomerbulletin.com

SERVING THE NEWCOMER COMMUNITIES IN DURHAM, NORTHUMBERLAND AND PETERBOROUGH

IMMIGRANTSMEAN BUSINESSIn Buckhorn village,immigrants keepthe wheels of theeconomy spinning

Page 2: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

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Page 3: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013
Page 4: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

4   NEWCOMER BULLETIN | SPRING 2013 www.newcomerbulletin.com

Altona Kabob Front Cover

City of Peterborough 3

Fleming College 2

Herod Financial Services 7

Informed Financial Growth 10

Lee’s Hi-Tec Computer Services 29

Manulife Securities 29

McConkey Real Estate Corp. 9

Mediaplus Village 11

New Canadians Centre 31

Nexicom 5

nofrills 20

Northumberland County 30

Red Cross 24

River Run Fellowship 11

Royal Bank of Canada 9

State Farm 8

Trent University Back Cover

Wensten Accounting Inc. 10

CONTENTS

OUR ADVERTISERS

14 COVER STORY When Trent Lakes Mayor Janet Clarkson planned a thank-you event for immigrants in Buckhorn, little did she realize they were actually more than many people had initially thought.

21 PROFILE Dr. Rodrigo De Luna

27 CLICK NB Forum

COVER STORY

14 BUSINESS DRIVERSIn Buckhorn, immigrants represent more than a dozen countries and own the majority of the businesses. By estimates, they account for more than 80 percent of the economic activity in the village.

NEWS DIGEST

PETERBOROUGH8 NCC AGMSeveral spots at the New Canadians Centre board will be filled during its an-nual general meeting on May 30, 2013 at the Market Hall. The deadline to submit expressions of interest is May 23.

NORTHUMBERLAND8 Immigration Portal LaunchNorthumberland County’s immigration portal, an online-information gateway for prospective investors and skilled immi-grants, is now up and running. A launch has been scheduled for April 26, 2013. NATIONAL9 New start-up visaCanada has begun accepting applica-tions for a new visa designed for start-up entrepreneurs with ideas for new busi-ness ventures and financial backing from Canadian investors. The start-up visa is a pilot program that will run for five years.

COLUMNS

11 Tax cornerFind out what benefits you can receive as a first-time home buyer. Know them and make a claim, says tax-consultant Forest Li, as the government does not automatically grant them.  28 Off the beatDon Sellar, a retired journalist who taught media law and ethics, writes about his class of foreign-trained journalists who aspires to re-start their careers in Canada.

PROFILES 

21 Dr. Rodrigo de LunaWhen he came to Canada in 1987 to join his parents, Dr. Rodrigo de Luna actually meant to cross the border into the United States – until a job came up for him in New-foundland. That marked the start of his medical profession in Canada.

22 Melanie HornerAn occupational nurse for 22 years, Melanie Horner shifts gear and turns her pottery hobby into a business after she and her family relocated from the UK to Canada. She lives in Cobourg.

Page 5: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

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Page 6: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

6   NEWCOMER BULLETIN | SPRING 2013 www.newcomerbulletin.com

FROM THE EDITORBEVERLY LOMOSAD

BUSINESS UNUSUAL

For a good part of my life, I lived in countries where expatriates

are virtually second-class citizens and deliberately excluded from mainstream life. More often, a two-layer society ex-ists: one for the expats and another for the host country’s citizens. And one knew very little of the other.

The host country couldn’t care less about the expats. By the same token, expats stay in their cocoon and never make any real effort to have mean-ingful social contact with the people outside of their own ethnic commu-nity away from home, much less make a little investment of their lives where they live.

I have friends who had lived, for example, in the Middle East for 30 years – some even longer – yet their sense of belonging is limited to the small circle of their own ethnic peers. They are as strangers to most of their neighbours as when they first came.

What a contrast to the story of a bunch of immigrants we feature as part of our cover story, Pages 14-20. Theirs is a collective story of a suc-cessful integration – thanks, to the welcoming spirit of the people who live next door to them and to the Buckhorn community at large. The immigrants in Buckhorn, a village of about 500 people, represent more than a dozen countries, and all but a few are investing right where they live as entrepreneurs. “We depend on each other, and we purchase from one another – it’s a really nice family,” said Trent Lakes Mayor Janet Clarkson of the small village of Buckhorn, whose first settler in 1828 was an Irish busi-

nessman who immigrated through the United States.

Some of Buckhorn’s immigrants are very special. For one, Dick Persson, Pages 15-16, is one of a handful few in all of Canada who build and restore canoes using pre-1920s methods. For another, Esther Inglis, Pages 16-17, owns and manages arguably one of the largest retail art galleries in Canada.

Beyond Buckhorn, a grassroots move-ment to build inclusive communities in Peterborough reached a crescendo in 2008, with the creation of the Peterborough Partnership Council on Immigrant Integration, Pages 12-13. The notion that immigrants are drivers of business and major contributors to the Canadian economy became a rallying point for PPCII and its com-munity partners.

TECHY WORLDAfter nearly 18 years, I had the pleasure again of working with multi-awarded cartoonist and illus-trator Rene Elevera – whom I have the privilege of calling my friend. As proof of how today’s technology has put the world at our fingertips, Rene and I, who are thousands of miles apart, found each other online. Rene has so kindly agreed to draw a cartoon for our front cover. He also made the illustration artwork for Don Sellar’s column, Pages 28-29.

A bunch of thanks also to Don Sellar, a 40-year veteran in journalism, who writes about his experience as a pro-fessor of a journalism class composed of foreign-trained journalists seeking to break into the media industry in Canada. I chuckled at some snip-pets of his column. You would too, I promise. n

MEDIAPLUS VILLAGEUnit LL5, 311 George Street North

Peterborough, ON K9J 3H3Phone: (705) 772-7172

[email protected]

EDITORIAL

EDITORBeverly Lomosad

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSChen Rao

Naser MiftariOlga Doktorova

PHOTOGRAPHERBob Laing

MARKETING AND CIRCULATION 

MARKETING MANAGERRamon Valles

ART

DESIGN AND LAYOUTJun G. Dayao

ADVISER

CONSULTANTCarmela Valles

ENQUIRIES

EDITORIAL [email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

ISSN 1929-8846

Publications Mail Agreement No. 42456027

MEMBER

Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the in-formation contained in this publication. However, Mediaplus Village regrets that it cannot accept liability for error or omis-sions contained in this publication, however caused. The opin-ions and views contained in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher. Readers are advised to seek specialist advice before acting on information contained in this publica-tio n, which is provided for general use and may not be appro-priate for the reader’s particular circumstances. The concept, content, style and design of this publication remain the exclu-sive property of Mediaplus Village. No part of this publication or any part of the contents thereof may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form without the permission of the publisher in writing. An exemption is hereby granted for extracts used for the purpose of fair review.

UPFRONT

BULLETINnewcomer

SERVING THE NEWCOMER COMMUNITIES IN DURHAM, NORTHUMBERLAND AND PETERBOROUGH

Page 7: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

7www.newcomerbulletin.com SPRING 2013 | NEWCOMER BULLETIN

LETTERS

We welcome your comments. Write to us at [email protected]. All submissions must include name, address and phone number. Letters may be edited for length, clarity and style.Submission constitutes permission to use.

Drain or boost? I like your recent cover story, (The Value of One – Pages 14-19, Winter 2013) which highlights the economic contribution of immigrants to Canada. Sometimes I feel that immigrants are being lumped together as one big drain to the Canadian economy. Noth-ing is further from the truth. You are correct in pointing out that immigrants are unfortu-nately under-utilized in the labour market. If immigrants were utilized to the extent that their qualifications should allow them, their economic contribution would cease to be in doubt.

Emmanuel EchiverriToronto

A nurse’s dreamI was searching online for information about how to im-migrate to Canada, and your website came up on Google Search. I was very inspired to read the story of Thelma Dillon. I am a Filipina nurse working in Saudi Arabia. My dream is to work in and move permanently to Canada. I am hard-working and have more than 11 years’ experience as an emergency nurse. I am hoping that your website will also publish job opportuni-

ties in Canada that interested applicants like me may apply online. I was encouraged after reading about Thelma Dillon. Her story is a good reminder that Canada has a place for persistent and hard-working individuals.

Joycelyn TomimbangJeddah

Super-visa costThe government’s super-visa program is a good example of good intention gone bad. Su-per visa is a new family-reuni-fication program that provides a quicker process for parents and grandparents to come to Canada and be reunited with

their families. However, the insurance-coverage require-ment before one gets issued a super visa is prohibitively costly. For most of us, it means many years before we can invite our parents to come.

