On warm weekend afternoons you’ll often find my husband and me sitting in Adirondack chairs on the boardwalk of our Toronto neighbourhood, sipping coffee while gazing at Lake Ontario’s undulating surface. Known as the Beaches to some and the Beach to others (a longstanding local dispute), the district hugs a stretch of the lake’s north shore and, despite being close to downtown, has a cozy small-town vibe.
As we sip and gaze, our ears feast on the Babel of sounds coming from people strolling by. A midlife couple leave a slipstream of Germanic syllables. Two women exchange rat-a-tat phrases in Spanish. A little boy tugs at his father’s coat, making an urgent request in what sounds like Cantonese. I recognise a young woman’s Ukrainian-accented English as she talks to the man at her side, their formal strides suggesting a first date. And so it goes until we’ve drained our Thermos flasks.
Try as they might, Brazilian immigrants could not get close to established Torontonians
For all its proclamations of world-class status, Toronto is no Paris or New York. But when it comes to diversity, Toronto competes with the best of them. Immigrants now account for more than half of the city’s residents. Whether at the bank or the bakery, you expect to be served in accented English. In 2019, BBC Radio dubbed Toronto the planet’s most multicultural city, belying London mayor Sadiq Khan’s claim that “London is the most diverse and fantastic city in the world.”
And yet.
My particular life path has afforded me a view of Toronto’s immigrant class that many established Canadians never get to observe. When I turned 60, the urge to learn a new language and spend time in a new country asserted itself (or rather reasserted itself; I had learned Japanese and lived in Japan in my 30s). Out of the hundreds of possible countries to choose from, Brazil emerged as the winner, inexplicably drawing me towards its hulking mass and syncopated rhythms.
When I asked why they had left their homeland, the answer was always the same: to escape the violence
A friend sent me a magazine article claiming that people over 50 couldn’t hope to achieve fluency in a new language, which made me determined to prove her wrong. If Meryl Streep could do all those fancy accents, surely I could master the ão nasalisation in Brazilian Portuguese. After blasting through Duolingo’s 69 online lessons, I posted a solicitation for language exchange partners in a Facebook group called Brasileiros em Toronto. Dozens of people responded to the overture.
Over the next few months, improbable friendships bloomed over broken Portuguese and broken English in coffee shops on the Danforth. Most of my interlocutors were half my age, but that didn’t faze them. (I learned that Brazilians have none of the North American inclination for age-matched friendships. If you click you click, no matter that you were born three decades apart.) They coached me on how to behave in Brazil (do kiss people on both cheeks, don’t call someone before noon on Sunday) and bowled me over with their warmth.
When I asked why they had left their homeland, the answer was always the same: to escape the violence (and the machismo, a few of them added). Adriana made the decision after a pair of young men followed her to a car, whipped out a gun, and demanded she hand over the keys. What did it for Fernanda was a knifepoint assault on a beach. Isaura had had enough after her fifth cell phone got stolen. “We don’t want our children to grow up this way,” I heard over and over.
Like my new friends, millions of Brazilians fling themselves at foreign cities all over the globe, resolutely adapting to new languages, climates and customs. A disproportionate number of them choose Canada, drawn to the country’s exotic weather (snow!) and reputation for tolerance and safety. Of the 112,000 Brazilians currently living in Canada – a larger diaspora than in the far more geographically and culturally accessible Argentina and Uruguay – about 90,000 have settled in Toronto, the country’s biggest city and economic hub.
Toronto represents a dream for many Brazilians, stoked by “immigration experts” who underplay the difficulty of making a new life here. After struggling vainly to advance beyond menial work and manage the city’s stratospheric rents, some of them conclude they were sold a sack of lemons and call it quits. But many persist, braving English course after English course, exam after exam, job interview after job interview, until they earn enough points to qualify for the holy grail of PR, or permanent residency.
I invited Viviane, one of my new Brazilian friends, to spend the evening with me on Victoria Day. We joined the crowds of people sitting on blankets at Woodbine Beach, waiting for the fireworks to start.
“Inacreditável,” she said after a few moments, shaking her head.
“What’s unbelievable?”
“All these people sitting quietly, waiting politely. In Brazil everyone would be drinking, dancing, shouting, and peeing in the bushes. Inacreditável.” And then: “I’ve been here for four years and you’re my only Canadian friend.”
“Seriously?” Viviane was one of the most gregarious people I had ever met, hardly pausing between sentences except to laugh.
“I get along with my colleagues, I talk to people at the gym, but it never turns into anything more,” she said. “It’s just different over here.”
Over the next few months I heard this story over and over again. Try as they might, Brazilian immigrants could not get close to established Torontonians – so they made friends with each other. They watched Brazilian TV shows together and held all-night parties where they sang and drank Brahma beer and got maudlin about what they had left behind.
They had friends from Mexico and Colombia, from India and Japan, but no “Canadian Canadian” friends except me. I was the token native at their barbecues and birthday parties. “Gabrielle, come over here, you have to meet Felipe,” Adriana or Fernanda would call out, clearly proud to show me off. I was not just a person whose company they enjoyed, but a status symbol – an achievement. They sometimes insisted my husband join me at their festivities so they would have not just one, but two achievements to display.
It wasn’t my professional status they coveted: just about all of them had gone to university and held white collar positions in Brazil. Lawyers, bankers, psychologists. What enticed them was what I represented: first-world chic. Cultural dominance. The Dream. “We Brazilians have a complexo de vira lata,” Arturo admitted to me. A mongrel complex. “We think other cultures are better than us, especially English-speaking ones.”
The English words they eagerly folded into their Portuguese – nerdi (nerd), flertar (to flirt), blecaute (blackout) – bespoke this admiration.
With my own Portuguese finally ready for prime time, I flew down to Brazil, where I spent five glorious months in the island city of Florianópolis (which Brazilians shorten to Floripa). The locals made no effort to hide their curiosity: What’s your Zodiac sign? Why are you here on your own? Is your husband OK with it? If he were Brazilian, he would find a mistress within a week! Here, have another caipirinha.
After returning to Toronto, I resumed my friendships with my Brazilian posse. Their faces grew wistful as I told them about the Floripans who had welcomed me into their homes, who sang and played guitar for me, who feted me in an ayahuasca ceremony. You understand now, they told me. You understand what we miss.
Even as they clawed their way up Toronto’s economic ladder, finally landing jobs that enabled them to get a car and an apartment with an extra bedroom, my Brazilian friends continued to rely on each other. Their rare friendships with non-immigrants never broke the surface. “It’s like a playdate,” Viviane explained to me. “You meet for coffee at 3pm, and two hours later everybody packs up and leaves. In Brazil, coffee turns into dinner, dinner turns into a party, and the following week you’re introducing your new coffee friends to your cousins.”
These days, when I hear someone boast about Toronto’s diversity, I generally stay quiet. We may have 230 nationalities represented in our city, but we haven’t yet learned how to welcome them. My Brazilian friends have helped me understand that, as hard as Toronto’s immigrants must work to break through the language and employment barriers, what stops them from full integration is a reticent host culture. A pity for all of us.
Gabrielle Bauer is an award-winning Toronto writer and journalist who has written three books: “Tokyo, My Everest”, “Waltzing The Tango” and “Blindsight Is 2020”
