The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I knew a gentleman many years ago who spoke volumes to me as a young man, some the truth and a lot of bravado also. I was apprenticing for a machinist and he was one of my foremen. Paul was from Italy, and had worked for my dad’s firm for over twenty years. His conversations were like a Margaret Atwood novel, long, precise and often long winded, until finally a bead of truth appeared that was relevant to you the reader.

I spoke about my hopes to travel, and he told me that there was no real reason to travel, as all cities were the same, and that it was the people that inspired his interest. Well, that spoke to me. I have travelled to many places, and, yes, the similarities are there, of the good and bad things one can find in an urban centre. What about the people I had asked Paul? Are they different or the same too? Paul described Toronto to me, a multi-cultural city of millions of different people, from different cultures and places from around the globe. They were different and also very similar.

Paul then described it this way...if Homer Simpson, from Springfield, was living in Italy or France, Homer and his family would be the same except for a few things, namely they would speak another language, have certain cultural rituals and rites that were different from North America. And yet they would also be the same people, doing the same crazy things they do on television. “Are all people basically the same?” I asked. Paul looked at me with his piercing eyes saying the person within is often the same, going through the same struggles, journeys and history as others do. The drama and costume we wear may be different, but the person in Spain, Jamaica or Bermuda is the same. What do you think?

I would go to an Asian grocery store with my mother-in-law, who always took off quickly forcing me to find her. I looked for short silver haired ladies with walkers and usually bulky winter coats. Well I introduced myself to many elderly Asians, all looking somewhat similar, but surely not the same until I finally found her. Our similarities complement our many differences. White, Black, Asian, Aboriginal or different culturally, we have more similar than different. We may be greedier, angrier, poorer, richer or more or less challenged, but we have our humanity, and a singularity of common purpose. We all wish to survive and prosper.

Shylock (Shakespeare’s comedy) speaks of our similarities, our humanity...

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes, hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions and senses, affections and passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed in the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer?” You get the idea, do you not? The horrible things we humans have done to ourselves and neighbours, all because we see ourselves as different, better perhaps.

Shylock ends this lesson claiming that someone has disgraced him because he is different, he is a Jew. Perhaps we must celebrate our unique similarities instead of our differences.

“He hath disgraced me, and hindered me a half million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation (Jewishness), stopped my bargains, attacked my friends, befriended my enemies, and what is his reason? I Am A Jew. (I am different).

STEVEN KASZAB

Bradford,

Ontario, Canada.

January 4, 2022.