Deepak A. RahmanToronto

VolunteerismAfter living in Canada for al-most six years now, I discover that in doing volunteer work we not only gain new friends but also learn more about our community as well as learn new skills. I really like your story about Carl and Ruth Hudson (The Power of Two – Page 24, Winter 2013) and their volunteer work in the community. I hope you will feature recent immigrants who have devoted time and effort to volunteer work.

Ashley PellegrinoCobourg

CanadianexperienceThank you for your discussion about Canadian experience

(Can’t land a job? You may lack soft skills – Page 16, Winter 2013). Canadian experience is a big irony for many, if not all, newcomers. How could a typical newcomer be expected to have gained a Canadian experience after having been in Canada for only a short period of time? When I was very new to Canada, I was asked during my job inter-views whether I had Canadian experience. To be honest, I didn’t know how to answer the question. To me, it sounded like a trick question until I realized the interviewer was actually seriously asking. Something must be put in place in order for newcomers to obtain Canadian experience soon after they ar-rived in Canada.

Anthony MoulickRichmond Hill

Q&A sectionThank you for a great maga-zine. Can I lobby for a Q&A section in your magazine where immigration questions are addressed?

Sam NabilPeterborough

Thanks for the suggestion. We will look into it. – Editor

IF IMMIGRANTS WERE UTILIZED TO THE EXTENT THAT THEIR QUALIFICATIONS SHOULD ALLOW THEM, THEIR ECONOMIC 

CONTRIBUTION WOULD CEASE TO BE IN DOUBT

Page 8: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

8   NEWCOMER BULLETIN | SPRING 2013 www.newcomerbulletin.com

NEWS DIGEST

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Dindin Villarino makes a presentation at a Metropolis conference

Northumberland launches web portal

Ontario is increasing support for settlement

programs and helping more than 80,000 newcomers get the services they need to settle and find jobs.

Through the government’s Newcomer Settlement Program, 98 organizations across the province will re-ceive support over the next two years to help connect new immigrants with lan-guage and job training, and other community services.

Enhancing newcomer settlement services is part of the province’s immigra-tion strategy. n

Several spots in the New Canadians Cen-

tre’s board will be filled during its annual general meeting on May 30, 2013.

Three-to-seven nomina-tions will be made and voted upon during the event. The deadline to submit expressions of

interest is May 23.

Financial and year-end reports will also be pre-sented. n

OntarioincreasessettlementfundingNorthumberland

County’s immigration issues and opportunities came into focus during a workshop held as part of the 15th National Metropo-lis Conference in Ottawa on March 14-16, 2013. Dindin Villarino, coordinator of the county’s immigration-portal project, led the conversation following a presentation.

Northumberland County is one of three municipali-ties that received funding in

2012 from the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigra-tion to develop the web portal under its Municipal Immigration Information Online program.

The workshop, titled “Im-migration and Sub-national Jurisdictions” looked at how local and regional communi-ties are taking a larger role in immigration. Ms. Villarino presented along with Ming-Young Tam, of MCI, who discussed the Immigration

New Canadians Centre sets AGM on May 30

Strategy of Ontario; Bonnie Mah, of Maytree Foundation, who talked about municipal-immigration practices from different communities in Europe and North America; and Peter Weclaw, director of immigration policy and plan-ning of Alberta, who talked about Alberta’s immigration policy and practices. Northumberland County’s immigration-web portal is now up and running, and a formal launch has been scheduled to take place on April 26, 2013. The online portal is a one-stop site of information on settlement and immigration for prospec-tive investors as well as skilled immigrants to the county. A key feature of the portal is the inclusion of video testimonials by newcomers and long-term immigrants in the county. Countries such as Afghanistan, China, Colom-bia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Macau, South Korea, the Philippines, Sweden and the UK are represented in a sec-tion called “In Our Voices.” n

QUICK FACTS

That’s the increase in Ontario’s funding to settlement programs since 2003.

That’s Ontario’s share of immigrantlandings each year. More newcomers settle in Ontario than any other prov-ince in Canada.

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada

80%

40%

Page 9: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

9www.newcomerbulletin.com SPRING 2013 | NEWCOMER BULLETIN

NEWS DIGEST

A new visa, designed for start-up entrepreneurs

with ideas for new business ventures and financial back-ing from Canadian inves-tors, went into effect on April 1, 2013.

“Canada is open for business to the world’s start-up en-trepreneurs,” said Immigra-tion Minister Jason Kenney. “Innovation and entrepre-neurship are essential drivers of the Canadian economy. That is why we are actively recruiting foreign entrepre-neurs – those who can build companies in Canada that will create new jobs, spur economic growth and com-pete on a global scale – with our new start-up visa.”

By providing entrepreneurs with permanent residency and access to a wide range of business partners, Canada hopes to become a destination of choice for start-up innovators.

CIC has worked with two umbrella organizations to identify and designate the venture-capital funds and

angel-investor groups that are keen to participate in the program.

Immigrant entrepreneurs hoping to launch cutting-edge businesses in Canada and attain permanent resi-dent status need the support of participating Cana-dian investors. A full list of designated venture capital funds and angel investor groups is now available on the Citizenship and Immi-gration Canada website.

To apply for permanent resident status in Canada, the foreign entrepreneur must first secure a significant in-vestment commitment from a designated Canadian angel investor group or venture capital fund. Applicants must also demonstrate language proficiency skills at a Cana-dian Language Benchmark 5 in listening, speaking, reading and writing, and have at least one year of education at a post-secondary institution.

The start-up visa program is a pilot program that will run for five years. n

New immigration pathwayfor start-up entrepreneurs

More than 15,000 super visas have

been issued since the program’s launch in December 2011, accord-ing to Citizenship and Immigration Canada records. With more than 1,000 super visas issued every month, approval rates remain at 86%.

The super visa-a multi-ple-entry visa valid for up to 10 years-allows parents and grandparents to visit Canada for up to two years at a time.

Applicants for the super visa must provide proof that the host child or grandchild meets a minimum income level, demonstrate that they have purchased com-prehensive Canadian medical insurance and undergo the immigra-tion medical examina-tion. Almost 99% of super-visa applicants who met these require-ments also went on to meet all other standard admissibility criteria, according to CIC. n

Super-visa approval rate at 86%

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Page 10: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

10   NEWCOMER BULLETIN | SPRING 2013 www.newcomerbulletin.com

NEWS DIGEST

Canada will let in up to 1,000 additional Bhuta-

nese refugees from Nepal, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has said.

“Canada has a longstand-ing tradition of assisting refugees and welcomes one in 10 refugees resettled globally, more than almost any other country in the world,” Kenney said. “We recognize the importance of family reunification in this process, and resettling refugees who already have family in Canada will help them adjust much faster and more easily.”

Bhutanese refugees have been living in seven camps in eastern Nepal since the early 1990s. Canada, along with Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway the United States and the United King-dom, are resettling many of these refugees.

In May 2007, Canada

announced that it would resettle up to 5,000 Bhu-tanese refugees over five years. In June 2012, it committed to resettling 500 more Bhutanese refugees who have family connec-tions in Canada. Today’s announcement of an ad-ditional 1,000 Bhutanese refugees will bring the total number to 6,500. To date, 5,000 have already resettled in Canada.

“We welcome the govern-ment’s decision to resettle more Bhutanese refugees,” said Furio De Angelis, the representative of the United Nations High Commission-er for Refugees in Canada. “By working in partnership with other countries, Cana-da has helped refugees who have been living in camps for more than two decades find a new home and start their lives anew.”

The additional 1,000 Bhutanese refugees will be selected over two years. n

1,000 Bhutanese refugeesto be resettled in Canada 

BY THE NUMBERS

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada

Canadian visas issued in 2012

CHINA32,990 Permanent residents

235,000 Visitors

25,245 Students

293,235 TOTAL

INDIA28,889 Permanent residents

130,000 Visitors

13,000 Students

171,889 TOTAL PHILIPPINES32,704 Permanent residents

44,000 Visitors

941 Students

77,645 TOTAL

I n d i a

Ch i n a

Ph i l i p p i n e s

2012 TOP 3 SOURCE COUNTRIES FOR IMMIGRANTS TO CANADA

1 China2 Philippines3 India

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Page 11: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

11www.newcomerbulletin.com SPRING 2013 | NEWCOMER BULLETIN

NEWS DIGEST

By FOREST LI

FOREST LI is a certified income-tax consultant.

