Canada: The love that hurts—but stays

There are countries you choose, and countries that choose you.Some enter your life gently; others enter like a love that arrives without asking, a fate you didn’t argue with.Canada did not arrive just as a dream. It arrived as a continuation—of fatigue, of survival, of endurance.It did not promise comfort. It promised order, and order, sometimes, is the last and right refuge of the tired.I was not born there. I did not grow up under its sky. I arrived as a man—one life already bruised, pierced by its arrows, leaving marks on the body and scars within the soul.You do not come to Canada light. You come carrying histories, defeats, unresolved pain, unfinished grief.Canada does not ask you to forget them. It simply asks you to function despite them.Being an immigrant doctor in Canada governs you with strict rules that take a portion of your freedom, sometimes even your joy.It drives you to work, day and night, exhausts you until you momentarily despise yourself.You earn, then surrender half—sometimes a little more—to taxes and services.Yet you comply. Not only because you wish to belong, but you have to.Those in authority shrink your worth, quietly rearranging hierarchies you do not recognize. You are leveled—your path flattened beside others who never walked your road, never paid its cost. Merit is acknowledged politely, then ignored efficiently. Titles lose weight. Experience becomes paperwork.They deduct from your income without consultation. You are expected to accept it quietly. And you do.Politicians discover you in seasons of need. Their language bends gently toward you, then straightens again as they move on. You are counted, recorded and left where you stand.You watch the cycles repeat. Faces change. Language softens. Outcomes remain the same.Hope is postponed—never cancelled.For all here: Winter toys with you mercilessly. It gnaws at your psyche until sadness settles into the body, heavy and persistent.Snow confines you indoors, punishing you for the crime of missing the sun. The cold forces you to layer your life onto your body; you spend more time preparing to exist than actually living.The days shorten. So does your patience. You begin to measure happiness in hours of daylight.You go to the grocery store to buy what keeps you alive, and you leave behind what you earned through days of labour. Life becomes efficient, not generous. Predictable, not warm.Summer arrives briefly—alive, intoxicating. You try to lose yourself in it, hoping to forget the cruelty of winter. You go to bed content, and wake to fallen leaves—dropping like the years of a lifetime, quietly announcing what is returning.You decide, once, to lighten the weight. You travel elsewhere, chase a generous sun, spend little and live well, tasting days you did not live in Canada.But even under a generous sun, joy reveals itself as borrowed, never owned. It warms you briefly, then reminds you—without cruelty—that you are only visiting.And then, at the peak of joy, dazzled by light you have not seen in a long time, memory strikes. Longing stabs.Canada calls you back silently.Not with romance. With familiarity. With structure. With the strange safety of knowing what tomorrow will demand of you.You realize then that Canada is a love that does not fade—and should not fade.Not because you are trapped, but because you are deeply, helplessly attached.It embraces you through structure, not through affection.And sometimes, that is enough.Canada was not my first place.But it will be my permanent one.I was not born above its soil—but I will rest beneath it.Canada: the love that hurts, but stays.Dr. Jabir Jassam is a family physician in Ottawa.

Canada: The love that hurts—but stays

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics