So What’s Up North? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness!

After living in southern Oregon for nearly half my life, and after graduating from Southern Oregon University, I had the opportunity to relocate. I relished the opportunity to pack up my husband, my four-year-old daughter, and our life to find a new home. But where?

In searching for a new home, I sought a city that would offer personal and professional opportunity, tolerance and equality, and above all lack of discrimination. Unfortunately there seems to be a difference between tolerance and a lack of discrimination. Case in point, in the 2008 election, the citizens of California and Florida voted for Barack Obama to be the first African-American President yet against gay marriage, banning marriage rights for a complete section of the population.

As an American I have been raised to embrace the notion that the United States has two outstretched arms welcoming anyone and everyone. We live in a tossed salad of cultural variety or a soup pot of ethnic diversity. Yet America is the land of opportunity for some, we have a long history of offering freedom to some at the expense of others.

I want to raise my daughter to be culturally comfortable, ethnically aware and above all accepting. I want to raise my daughter in a tossed salad of equality—to borrow that metaphor.

I know, I am asking a lot. In my quest for blended, accepting equality, I found myself peering over the US border. I found Calgary Alberta, with 20% of its population considered “visibly diverse.” Calgary located in a nation that sponsors and protects cultural and ethnic diversity through a network of federally funded programs and government regulations. From programs to support publishing companies printing books and magazines telling the nation’s histories to separate religious, publicly funded schools, the general national theme seems to be acceptance.

I discovered a country that has lessened finically based discrimination by providing a wealth of social programs, namely socialized medicine for everyone—citizens, permanent residences, and individuals on visas. For a nominal fee, my family had health coverage from the day we entered the country.

I discovered a nation where marriage is not modified based on sexual orientation: Marriage is marriage regardless of the genders involved.

I discovered Canada.