COLUMN TAX CORNER

HOME-PURCHASE BENEFITS

There are tax benefits you can claim when you buy a house. A first-time home buyer can claim up to $5,000

in tax benefit if both of the following apply: (1) You or your spouse or common-law partner acquired an eligible home; (2) You did not live in another home owned by you or your spouse or common-law partner in the year of acquisition or in the preceding four years.

The tax credit would save you $750 in income tax, and you should claim it on your income tax return for the year the house was purchased.

If you purchase or build a new house, you can claim a GST rebate (refund) for the GST you have paid. The maximum amount of the rebate is $24,000, and the maximum amount el-igible for the purchase price of the house is normally $450,000. To claim the rebate, you need to file GST 190 or GST 191 and other forms, and you need to provide documents relating to the purchase of the house or construction materials.

After the purchase of the house, depending on your total family income, you may be able to get the refundable prop-erty tax credit for the property tax you have paid. You shall try to claim this credit in your income tax return every year.

If you need to use part of your house as an office, workshop, storage and so on for your employment or business, you may be able to claim a portion of the home expenses as business-use-of-home (BUOH) expenses to save you income tax. The home expenses include property tax, insurance, interest on mortgage, repairs and maintenance, and use of heat, hydro, water/sewer, telephone, Internet, and so on. There are criteria on whether or not you can claim BUOH expenses, and you need to keep all the documents of the expenses.

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There are many tax benefits to claim when you purchase and own a house. The government does not automatically give the benefits to you. You have to claim them. If you need help, please phone Wensten Accounting Inc. at (705) 749-9288. n

Page 12: Newcomer Bulletin Spring 2013

12   NEWCOMER BULLETIN | SPRING 2013 www.newcomerbulletin.com

crossed my mind about how easily the NCC could be-come irrelevant to the lives of the people it seeks to help if its program delivery is not in tune with the real needs of its clients and its leader-ship as the main provider of settlement and integration services for newcomers is not sustained.

At the same time, I had also wished for a time in the future when Peterbor-ough’s organizations in the business, health, education, social services, government, and faith communities be-come well able to assist and welcome newcomers who walk through their doors to seek support, volunteer, or purchase products or services.

I would like to believe that, through the PPCII and its community partners, Peter-borough has, in some mea-sure, become that kind of a community today.

Peterborough has a good start; it has a collection of small but long-standing organizations that have global mandates in education, hu-man rights, race relations, and civic action. Organizations such as Casa Maria Refugee Homes, Kawartha World Issues Centre, Jamaica Self-Help, Amnesty International; Trent Centre for Community Based Education, Community Race Relations Committee, Trent International Program, Fleming College International Program, English as a Second Language training providers, and local Rotary Clubs have been in the community for decades, building community awareness on issues affect-ing immigrant and refugee families.

But I’m getting ahead of my story.

The idea of rallying the community and taking the conversation about immigrant-integration is-

FEATURE PETERBOROUGH PARTNERSHIP COUNCIL ON IMMIGRATION INTEGRATION

PPCII: A DIVERSITY EXPERIENCEBy CARMELA VALLESSuccess is a big word. And that was how a delegation from Peterborough described the five-year life of PPCII, or Peterborough Partnership Council on Immigration Inte-gration, to a national audience attending the 15th Metropolis Conference in Ottawa on March 14-16, 2013. The Peterborough team was slotted on the final day of the confer-ence, which drew more than 600 participants across Canada.

sues beyond services and toward policy change gained momentum when the NCC started collaborating with the Workforce Development Board and the Peterborough Public Library. The NCC found two key champions in Gord Evans, then CEO of the Workforce Development Board, and Becky Rogers, then head librarian of the Peterborough Public Library. Mr. Evans led the conversa-tion on immigrant integration in the business sector, while Ms. Rogers became the NCC champion inside City Hall.

We wanted to challenge the notion of immigrants as siphoning off community resources to the disadvan-tage of others. We wanted to promote immigrants as community builders. After all, they represent a wide range of trades and professions – physicians, urban planners, museum curators, telecom-munication engineers, child-minders, artists, caregivers, journalists, musicians, weld-ers, international students, farmers – and so on.

In October 2006, a communi-ty-immigration forum called Building Common Visions took place at Fleming College. The forum provided an-other venue for a conversation about integrating immigrants in local businesses. At the forefront of that discussion were Debbie Harrison, of Fleming College; Julie Dotsch, of the NCC; Maureen Egg-leton, of Northern Lights; Dawn Berry-Merriam, of the Peterborough Social Planning Council; Lou O’Hara, of the Regional Ministry of Citizen-ship and Immigration; Michael Alcott, of Trent University (Trent International Program); Brenda Dales, of United Way; and Mr. Evans.

Culminating the forum was the mayoral debate on diver-

Becky Rogers

The Peterborough dele-gates were Becky Rogers,

manager of Arts, Culture and Heritage Division of the City of Peterborough; Mike Ma, former coordinator of the Community Race Relations Committee; Andy Cragg, of the Trent Centre for Com-munity Based Education; and Jason Stabler, interim executive director of the New Canadians Centre.

They came to the confer-ence to share Peterborough’s experience in forging strategic partnerships and initiating broad-based planning around the needs of newcomers to ease and fast-track their inte-gration in the community.

That Peterborough could now speak on a national plat-form about its experience of engaging its community for the successful integration of immigrants is proof of the collective force that PPCII, formed in 2008, has acquired over the years.

That I am writing about it now, and you are reading it in a newcomer-focused maga-zine managed and edited by a newcomer, speaks volumes about the Peterborough of today as a host community for new Canadians.

RELEVANCELet me take you a few years back – to a time when I was the executive director of the New Canadians Centre, the settlement agency in Peter-borough. More than a few times in my 12 years with the agency, the notion had

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sole funder. Today, while it continues to receive CIC funding, it also enjoys sup-port from Ontario Trillium Foundation, Community Futures Development Corp., City and County of Peter-borough, Ontario Chamber of Commerce through the Peterborough Chamber of Commerce, and the Commu-nity Foundation of Greater Peterborough. If there’s one thing that the PPCII’s multi-source funding speaks of, it is of belief in the work that it does in the community.

When I started at the NCC, it was a two-person operation. I remember very well the after-noons that I would walk to a nearby donut shop to collect its donation of donuts, which we served to participants of the English-conversation classes and the board mem-bers when they came for their monthly meetings.

Today, NCC is an organiza-tion with 18 staff and a satel-lite office in Cobourg, which opened in 2008. NCC still receives occasional food do-nations. However, this time, food and other donations come from many different sources. When an NCC staff went on Twitter with a need for baby supplies for a new-comer mother who needed some help, the NCC office, in no time, became a virtual baby shop. NCC volunteer base has swelled.

The community has rallied behind the cause to attract and retain newcomers. PPCII continues to grow, and Peter-borough continues to enjoy a surge of newcomer arrivals.

In Peterborough, the place we call home, we do have a story to share. n

sity issues in Peterborough for the municipal elections scheduled in Fall 2006.

Stuart Harrison, of the Peterborough Chamber of Commerce; Andy Mitchell, of the Greater Peterborough and Area Economic Devel-opment Council; and Judy Heffernan, of the Commu-nity Futures Development Corp., took the immigrant-in-tegration conversation deeper into the business sectors. The vision of immigrants as drivers of economic activity gained a sharper focus.

With NCC’S strategic com-munity partnerships, an understanding of a new definition of settlement and integration began to emerge. While it was a common expectation that immigrants need information, orienta-tion, referral and access to their new home, the commu-nity also needed to prepare for the new cultural, religious and social infusion that new Canadians bring. In other words, for the full integration of newcomers to occur, the community needs to meet them halfway.

The need to develop a cohe-sive approach for newcomer settlement and integration found provincial and national resonance. In early 2008, Ontario’s Ministry of Citizen-

ship and Immigration as well as Citizenship and Immigra-tion Canada issued a joint call for proposals for Local Immigration Partnerships, a program designed to include immigrant settlement and integration into the broader community-planning process as well as develop coordi-nated strategies in integrat-ing new Canadians into an inclusive environment. The call for proposals could not have come at a better timing. In March 2008, the core group of WDB, TCCBE, CRRC and NCC called for a meeting to gauge community support to apply for the LIP funding. Twenty-eight orga-nizations, representing major employers in Peterborough, training institutions, police services, city and county staff and councillors, faith commu-nities, health-care providers, and service providers attended the meeting.

Ken Doherty, director of Community Services, who is another key champion of immigrant integration inside City Hall, prepared a report and obtained approval from city council.

PPPCII applied for and received LIP funding.

