In my first years in Canada, when asked why I left Belfast, I’d cite the Troubles – a sensible and easy-to-understand reason.
However, over time, I began to recall other, more personal, push factors – my chronic cash shortage, early twenties issues, lack of preparedness for full-blown adulthood and then, in the recesses of my memory, I chanced upon the minor educational malfunction that had set me on the path to emigration.
That educational malfunction was an E in French at GCE O Level that shunted me into science – which I liked, but didn’t love – and cut me off from English, which I loved with a passion.
To get past my A Levels and through university, my only option was to study, which, over time, undermined my already fragile interest in science.
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Study wasn’t my only challenge at Queen’s University Belfast. In undergrad chemistry, my lukewarm welcome cooled during the civil rights campaign and turned decidedly chilly when the Troubles began.
One chemistry undergraduate put it this way: “There’s a line in the sand, and you’re on the wrong side of it.”
On Sunday, January 30th, 1972, in the TV room of my student residence, I was the only one not to jump to his feet to applaud what the paras had just done in Derry.
It didn’t get any better in my first job, where a colleague smilingly told me: “If the violence gets any worse, you’ll be one of the first to go.” (He wasn’t alluding to my being fired.)
So, when I finagled a lab job in Ontario with a pharma company, I didn’t think twice. Off I went.
Three years later, unable to warm to the people, place or the winters, I was about to return home, but instead I accepted a job in Montreal, which was love at first sight. And, 45 years later, the love remains.
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Mind you, the summer of 1978 wasn’t the best of times for this or any other unilingual Anglo to land in Montreal, where a newly elected “nation-once-again” separatist government had just enacted the “Charter of the French Language”, which relegated English to second-class status. Spooked by the language law and imminent “Quebexit” referendum, tens of thousands Quebec residents – as well as many businesses and head offices – were running for the exits.
Bizarrely, I fitted right into this political hothouse – it provided me the adrenaline rush I’d been missing since leaving Belfast’s “there-may-not-be-a-tomorrow” intensity.
I’m as oblivious to Montreal as I was to Belfast before I left, which is a sure sign I’m truly at home here
I jumped into French and picked it up as I went along. Soon, I was enjoying my second language so much I thought a third would be even more fun, so I signed up for German at the Goethe Institute. After two years, my “Zertifikat Deutsch als Fremdsprache” confirmed that French wasn’t a fluke: I did have some language aptitude (most people do).
Later, while studying for a master’s degree in education, my daily thoughts were of learning and not of home as they’d been for the previous 25 years. Could it be that my passion for learning was stronger than my passion for home? It seemed that way.
For most of my forties I worked as a self-employed consultant until my contracts ran out, and then I became a volunteer ESL (English as a second language) teacher of refugees and asylum seekers. Of all my jobs so far, this was the one I loved the most. Once, a young Moroccan engineer told me: “Patrick, this is the best day in my life; I can speak English!” I replied: “And this is the best day in my life to hear you say that.”
I left ESL teaching when a former consulting client hired me to work in his software company. A few years later, his firm was bought out by IBM, which kept me on as a training specialist on the strength of my master’s in education. When that gig was up the IBM name and my master’s shoehorned me into a job as a software trainer. That master’s in education really paid off – it got me to the other side of my fifties.
Since retiring I’ve carved out a new career with tasks such as constantly improving my knowledge of French grammar and vocabulary, reading French authors, and attempting to write in French (amazingly some of my texts have been published), practising my hobby languages – German and Spanish – every day and attending a class or two a semester at Concordia University.
This career is such a good fit that I no longer think about Belfast, or, for that matter, about Montreal. In fact, I’m as oblivious to Montreal as I was to Belfast before I left, which is a sure sign I’m truly at home here.
All those years ago in Belfast, I didn’t find an educational fit that was right for me. In Montreal, I did. It all worked out for the best.
As all you German speakers know, “Ende gut, Alles gut” – and that’s “gut” enough for me.
Patrick McKenna moved to Canada in January, 1975. He lives and works in Montreal
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