I have been based for four months in Wollongong, a city of 300,000 inhabitants located an hour south of Sydney. I haven’t had time to delve into Australia’s best kept secrets yet, as that would obviously take me a lot more time, but some things are already jumping out at me because they are so different.
My five-year-old daughter attends a public school here, Wollongong Public School, where 65% of young people come from non-(primarily) English-speaking families. The languages spoken in the schoolyard are numerous — the administration told us there are more than 50. Often, children themselves act as interpreters for each other.
I was pleasantly surprised at the way families with immigrant backgrounds are treated here. While waiting for the children after school, I made friends with parents from various cultures. They welcomed me with wide open arms, repeating themselves — according to what I was able to understand later — the way in which they had been welcomed upon their arrival. Indeed, everyone told me, during our discussions, that they liked living in Wollongong, where life is peaceful, and where people are welcoming and warm.
Every year, young people celebrate “Harmony Week” at school. Some children are chosen to give short presentations about their native culture, and all are encouraged to wear their traditional costumes. Activities are organized, including performances and discussions. A great way to take an interest in others, in one’s neighbors, to build bridges between communities, and to show that this meeting can be done through common values, such as sharing, openness, respect, kindness and mutual aid.
Another example: my partner recently helped the Wollongong Art Gallery to put on an exhibition of Latin Australian artists. During the inauguration, the city’s mayor came to warmly thank the people present, most of them members of the Latino community. He told them in a warm speech that he had not had the opportunity to travel a lot, but that he was happy to travel among the people of immigrant background established here. He also said he was fascinated by works that incorporated elements of the city of Wollongong, because they forced him to look at things he knew well, but with an often very different perspective. Openness to others, real, sincere, was thus presented as an experience which can transform us and which can even, sometimes, inform us about ourselves.
One last example: at the local library, in a section intended for adults, you can find books and magazines in several languages. The offer is limited, but I met a Polish grandmother that I knew a little, very happy to be able to read news from her country of origin in her mother tongue.
Then, on the walls of this small section, you can discover portraits of women from immigrant backgrounds, with smiling and luminous faces, accompanied by their testimonies. These women from various countries were asked the same question: “What does finding freedom mean to you?” “. Here are some answers that I noted down, as they seemed important to me: “Security”; ” The peace ” ; “Living in safety, having access to health and education services”; ” Freedom of speech ” ; “Be treated well, by friendly and respectful people”; “The chance to be able to go to school and be able to educate yourself.”
What wonderful answers. And what a wonderful response, when we transpose to Quebec, to all those who worry that immigrants do not share the same values as those of the French-Canadian majority. I have this intuition, since I have been (temporarily) based in Wollongong, that this is all a huge misunderstanding. Immigrants also dream (and sometimes even more ardently, because they have often experienced situations where all this was refused to them) of living in a society built on the values of security, peace, mutual aid, kindness, education, health, work and opportunity.
When we seek to define the Quebec values that we want to defend, is it not precisely from this set of universal values that we draw? We do it in our own way, of course, in a language that is our own and through customs that are our own, but always with an eye fixed on general and humanist ideas, of which we are not, of course, the only heirs. .
Quebec is often tempted, when it gets closer to elections, to return to ethnic nationalism. Politicians play on this sensitive chord and on our good old “survival reflex”. But perhaps it would finally be time to understand that our social project is, in reality – and always has been – built on values that go beyond us.