Shortly after, the City of Peterborough also received

funding to develop an im-migration portal, under the Municipal Immigrant Information Online program of the Ministry of Citizen-ship and Immigration. With the portal in place, potential immigrants could now access online settlement informa-tion even before they arrive in Peterborough. The portal promotes Peterborough as a welcoming community to live, study, work and invest.

CITY BACKINGIn Peterborough, immigration is part of the Arts, Culture and Heritage Division. Becky Rogers, the manager of that office, had asked for the im-migration portfolio, noting that it was not one of the direct services provided by the municipal government. She also serves as the city’s repre-sentative at the PPCII.

Recently, the city council also designated a diversity portfo-lio to one of its councillors, Dean Pappas.

The city has demonstrated its commitment to newcomers by signing NCC as one of its service-contract organizations delivering immigrant-integra-tion services to the commu-nity. What’s more, the city has adopted a Municipal Cultural Plan that underscores the strength of diversity in the community.

When it started in 2008, PPCII had Citizenship and Immigration Canada as its

FEATURE PETERBOROUGH PARTNERSHIP COUNCIL ON IMMIGRATION INTEGRATION

Carmela Valles is the principal of Carmela Valles Immigration Consulting in Peterborough.

Jason Stabler Mike Ma

Peterborough’s immigration portal is accessibleat www.welcomepeterborough.ca.

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Nearly six years ago, the village of Buckhorn set out to build its own medical centre. The vil-lage received municipal tax dollars amounting to $859,900 to construct the building. However, some of the money needed to purchase medical equipment was left for the community to raise – the village’s 500 or so residents must raise $350,000. And, through a variety of fund-raising activities, they did. The Buckhorn Regional Health Centre officially opened on June 21, 2008.

“The project brought the people together;

it was the best thing that ever happened to us,” said Trent Lakes Mayor Janet Clarkson. By having a com-mon goal, we got to know each other, and we got friendly with each other.” The success of the medical-centre project has led to a pair of other community initiatives. First, the Heri-tage Day, held around the same time as the Family Day in February, was designed as much to increase tourist traffic to Buckhorn during the winter months, when the village’s tourism indus-try – its economic lifeblood

Buckhaven Trailer & RV Parks BarbadosBuckhorn Canoe Company SwedenBuckhorn Foodland IndiaBuckhorn General Store South KoreaBuckhorn Remedy’s RX Pharmacy IndiaCody Inn Hong KongGallery On The Lake GuyanaHerb Guy’s Honey House PhilippinesPizza Alloro AlbaniaShady Point Resort IndiaShambala Bed & Breakfast GermanySunrise Resort HollandSybil’s Foods IndiaTeddy’s Antiques DenmarkThe Birches Resort GermanyThree Castles Resort Trinidad and Tobago

Buckhorn is a village of the municipality of Trent Lakes, formerly Galway-Cavendish and Harvey. The vil-lage has 500 or so residents, according to estimates. The village’s first settler was an Irish businessman named John Hall, who came in 1828 and established a saw mill as well as a gristmill. He also built a dam and a bridge. Buckhorn had been named in honour of Mr. Hall. The village used to be known as Hall’s Bridge until 1941, when it became known as Buckhorn, owing to the propensity of Mr. Hall, an avid hunter, to mount deer antlers or buck horns on the side of his mill for people to see.

BUCKHORN’S MINI WORLD

– needed an extra boost, as for newcomers to be acquainted with the culture they have moved into. Sec-ond, the International Food Court festival was intended to give recognition to new-comers and immigrants for their contributions to the community. Event planners obviously are well aware that Buckhorn does have its share of immi-grants. After all, the very first check donation Ms. Clarkson received in support of the medical-centre project was from a South Korean couple

“We always receive a flow of new people. I think that’s what makes Buckhorn friendly and welcoming,” says Trent Lakes Mayor Janet Clarkson.

SOME OF BUCKHORN’SIMMIGRANT–OWNED BUSINESSES

BUSINESS OWNER ORIGINALLY FROM

Trent Lakes*

NorthKawartha

* Formerly Galway-Cavendish and Harvey

DouroDummer

CavanMillbrook

NorthMonaghan

Otonabee SouthManaghan

NorwoodAsphodel

SmithEnnismoreLake�eld

BuckhornVillage

Peterborough

BuckhornLake

BuckhornCommunity

Centre

Buckhorn OutdoorSkating Rinkand Sports Pad

VILLAGE OF BUCKHORN

Marina

Lower BuckhornLake

37

36

36

23

Kawartha HighlandsSignature Site Park

BUCKHORN

ROA

D

LAKEHURST ROAD

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who, with their difficulty to use the English language, stood out as unmistakably immigrants. What they were quite unsure of, when the idea for a food-court festival was hatched, was the extent of the immigrant community in their village.

So, a little survey began, and a startling discovery emerged: the drugstore owner is from India, the Pizza-restaurant owner is from Albania, the man behind the well-known Buckhorn Canoe Company is from Sweden, the couple who run a general store are from South Korea, the Chinese-restaurant owner is from Hong Kong, and the art gallery owner is from Guyana. Several resort own-ers are immigrants too – they come from such coun-tries as Germany, Holland and Trinidad and Tobago. And the list goes on.

TOURISMIn Buckhorn, whose first set-tler 185 years ago was an Irish entrepreneur named John Hall, immigrants represent more than a dozen countries and own most of the busi-nesses. “By percentage, immi-grants probably account for more than 80 percent of the economic activity in Buck-horn,” Ms. Clarkson said.

“Tourism is our main indus-try, so we always receive a flow of new people. I think that’s what makes Buckhorn friendly and welcoming. We always have access to people coming from different places. I think it gives you a much broader opinion of the world. And if you look at Buckhorn, and the people coming into it, you can’t help expanding your knowl-edge of the world.”

Meet some of Buckhorn’s immigrant entrepreneurs in the succeeding pages. n

THE HAND THAT MENDS

If Dick Persson is not building a brand-new canoe, he is certainly re-storing one – more likely a very old one. He is spe-cial. In all of Canada, he is one in perhaps only about 10 people who do exactly what he does for a living: builds and restores canoes the old way, meaning, applying the same canoe-build-ing methods used since before the 1920s.

After the1920s, Mr. Persson said, canoe-

building went on a down-ward spiral from its peak before the first-world war, when makers were churning out top-quality canoes. Later, the industry further took a beating with the outbreak of a severe worldwide economic

depression as well as the second-world war.

In the 1950s, canoe-build-ing had a resurgence; by then, he said, makers were mass-producing boats and canoes, “doing it as quickly as they could” to survive a stiff and competitive market. Mass production of canoes consequently replaced the traditional way of hand-crafting canoes.

Canoe-building has been Mr. Persson’s long-time hobby, something he started on the side while he was running a home-construction business. He learned the trade as a young boy from a man who had lived for 40 years in North America, working for American and Cana-dian companies as a canoe

and boat builder and re-turned to Sweden to retire. “I may not have learned all the intricacies of canoe-building from that man, but I picked up enough to later make it a business and a trade,” Mr. Persson said.

He took a serious look at canoe-building as a revenue earner, when a sluggish economy triggered a slow-down in the construction business, with very little work available in Toronto where he started working when he and his family first arrived in Canada in 1987 from Sweden through the United States.

Retreating from big-city life, he moved to Buckhorn in 1991. With the construc-tion business still in the throes of a protracted re-cession, he began building a canoe and put it out for sale on his front yard. Then he built another one. When they sold fairly quickly, it dawned on him that it could potentially become a business for him someday.

Indeed, he made canoe-building a full-time busi-ness starting in 1996. And what a journey it has been. In 1998, Mr. Persson was thrown into the national spotlight for a restoration work involving a canoe that has a lot of history behind it. The canoe was one of the few units that the now-defunct Peter-borough Canoe Company imported from the United States in 1913 and exam-ined as part of the com-pany’s research into the canoe-building methods of other makers.

An area cottage owner, whose father had acquired

DICK PERSSON, SwedenBUCKHORN CANOE COMPANYBuilder and restorer of traditional all-wood, wood-canvas canoes and small boats

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the canoe from the Peter-borough Canoe Com-pany, brought it in for restoration. The restora-tion work was covered by Cottage Life magazine as well as filmed and aired on HGTV.

Mr. Persson was also asked to restore a canoe given to Prince Andrew by the village of Lakefield as a gift on his graduation from Lakefield College School in 1978.

WHERE IT STARTED“This area, the Peter-borough area, is where canoe-building started in the 1850s. Peterborough is the birthplace of the manufactured canoe,” he said.

There is no shortage of work for Mr. Pers-son now. “Sometimes I would get canoes shipped from Montreal, Toronto, Buffalo, New York and Boston for restoration or repair,” he said. On aver-age, he repairs or restores 20-25 canoes – some requiring museum-quality restoration – and builds 5-10 new ones in a year.

“Buckhorn, being a resort area, is good for my busi-ness,” he said. “A lot of families with old cottages around here have canoes. So, there is a market for me to repair and restore.” Business aside, Buck-horn is “a great place to live in,” Mr. Persson said. “On the day we moved in, I was carrying a big box, and someone stopped his car on the road and asked me: ‘Do you need a hand?’”

A neighbour, a lady in her 80s, also came up with cookies and coffee. And she said “Welcome.” n

Esther Inglis has seen how the racial landscape in Canada has evolved over the years. She re-members being “the only brown face” on the bus and on the subway each day when she commutes from home in Scarbor-ough to her work in downtown Toronto. That was about 40 years ago.

When work took her to Peterborough in 1998,

she had less expectations of a faster integration in the community. “Somehow, I had an impression at the back of my mind that small towns in Canada are not particularly overly welcom-ing. And I think it has noth-ing to do with me being an immigrant. That’s just the way it is in small-town On-tario, or maybe small-town Canada. So, sometimes it takes a while to be integrat-ed,” she said.

But, to her surprise, Peter-borough turned out to be “extraordinarily welcoming

and good to me – to be honest.”

“In Peterborough, I did not get the impression that the people saw my colour first. The people did not judge me by the colour of my skin and by the fact that I was a woman in a bit of a man’s world with the kind of

WORK OF ART work I was doing. For some reason, they did not seem to hold it against me,” Ms. Inglis said.

That should account, she added, for why she was able to thrive and build a suc-cessful career in the stock-brokerage business – so much so that, within a year, she managed to bring four times as much business as her bosses had expected her to. “That shocked me, and it shocked them. But that was an indication of how much I was able to succeed in Peterborough,” she said.

In 2002, Ms. Inglis and her husband purchased an old rundown art gallery in Buck-horn that had been closed for a number of years and needed extensive renovation. The Gallery on the Lake, right smack in the middle of tall pine trees and sitting on a gigantic granite rock over-looking the Lower Buckhorn Lake, came back to life.

The Gallery on the Lake, which is housed in a 15,000-square-foot building, is arguably one of Canada’s largest retail art galleries,

ESTHER INGLIS, GuyanaTHE GALLERY ON THE LAKEOffers a wide selection of origi-nals, prints, sculptures and other art pieces; also home to an art school and a café

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representing and showcas-ing the work of some of the most-recognized and influential Canadian artists – painters, sculptors, jewellers, potters, wood turners and glass blowers.

The first six years were lean years for the gallery, Ms. Inglis said. “For six difficult years, we carried it on our backs. But you really have to turn it around – it’s like taking something that had died and bringing it back to life,” she said. “For an entrepreneur to make it, you have to fight a lot of self-doubt. You have to believe in yourself. You need to have a drive and a sense of optimism that brighter days are ahead of you.”

The gallery turned the cor-ner with an exhibit by the late Ojibway First Nations artist Norval Morrisseau in the summer of 2008. For the first time, the gallery turned a profit. “From that point on, we managed to not go back to the days when we were scraping bot-tom,” she said.

And from that point on, “we have been taken seri-ously as a gallery by seri-ous art buyers,” Ms. Inglis said. The gallery’s biggest patrons, she said, come mostly from the big cities such as Montreal, Toronto, Markham, Ottawa and Van-couver. Overseas orders also come through the gallery’s website – Holland, England, Scandinavia, Australia and the United States.

The success of the Morris-seau exhibit has also lifted the spirits of the gallery’s other artists, Ms. Inglis said. “Now they know we can move good art. That was the reputation we were looking to achieve. If we are not 100% there, we are very much on the way there.” n

Louis Melizan is a nice guy or, in his own words, a people-person. Really. And so are the other cot-tage-business owners, like him, in Buckhorn.

“If you are a people-person, you won’t

have a hard time running our kind of business – even if you know nothing about the tourism indus-try,” he said. “I did not know anything about the tourism business when we first started out about 26 years ago. But we are good with people; my parents are people-oriented.”

Mr. Melizan has since grown into the business to a point that he now has “a good grasp of the busi-ness,” he said. And, today, he definitely knows more than a thing or two about the tourism industry. For about four years now, he has been the president of the 140-member Buckhorn District Tourist Asso-ciation, whose formation dates back to the 1950s and now draws member-ship from businesses that, in one way or another, are connected with tourism.

He and his parents own and manage the Three Castles Resort, a 4-acre lakefront property on Lower Buckhorn Lake with a cluster of 17 cottages.

“We look after our custom-ers really well, and that’s how we were able to grow our business,” he said. “We have a very loyal customer base. We have guests who have been our customers from way back since 60 years ago. We spend very little on advertising because our customers are our biggest advocates. Other cottage owners have also earned that level of loyalty from their customers, I believe.”

Mr. Melizan’s parents purchased the Three Castles Resort in 1987, four years after they migrated to Canada from Trinidad and Tobago. The seasonal nature of a resort business suits them: at that time, they were in semi-retire-ment, and they were simply looking for a business that requires far less commit-ment than a full-time work.

The acquisition of the business came at a time

PEOPLE-PERSON

when Mr. Melizan was barely a month or two away from graduating at Trent University, where he studied economics with a minor in computer studies. Soon after graduation, he joined the family business.

The business paved the way for their move to Buckhorn. “The thing that struck me about Buckhorn was that the people are very friendly and welcoming. The level of vol-unteerism is also extremely high. I think it’s because it has, for a long time, been a tourist town. When your livelihood depends on tourists, you have to be a welcoming community,” Mr. Melizan said.

Over time, the tourist demographics in Buckhorn have changed: the majority of tourists used to come from the United States for leisure fishing. “Now,” he said, “we have people from all over the world come to Buckhorn. They come, and they like the area. So they buy a business and stay in Buckhorn.”

Mr. Melizan is hop-ing Buckhorn’s tourism industry will continue to flourish, allowing business owners to stay open longer than the usual May-Octo-ber season.

In May 2011, Buckhorn’s tourism industry received a boost with the opening of a brand-new $400,000 welcome centre serving as a tourist-information centre. In 2012, the centre received 7,000 visitors over the May-October period. “I look forward to a more developed tourism in-dustry in Buckhorn,” Mr. Melizan said. n

LOUIS MELIZAN, Trinidad and TobagoTHREE CASTLES RESORTOffers 17 lakefront cottages and suites on 1,600 feet of shoreline on Lower Buckhorn Lake

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RURAL COMMUTE

AMISH PATHAK, IndiaBUCKHORN PHARMACYProvides pharmaceutical drugs and supplies

YOUNG AND BOLD

Buckhorn may be an hour-and-a-half drive from where Amish Pathak lives in Markham, but it is very close to his heart; for the past 20 years, Buckhorn has been the location of his pharmacy business and where it thrives on the strength of a caring and supportive community.

Mr. Pathak is a believer of the rural Canada as

an investment site. “We’re

always looking for opportu-nities, but we’ve always gone to smaller communities. That has worked out better for us,” he said.

Whereas many immigrants flock to the big cities in search of diversity and look at rural communities as tending to be more exclu-sive, Mr. Pathak thinks oth-erwise. “I think the reverse is true,” he said. “People in the rural communities actually make more effort

to make you feel included. Everyone seems to have the pre-conceived notion that rural Canada tends to be exclusive. I never felt that. Some people are just so caught up in all biases – the thinking that you will not be included. I think that if you reach out to people, they will reach out back to you.”

Where business is con-cerned, Mr. Pathak said, rural communities “actually did a better job, I think, of reaching out to businesses more so than probably the cities in general – people do try to support local busi-nesses to keep the business within the local community.”

He narrates fond stories about the good people of Buckhorn.

In winter, when snow starts pouring, people would actu-ally call, offering him a room for the night, because they did not want him to drive in bad weather and risk a traf-fic accident. Or, they would call in the morning to check if he arrived safely at work, because they heard how slip-pery the roads were.

“Would that happen in the city?” he said, laughing. “Probably not.”

On another occasion, someone came by his phar-macy with a piece of paper on which a car-licence plate was written. As the story goes, a car that did not belong to Mr. Pathak was spotted hanging around the pharmacy late at night. So, the spotter jotted down the number on the car-licence plate on a paper, which he then handed to Mr. Pathak the following morning. “In case you had a break-in or something,” the man said to Mr. Pathak.

Mr. Pathak describes Buck-horn as one of the places where multiculturalism actually works. “You see it in other places as well, I guess. But it becomes more pronounced when you see it in a smaller community; it’s a really nice diversity, and that’s what makes Buckhorn unique,” he said.

In Buckhorn, he added, “we got all the support that we wanted from the commu-nity.” n

For Irma and Horst Klein, their permanent move to Canada in 1976 was an adventure – “it was fun, it was scary, and it was good,” Irma said.

They were quite young then: Irma was 34 and

Horst, 39. And they had a 12-year-old son. They had some money, Horst said, so if, for whatever reason, it didn’t work out, they would go back to Germany and start all over again. They reckoned that the timing of their decision was perfect: if they had postponed it for later, time would not have been on their side, and they might not be young enough to start over

if their plan went awry.

Back in Germany, the couple owned a gas sta-tion and a car-repair shop. “When we decided to move, we gave up the business, sold our house and put our stuff in a container to be shipped to Canada,” Irma said. “We had hectic lives in Germany because of the nature of our business. We put in a lot of hours in the business, and it came to a point that it became very stressful for us.”

Four years earlier, the Kleins came to Canada on a three-week holiday. Irma has a sister who had lived in Canada since 1957. They

IRMA AND HORST KLEIN, GermanyTHE BIRCHES RESORTHas 11 cottages, each one with its own dock and ideal for leisure fishing and family vacation

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Aside from the vastness of Canada , there were also a few Canadian hab-its that Cees Slothouber had to get used to when he and wife Anya moved to the country from Hol-land in 2004.

A few comparisons are inevitable. “In Hol-

land, you can walk or bike to almost everywhere. In Canada, everything is really far apart,” Cees said. OK, no big deal, right? Wrong. “We even lose some busi-

ness on the weekends because parents are busy driving their kids around.”

In the beginning, he also noticed that when having a meal and a nice evening to-gether with Canadians, they

liked what they saw, and “after many thoughts back and forth, we decided to move,” Irma said.

Language was quite a problem for both Irma and Horst in the begin-ning. “We came with no language,” Irma said. “I remember that, in the be-ginning, when I was dealing with our guests there was a lot of sign language involved,” she said, laugh-ing. “On the phone, when people called, I would often ask them to repeat what they said – it gives me time to think.”

So, they took English classes in Peterborough. “I

think I catch on a little bit faster. After two or three years, I got comfortable speaking in English. We took it seriously because we had to run a business,” Irma said.

Within a short time of ar-riving in Canada, the couple purchased The Birches Resort, a 46-acre lakefront property in Buckhorn. “We like the business because it is a service business, and that is nothing new to us,” Irma said.

There was a lot of hard work in the beginning, because the cottages were in rough shape, Horst said. And it took about five years

before the couple could put some money on the side after paying off their bills, since whatever revenue they made was plowed back into improving the 11 cottages on the property.

“We worked from morn-ing till evening. But, on top of it, we had a lot of fun,” Irma said. “Everything just went smoothly. We knew what we were going to do when we decided to im-migrate. We did not go into it blindly.”

Over the years, business was good. “We have made lasting memories with many of our guests. Some of our guests have been

with us since the very first year that we opened for business in 1976. After all these years, they still keep coming back,” Irma said. “We would fondly recall together the days when we were starting out, when we hardly spoke English. And we would laugh about it with their children and grandchildren.”

Buckhorn has also been a good place to be in. “Buckhorn is a welcoming community to newcomers,” Irma said. “When we were starting out, other resort owners came, offering their help to us, saying: ‘If you need help, we’re here. Just call us.’” n

leave or expect their guests to leave at nine. “The eve-ning is over at nine,” Cees said. “In Holland, guests leave, if you’re lucky, at one in the morning.”

Gum-chewing also caught his attention. In Canada, it seems like everybody is chewing gum no matter who you talk to – “somebody from the bank, the car sales-man” – while in the middle of a conversation, he said.

For Cees, the real shocker was the prominence of women in Canadian banks. “Women actually make the decisions in banks – deci-sions like who get to borrow money or not,” he said. “I was not used to that. In Holland, I always have to deal with a man in the bank. The higher you go in the corporate ladder, the more men you see.”

Cees acknowledges though that “I love dealing with women because they don’t have that macho thing over them and they are often straightforward.” Cees and Anya own the

OH, A FEW LITTLE QUIRKS

CEES AND ANYA SLOTHOUBER, HollandSUNRISE RESORTOffers 11 cottages on a lakefront property that provides a visually stunning view of the Buckhorn Lake

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Sunrise Resort in Buck-horn, which they acquired in April 2004. The couple were looking for a lifestyle change, something that is more relaxed compared with the busy lives they led in Holland, where, for 25 years, they operated a business in-volving installations of kitch-ens, bathrooms and heating systems. “The business was very stressful,” Anya said.

They were familiar with the Buckhorn area, where they usually went on fishing trips, along with Anya’s parents, when they came to Canada on short visits. Anya was seven when her parents moved to Canada. She was 19 and had barely completed high school when she went back to Hol-land, where she stayed after she got married to Cees.

The idea to buy and run a resort came in one of those fishing trips – 12 years before Cees and Anya actu-ally came to Canada. When their two sons moved out of their house and were on their own, they decided it was time to “get out of our routine and try something different.”

They sold their house and business and went straight to Buckhorn. “We wanted to go to a place that’s out in the country. We knew the Buckhorn area from our holidays,” Anya said. “The first time we were up here, people actually came and offered to help. They came with salads, pastas and strawberries. They brought us all kinds of stuff.”

The couple have everything also planned out the mo-ment they decide to retire. “We would actually buy a house around here and be the tourists ourselves. We haven’t really seen much of the area; we were just too busy,” Cees said. n

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PROFILE DR. RODRIGO DE LUNA

ALL IS WELLWhen Dr. Rodrigo de Luna joined his parents in Win-nipeg, Manitoba in Febru-ary 1987, he had already been a family-practice doctor in the Philippines for six years and working on his orthopedic-surgery specialty. Amid a dearth of jobs for foreign-trained physicians at that time in Canada, he had initially considered crossing the border into the United States.

He was on the thick of his review lessons in

Toronto, when he got wind of a potential job for a medi-cal doctor in Newfoundland. He applied and, within one week, received a job offer. “I was given a medical licence in Newfoundland right away,” he said.

That marked the start of Dr. De Luna’s medical profession in Canada.

In the meantime, his wife, Helen, also a physician in the

Philippines with a specialty in obstetrics and gynecology, and their three kids – Ka-trina, Claudine and Raphael – were left momentarily behind in the Philippines.

“That’s one of the key decisions we had to make: I would try Canada and give it sometime while they wait until I get settled and established before they would join me. If it didn’t go as planned, then I would go back and start over. I don’t really see any problem to re-start my medical practice in the Philippines. Besides, my wife is also a doctor,” he said.

She was referring to her role as executive director of the Peterborough Pregnancy Support Services, which provides support to women and men facing unplanned pregnancies.

“To me, it’s more than a job; it’s a ministry,” she said.

The couple’s community service does extend beyond Peterborough. In February, Dr. De Luna travelled with a team of five doctors, six nurses and nine support crew from Peterborough for a two-week medical mission in central Philippines. The Pe-terborough Medical Brigade, led by Dr. Hardy Friesen, saw more than 2,000 patients and distributed more than $100,000 worth of medicines.

Formed in 2001, the Peter-borough Medical Brigade provides free medical and dental care in developing countries across the world.

“Everything all worked out for us. I did not regret mov-ing to Canada. Peterborough is where we plan to stay for good. Helen is happy here,” Dr. De Luna said. n

Things did work out, and his family joined him in 1993. By then, Dr. De Luna was into his second year of full-time residency training in fam-ily medicine in Newfound-land, finishing in 1994. The residency training, along with writing the medical-licensure examination, allowed him to practice medicine beyond Newfoundland – the medical license issued in Newfound-land is recognized only within its jurisdiction, that’s why.

In 1996, Dr. De Luna moved to Timmins District Hospital, where he worked until 2006.

By then, their youngest, Raphael, had just finished high school, and Helen had shown interest to start work-ing. After scouting around for the best potential places to relocate, they were drawn to Peterborough, which satisfies Dr. De Luna’s fondness for great outdoors. Peterborough is also fairly close to both Toronto and Ottawa.

