By Vince Shuley, Whistler Question | Link to Article
The first few months of living in Whistler can be an exciting time as you discover the beauty of the landscape and meet people in the community, but for Jorge Marina, it wasn’t so easy.
By Vince Shuley, Whistler Question | Link to Article
The first few months of living in Whistler can be an exciting time as you discover the beauty of the landscape and meet people in the community, but for Jorge Marina, it wasn’t so easy.
“I felt afraid of everything,” said the 48-year-old from Mexico City, proudly sporting his nation’s colours for a World Cup soccer match against the Netherlands. “Even now I’m trying to get my drivers license and I’ve been driving in Mexico for 30 years. I’ve already failed the road test. In Mexico, they give you a license even if you don’t drive. It’s very different here in Canada.”
Marina came to Canada in 2012 after his wife, who had been working as a housekeeper at the Four Seasons Whistler for two years, was approved for permanent resident status through the Provincial Nominee Program. She suggested moving the family to Whistler to give their teenage son and daughter more opportunities for the future.
“I had been working for the Nestle Company in Mexico City for 15 years,” said Marina. “I didn’t want to quit my job, I was in a management position with a good salary. It was like starting all over again.”
Marina had travelled with his family to California and Texas — states with large Mexican populations — but despite having spent time in an English-speaking country, he had never seen a community with so few of his countrymen.
Despite the newfound isolation, help was not far away.
“The Whistler people were so friendly and so kind,” said Marina. “The locals adopted us like family and encouraged us to go to the library and meet Carol (Stretch) from the Whistler Multicultural Network.”
The Marinas all had limited English, so the government-funded language classes and conversation groups were an enormous help, giving them confidence with communication and a general sense of belonging to the community.
“A lot of the (non-English speaking) cultures have a huge family dynamic, where the family is the most important support network,” said Andrea Dunne, settlement worker for the Whistler Multicultural Network (WMN). “People come here and experience that separation as well as trying to adjust to a new culture. Suddenly they find themselves in a place where there’s a language barrier, they’re in a different climate and they have to learn how the healthcare system works, how the financial system works, how to get their children into school. Those things are so basic in your own culture, when you have to learn all those things again it can be so overwhelming that it causes you to withdraw from the community.”
Despite having to leave his sales manager job in Mexico City to work as a night cleaner at the Four Seasons in Whistler, Marina remained determined to be a productive member of society. Unfamiliar with the trappings of seasonal work in a resort town, he quickly learned that it can be hard to find employment during the shoulder season from September to mid-November. Coming up with other ways to make money is a lot easier in Mexico, where municipal bylaws don’t interfere with people making a living, he said.
“In Mexico, we’re not used to requesting help from the government,” said Marina. “If you lose your job you find another one. If you can’t find a job, you figure out a way of making money. Here in Whistler, if I want to wash cars in Marketplace parking lot, it’s not allowed. If I want to sell food in the street, it’s not allowed. I want to be a productive person, I don’t want to spend my time doing nothing, but nothing here is allowed. I arrived to Canada at the end of
August for my immigration deadline so I had to wait two months until I could find work. This is a crime for the pocket.”
Now that Marina has overcome the initial challenges of integrating into a Canadian resort municipality, he can start to focus on the other things that make Whistler such an attractive place to live. Since emigrating two years ago, he has lost about 40 lbs (18 kg) from eating more healthily and believes he will live much longer now because he is not exposed to the pollution in Mexico City. He likes the fact that he is more likely to encounter a bear than a robber when walking home late at night.
“The quality of life here is amazing, it’s so peaceful,” he said. “It was hard at the beginning, but it can be your place, if you wish.”
© Whistler Question