"We're not a melting pot—we're a cultural mosaic!" is one of the most common things any kid growing up in Canada will have pounded into his or her brain from a young age. We are a diverse country, we're told. We are accepting of all cultures, religions, and political ideologies (*cough*). Truly, you can go to most major cities in Canada and find a significant portion of the population wasn't born in this country.
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It's easy to get lost in how diverse we say we are. Outside of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, there's still a lot of whiteness (and trees and rocks and ice) that makes up everything stretching from George Street to the Pacific Ocean.To find out what Canada looks like both from the outside in, and the inside out, we asked some folks who immigrated here about the most shocking things they experienced after moving to the Great White North.
Zeinab, Lebanon
Dana, United Arab Emirates
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Julianne, France
Miranda, New Zealand
An, Vietnam
Emma, United States
Hussan, Iraq
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Bariel, Israel
Andrea, Egypt
Stacey, South Africa
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