Most important of all, how-ever, it was in Peterborough that Helen said she found “the ministry that I have been praying to God for.”

Dr. De Luna and wife Helen

Dr. Rodrigo de Luna in his office at The Peterborough Clinic

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Q&A MELANIE HORNER

LIVING IN COBOURGNEWCOMER BULLETIN: Please tell us why you chose Cobourg.MELANIE HORNER: I have always had an affinity with Canada. My aunt, uncle and cousins lived in Ontario, and we visited several times while I was growing up. Also, in 1990, I worked in Toronto for a year as a nurse. The company my husband works for wanted to expand in North America and decided to set up a manufacturing site in Cobourg. The company chose Cobourg because it was reasonably close to Toronto and also for financial considerations. When we saw the advert for a job in Canada, it just seemed to be sent from heaven. We looked up Cobourg on Google

Maps and liked what we saw. Then, we came over for a visit and liked it even more (even though it was November). We moved to Cobourg in 2011.

What were some of the challenges you encountered when you arrived?Getting a credit rating is hard. We were lucky that our bank was global, so they allowed us to have a meagre amount on a credit card. We needed to lease a car but found it very difficult to get the car companies to take us on. Even-tually we found one company that did,

and it has had a lot of repeat business through expats because he gave us a chance. Driving on the right side of the road is also challenge. In the UK, it’s on the left, so it took some getting used to. Also, the different traffic rules take time to get used to. Another chal-lenge is getting used to being socially isolated in the beginning. I miss my friends from home and my family. On the positive side, I’ve made some new friends and built a new social network. The school system is very different to that of the UK.

What did you wish you had known before coming to Canada?Having lived in Canada before helped us to avoid some of the pitfalls – for example, trying to set up a bank ac-count while not having a permanent address. We arranged to set up a bank account in Canada while still in the UK. How expensive most things are. We find insurance very expensive, par-ticularly for the car. We didn’t realize we would be treated as new drivers de-spite driving for 27 years in England. We also find that clothes and shoes are more expensive than in the UK.

Tell us about your work orbusiness.I used to work as an occupational health nurse for 22 years in the UK, working in industry not hospitals. But I have always done pottery as a hobby throughout my life and decided to turn my passion into a business and set up Firing Time. I had a small part-time business in the UK making children’s hand and feet impressions in clay while working as a nurse. Having looked at what was available in the marketplace already, I decided to focus on children as my market. I decided to make children’s clocks with the idea of personalising them with their name on. So far, I’ve made fire trucks, dolphins, princess castles and jungles. I also still take and make the hand and feet impressions for babies and children. I get immense satisfaction from captur-ing that special moment in time when the children are small and making it last forever. More recently, I organized children’s pottery workshops hosted at a children’s consignment shop in Co-bourg. I have also recently expanded my line to making cute little tooth pots so kids can put their lost tooth out for the tooth fairy. n

Melanie Horner turns her pottery hobby into a business

Firing Time can be accessed online at www.firingtime2012.com.

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ADVERTORIAL FLEMING COLLEGE

ARTS COURSES AT FLEMINGIgnite your creativity with an arts course or workshop being offered this spring at Fleming College’s main Sutherland campus.

The college’s Haliburton School of The Arts (HSTA) is now offering

its renowned arts courses in Peterbor-ough throughout April and May. It’s a great opportunity to try something new or brush up on your expertise.

Courses and workshops include Environmental Art, Portrait Drawing, Abstract Painting, Artful Lettering, Grapevine Home and Garden Décor Workshop, Writing Life Stories, Gui-tar, and Felting. Full details on these and all of the courses being offered in Peterborough are available at www.hsta.ca.

SUMMER ARTSCOURSESLooking for an out-of-town summer vacation? Fleming College offers the option of an affordable “arts” vaca-tion for the whole family at its beauti-ful Haliburton Campus (home to the HSTA) situated on Head Lake in the beautiful Haliburton Highlands.

Choose from hundreds of summer courses in a variety of media – every-thing from quilting to abstract art to jewellery making to sculpture. And no matter which course you choose, all of HSTA’s summer school students can experience the architecturally inspir-ing campus, creative energy, gallery receptions, art talks, and local galleries,

shops and studios. With dozens of lakes surrounded by rolling hills and breathtaking vistas, you can relax, be inspired and explore your creativity.

Bring the kids too. HSTA offers animation, archery/fencing, movie-making, music, and visual arts as part of its menu of week-long summer arts courses for children and teens.

If needed, HSTA is happy to help you and your family find accommodations.

Registration for summer courses has opened and spaces are filling up. For the course calendar and registra-tion details please visit hsta.ca, email [email protected] or call 1-866-353-6464 x 3.

LIVE ART HEREThe Haliburton School of The Arts is also hosting a special one-day fundraising event - Live Art Here - at the Haliburton Campus on Saturday, April 27, 2013.

It’s a full day of immersion in the arts – the event includes breakfast, lunch, wine reception, art demonstrations, an auction, and participation in an arts workshop.

The workshops are taught by expert artists and cover a variety of media: Digital Photography with Rob Stimp-son; Intermediate/Advanced Paint-ing with Rod Prouse; Glassblowing Paperweight with Terry Craig; Felted Scarf with Susan MacDonald; Adobe Photo Shop with Michael Bainbridge; Sculpted Silver Jewellery with Sophia Tink; Sterling Silver Bracelet with Susan Watson Ellis; Rustic Planter with Mag-gie Longsworth; Wire Song Bird with Charles O’Neil; and Fascinator Work-shop with Cheryl Ellis.

The cost is $150 (it’s a $250 value) and space is limited. For more infor-mation or to reserve a space, please contact Arla Whalen at [email protected] or Marcia Steeves at [email protected], or call 1-866-353-6464 x 1664.

Proceeds from this event will provide bursaries and enhance the studio experience of students attending the Haliburton Campus. n

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NB FORUMOn March 5, 2013, the Newcomer Bulletin, in partnership with the New Canadians Centre and Northum-berland County Immigration Portal, organized a forum for newcomers in Cobourg. The forum features speakers from Watton Employment Services, Royal Bank of Canada and Informed Financial Growth.

GET INVOLVEDWITH YOURRED CROSSVolunteer opportunities are available.

565 Water Street, Peterborough

(705) 745-8222 | redcross.ca

• Disaster Management • First Aid

Greg Thompson of Informed Financial Growth

Rosa Ortega Francisco PenagosJennifer Tennant of Royal Bank of Canada Greg Thompson and Cory Brzozowski

Forum participants

Luz Ofelia Maya, Caroline McNamara and Lorena Arimon

Maria Victoria Guevara

Oswaldo Bacareza, Theresa Lang and Dennis Lusisa

Caroline McNamara of Watton Employment Services

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WBN SPOTLIGHTOn February 13, 2013, the Peterborough Partnership Council on Immigrant Integra-tion hosted the Women’s Business Network of Peterborough event. Women entrepre-neurs were featured. Participants also had the opportunity to learn about professional development opportunities and get hands-on experience making rice paper rolls.

BULLETINnewcomer

SERVING THE NEWCOMER COMMUNITIES IN DURHAM, NORTHUMBERLAND AND PETERBOROUGH

Unit LL5, 311 George Street NorthPeterborough, ON K9J 3H3Phone: (705) 772-7172E-mail: [email protected]

Net proceeds from the sale of magazine subscriptions are earmarked for donation to organizations that provide services to newcomers.

To subscribe by e-mail, write to [email protected].

INFORMATION.INSPIRATION.INSIGHT.

