Canadian Values

As a Canadian, we don’t think about our responsibilities or we take for granted the things that we have. However, talking to my international friends, I’ve learned that we, as Canadians, should be grateful for what we have as they would gladly take my spot.

A photo of North Vancouver

It turns out I wasn’t the only reason why my friend Chris want to move to Canada from Africa. Chris is a music producer, producing under the alias of Light Shard. Chris told me that “[he] would love living there because it is a well developed and technologically supportive country. [He’s] been seeing more innovations music and video wise from Canada as well.” Chris also said that the scenery (especially in Vancouver) is much nicer than Africa, as would jump at the chance to move here.

Tyler is another music producer. He produces under the alias of Catastrophe and is based in Los Angeles. “Canada, Norway and Germany are my favorite places for safe environments. I would want to go there because the population is very spread out on its land mass.” He told me on SnapChat. “I might be moving there soon for refuge.” He asked me not to reveal why.

When asked simple questions, Ryan Beckett gave me an answer I thought I would never hear from him. Ryan is a Track and Field runner in Cerritos College and is going to school for teaching. “You guys don’t have Trump as a president” he answered simply, “but I can’t say that Canada is the best country in the world to live in but it’s definitely better than a lot. There doesn’t seem to be as much drama going on over there with your government.”

James Sullivan, yet another boy from Africa, gave me some information I thought I wouldn’t hear. “Trump isn’t your president or prime minister or whatever it is over there, Africa has a corrupt president, it’s safer to walk the streets in Toronto then it is in Cape Town, they have [rainbow] money and transgender rights are more accepting than they are here.” Sullivan then continued to tell me that he was very unfortunate being who he was in the country that he was in.

I guess I see Canada as a sort of blessing. It’s a fortunate country in equality rights and as my friends said, we could have it worse government wise. If I lived anywhere in the world, I would want to come to Canada because of the rights and freedoms we have. Gathering information from my friends only made me want them here more.

Houston-Kubow Ancestry

My ancestry is one of the hardest things I've ever tried to find. With most of it being missing on both sides, it was difficult to track and piece together. However, the pieces that I found were interesting, to say the least. 

Uncle Sam Houston, as seen in
the "I Want You" posters

My father was adopted with my aunt by a Ukrainian family shortly after being born. However, to this day, my baba and dido (grandma and grandpa) are still debating their past. We recently found a polish ancestor named Karol, who stayed with us for a weekend before resuming his tour around the world, seeking out our ancestors. When he did this, my baba started to rethink her Ukrainian roots. Before, she assumed that her and her family were strictly Ukrainian, her family moving to Canada to seek out a better life. Karol changed a lot when he visited.

With my dad's side being complicated, it doesn’t help that my mothers is even more so. My family ancestry is only known back to my great great grandmother on my mum's side, who immigrated from Germany, and my great great grandfather who, as far as we know, was from Canada. From there, my great grandmother was born in Canada and had 6 boys and 8 girls. My grandmother Norma had two children, one who died almost immediately after birth, the other is my mother, Daphne. My mother had two children, myself and my half-brother Aaron. Before that, my history is lost, aside from a few fragments. My grandmother told me that one of my ancestors married a slave, and ran away with them, starting a family. It isn't known for sure, but she said that the slave might have belonged to Sam Houston. For those of you who don't know how slavery worked, when a slave was bought, they automatically changed their last name to their owner, hence my distant relations to "Uncle Sam" Houston. Another one of the fragments is that Colonel John Butler is another one of my distant relatives. You can read hore about him here.

My ancestry doesn’t really matter to me, as it is a growing world. New traditions can be made as well as new memories. However, it is nice to keep traditions that I know and pass them along to my brothers or my own children. There are some traditions, like christian holidays, that I want to pass down, but others, like some traditional Ukrainian foods, that I don’t want my descendants to see as tradition or normality. For future generations, I’m the only relative that can carry on the Kubow and Houston bloodline and traditions, as my brother is only Houston. With this weight on my shoulders, I hope to carry on traditions from both bloodlines.

Works Cited

Houston, Norma. Interview. 1 Dec. 2017.

Ann

The Houston Family "Put-Put" Game

In the Houston family, cottage time means family time. When my grandma was young, her 13 brothers and sisters would all gather at their cottage in Minden, and on rainy days, would all gather around their table and bring out the rummoli board.

A Rummoli Board like my families.

The game has simple rules, but these are the “Houston” rules. The full deck of cards is dealt, if playing with six or more people, deal two decks. A “spare” pile must be dealt. After cards are dealt, if someone has a bad hand, they can “bid” for the spare pile. The person who bids the highest gets the deck. Next, all players must put one penny into each slot in the board. The person to the left of the dealer starts, putting down the lowest card of any suit that’s in their deck. The person who has the next card in that suit puts down that card. If no one has the next card in the suit, then the last person who put down a card puts down the lowest card in their deck and the play continues with that suit. If a “special” card (a card that is seen on the game board) is played, the person who played the card gets all of the pennies in that pot. The first person who has an empty hand gets the pot in the middle, then the cards are all shuffled and a new round starts. The game ends when an agreed “end point” is reached. When this happens, a single round of poker is played for each remaining pot. The winner of each round gets one pot until all pots are gone. The person with the most pennies win.

The name “put-put” came from my Uncle Bernie, who always caught my aunts and uncles not putting their pennies in the pots. He always tapped the center of the board and yell “put-put!”, startling everyone at the table. The game board we own (not the one in the picture, though same model. Ours is covered in duct tape because of overuse) has been passed down to me, even though my grandmother, aunt and I still play it at the trailer on rainy days.

Houston, Norma. Interview. 26 Oct. 2017.