I arrived in Vancouver on a sunny Sunday in August 2014. Although I was tired, I felt like taking a walk around the famous downtown area. The city was joyous on that day, and the glass in the buildings reflected the sunlight making everything I looked at very shiny – the glitter city, I thought to myself!

I walked down Granville Street and heard some people listening to Latin music and dancing to it quite joyfully. I kept on walking and saw a man feeding pigeons! I hadn’t seen that in years. It reminded me of the Pigeon Lady – a character from a classic movie (Home Alone, 1990). Those who are about my age might relate to that. Everywhere I looked I saw people of all kinds; a true mosaic of ethnicities. I heard all kinds of languages, and, suddenly, I caught myself playing this little “guess-what-language-that-is” game.

In Vancouver you can be in a different part of the world every weekend | Photo by Camera Obscura

When night fell I headed to Yaletown and had a hard time choosing among the many different options for restaurants with foods from all over the world. Where I come from – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – there is no such diversity and everyone speaks pretty much the same language. I have traveled to other big, multicultural cities, such as Paris, New York and London. Vancouver reminds me of those cities because it really is a melting pot. “Shall I eat Japanese or Thai food?,” I asked myself. I ended up playing it safe that night and ate at an Italian restaurant – Italian cuisine is popular in Brazil. I just loved it! In Vancouver you can be in a different part of the world every weekend or even every day! All you need is to be on a bus or a train to get the multicultural feel.

That was my first day in the city. Let me fast forward a bit. It has been two months now. Here I am. I still have the same impressions I had back on that very first day in August, but I guess now, to a certain extent, I’m more of a local. I have a routine in the city. I am taking a course about Digital Music Production at Langara College. My classmates are from Russia, Colombia, Tanzania, Mexico and, of course, Canada! One of my teachers is Japanese and the other is Brazilian – just like me. It is great to see everyone on the same wavelength; speaking the same language. John Lennon’s Imagine lyrics keep playing back in my head: “Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do.”

I guess Lennon would have loved to either visit or live in today’s Vancouver because the impression you get is that you don’t need to be a dreamer to be in a place where you can feel as if there are no countries, no barriers, a “brotherhood of man” where difference is embraced with respect. There is a place for everyone; it is Canada. Canadians are so welcoming that you feel like you are in a country where there is no country – “above us only sky” – that of British Columbia .

I’ve been enjoying the sense of community and the care you see here for one another. When I found an apartment in the city, it was unfurnished. My neighbors in Marpole soon introduced themselves and, magically, my flat became furnished with their donations! On Thanksgiving Day, a Canadian couple invited me and a friend to have dinner with them in Surrey. We got in contact through a website whose purpose is to connect immigrants and Canadians in order to share dinner on Thanksgiving Day
(www.sharethanksgiving.ca).

This is a bit of my Vancouver experience. I’m sure more and more will happen. In the meantime, I will tell John Lennon in my head that there is no need to imagine any longer.