One Year (4 issues) $10

NAME

ADDRESS

CITY/PROVINCE/POSTAL CODE

Payment enclosed (Please make check payable to Mediaplus Village)

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Mehran Monsef, Laura Jaramillo Carmela Valles and Jenny Santos

Carolyn Corp, Erica Cherney, Cheri Anderson, Jocasta Boone and Patience Gonouya

Sharla Trudell, Wanda Clancy, Marilyn Cassidy, Tracy Huang and Bridget Leslie

Faye Shien Tan, Guye Boru and Kateryna Dushkevych

Gabriela Revak, Jenny Santos, Carolina Orduz and Hajni Hos

Gwyneth James, Betty Halman-Plumley and Cheri Anderson

Evangelina Rodriguez and Rosy Salcido-Schmidt Carmela Valles and Elizabeth Thipphawong

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NCC GALAOn March 2, 2013, the New Canadians Centre and the Peterborough Partnership Council on Im-migrant Integration held the inaugural Masquer-ade Ball: One Night in Venice gala fund-raiser in which more than a hundred people attended. The event raised more than $9,000. The funds will be used to provide services that would help immigrants and refugees to become full and equal members of Canadian society as well as to provide community leadership to ensure cultural integration in a welcoming community. Next year’s gala will be on March 1, 2014. The Pyroflyers’ finale performance

Gala guests Debbie Harrison and Kerstin Walsh with Hajni Hos and Jason StablerCarolina Orduz, Salwa Mirgani and Jenny Santos

Living statue Mark Ross with guests from Carl-son Wagonlit Stewart Travel

Gala ticket winners Garry and Noreen Lister and Benjamin and Lisa Newton

Guests peruse the array of silent-auction itemsNaser Miftari, Yvonne Lai and Safo Musta

NCC Executive Director Hajni Hos with Mayor Daryl Bennett and wife Jewell

Bill Boath with Bob and Theresia Laing

Luz Ofelia Maya and husband Francisco Penagos Rene and Maria Ferrer Janet Hunter and husband Jean-Luc

Dave and Kim Thompson and Bill Atkinson Guests from Cobourg ready to party

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Guests at The Venue (backdrop by Esther Vincent) Singer Dominique Oh against a beautiful backdrop by Ken Powell

Pete and Sarah Dalliday NCC staff doing the conga line Steve Ross and Hajni HosSingers Dominique Oh and Scott Shi

Faye Shien Tan paddling away with photogra-pher Elizabeth Thipphawong

Emcees Catharine Hanrahan and Pete Dall-liday with NCC interim Executive Director Jason Stabler

Bob and Theresia Laing, Carmela Valles and Joan Barrett

Live music with performers Carrie Chesnutt, Mike Graham and friends

Guests from GPAEDC enjoying themselves

Dr. Rosana Pellizzari delivering the welcome address

Silvestre Delfin and Ramon Valles

Gabriel Ribadeniera and Tracy Huang

The Design Team that decorates the venue for the gala event

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COLUMN OFF THE BEAT

It was definitely an inter-national group. The stu-

dents, all adults, came from all corners of the globe: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Egypt, Nigeria, Eritrea, Tibet, Chile, Brazil, Peru and China. All were trained journal-ists, hoping to re-start their careers in Canada. For many, English was a significant barrier. It would be my job over the next 13 Tuesday evenings at Sheri-dan College in Oakville to help them learn something about media law and eth-ics in their newly adopted country. But those names. How would I learn them? When we met that first night, there was immediate relief, and a major revela-tion. “We can’t pronounce them either,” one student ex-plained. Of course. Why had I assumed unity in such a diverse group? Obviously, the new professor had a great deal to learn from his students.

Already, I knew a bit. My students, many with families to support, were grind-ing out a living in Canada delivering pizzas, working as security guards or call-centre employees, and driving taxis. One sad-faced man, slight of build and frail, had been tortured in Peru, where good, aggressive journalism was then synonymous with bravery. Or foolishness. Another student had left his wife and three kids behind in Eritrea. The government had shut down his newspa-per, a colleague murdered. When he crossed the border to safety, guns were firing at his back. (About six years were to pass before his fam-ily was re-united in Canada, but that’s another story.) And I had thought Wash-ington, D.C. a rough assign-ment when the FBI invited me to an office at Buzzard Point to ask me a few ques-tions about my informants and a couple of stories I’d written. Silly me. From the get-go, the weekly

By DON SELLAR

MEMORIES OF A SPECIAL CLASS Before the group met the first time, I scanned the 23 names on the class list. Tazeen? Tahir? Male or female? To me, the names seemed confounding, a wild array of unpronounceable – well, foreign – syllables that tied my Anglo tongue in knots.

media law and ethics class was inspiring. Scheduled to run three hours, it frequent-ly ran overtime. Students overcame their tiredness to engage in spirited discus-sions – even arguments – about arcane ethics cases. There was laughter and even applause at times. After the livelier classes, I would lie in bed after my 300-km commute to Sheridan, unable to sleep, replaying the latest class-room adventures in a haze of adrenalin. Early in the course, we had

group presentations on big issues such as the collision between the public’s right to know and the need of some for privacy. I’ve long forgot-ten who presented what that particular night, but a larger lesson was unfolding in the room. A group of women students went first, with an elaborate, well-rehearsed presentation. It was multi-media, and very slick indeed. When the baton was passed to the second group – all men – it was immediately evident from the present-

Newcomer Bulletin Graphics

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THE STUDENTS, ALL ADULTS, CAME FROM ALL CORNERS OF THE GLOBE. 

ALL WERE TRAINEDJOURNALISTS,  HOPING 

TO RE-START THEIRCAREERS IN CANADA.

ers’ downcast faces, that the standard of excellence the women had set was not about to be repeated. If memory serves, the male team was even missing a presenter or two. I cringed. In many of the countries represented in the class list, women lack the educational opportunities open to men. And men are not as used to working with women. How were the men in my class going to handle the embarrassment of being shown up by a group of well-prepared women? No worry. The men handled the situation with humil-ity and self-deprecating humour. They began their rather clumsy, incoherent presentation with words of high praise for the stalwart women who had preceded them. And they made it clear their show would not be of the same calibre. Everyone laughed, and a neophyte professor sweated buckets of relief.

Not that we didn’t have an awkward moment or two in this United Nations gather-ing of motivated, some-times competitive adults. Not everyone who comes to Canada is always able to rise above the enmities of old quarrels better left behind. “I won’t sit next to a Paki-stani,” one gentleman from

India informed the Profes-sor – an honorific that I never earned – one evening. “I don’t care where anyone sits in this class,” I shot back. On another occasion, an anti-Semitic remark briefly unsettled the class. But in truth, those were isolated incidents long forgotten by the night of our last class, when we adjourned early for a fare-well beer at a nearby pub, a Canadian tradition that of-fended no one in the class, even those whose lips will never taste alcohol. A few years have passed, but thanks to Facebook and the occasional e-mail, several class members stay in touch. Not many have found places in Canadian journal-ism: these are hard times in mainstream media, after all. But in the broader field of communication, some have found modest success. For sure, all earned my last-ing respect and admiration for their courage and deter-mination, even when written English remains a work in progress for some. They are building Canada. n

Don Sellar is a retired journalist who taught media law and ethics in the Canadian Journalism for Inter-nationally Trained Writers program at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. He lives in Port Hope.

175 George Street NorthPeterborough, ON

(705) [email protected]

Eileen Madder, CFP, EPCFinancial Advisor

For faster family reunification, Citizenship and Immi-gration Canada has introduced Super Visas for parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens or permanent residents in Canada.

Super Visa applicants must have Canadian medical cover-age for at least one year and a minimum of $100,000 in a minimum of $100,000 in coverage.

Ask me about travel insurance for Super Visa applicants and get a free quote.

175 George Street NorthPeterborough, ON

(705) [email protected]

Eileen Madder, CFP, EPCFinancial Advisor

For faster family reunification, Citizenship and Immi-gration Canada has introduced Super Visas for parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens or permanent residents in Canada.

Super Visa applicants must have Canadian medical cover-age for at least one year and a minimum of $100,000 in a minimum of $100,000 in coverage.

Ask me about travel insurance for Super Visa applicants and get a free quote.

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*Conditions apply. Visit trentu.ca/tip for details

Telephone: (705) 748-1314 | E-mail: [email protected]

Be part of a culturally sensitive and diverse Trent International Program. We value the knowledge and perspective you bring. Upgrade your language skills to match the demand of your new work environment and the rigors of university study. Exciting new programs at Trent include: ■ Archaeology ■ Bachelor of Arts & Science ■ Journalism ■ Media Studies ■ Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems ■ New Bachelor of Business Administration at our Oshawa Campus and more than 60 existing degrees and specializations.

Trent International Program■ Trent-ESL: English for University •Full-time Academic Preparation for University and College Study■ Part-time Professional English Programs •Business English •English for Information and Communication Technology •English for Science■ Sessions begin September, January, April and June■ Outstanding Undergraduate Research University■ Prestigious Scholarships■ Supportive International Community■ Smaller University Environment

ESL Spring term: 9 weeks intensive study – April 15-June 14ESL Summer term: 9 weeks intensive study – June 24-August 23 For ESL students who hope to begin a degree in September, the followingadmission requirements will ensure September degree start: ESL 4: IEESL 4: IELTS – 5.5 overall with 5.5 in writing; TOEFL iBT 70; PBT 525ESL 5: IELTS – 6.0 overall with 6.0 in writing; TOEFL iBT 80; PBT 550

May degree start: arrive by May 13