When did your romance with writing begin? All our parents had accents that were different from ours! Being surrounded by people from all over the globe, early in life, has influenced the characters I create and the way I populate my stories.’ Even my white friends were first generation Canadian from places like Poland, Croatia, and the UK. My friends came from everywhere-India, the Philippines, China.
‘I grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, in a town called Pickering, which even in the 80s and 90s was quite multicultural. They immigrated to Canada when Sharon was seven. The family moved to the UAE by the mid ‘70s, as it was pretty clear that Sri Lanka was not a safe place to be a Tamil. I wanted to explore this dichotomy, of who we actually are versus the image we portray to the world.’īorn in Dubai to Sri Lankan parents, Sharon Bala had a happy childhood. Essentially we were patting ourselves on the back for our past kindness toward refugees while simultaneously acting with incredible cruelty to our newest arrivals. In the years that the people from these boats languished in jail, our country celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Kosovo airlift and the 40th anniversary of the arrival of the Vietnamese. When the two ships of Tamils arrived in 20 we treated the asylum seekers inhumanely, separating families and throwing everyone, even children, in prison. At that time Canada was also a British colony and still we turned away our own citizens. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees who we sent back to Nazi Germany, and the Komagata Maru, a ship of mostly Sikhs, all citizens of the British Raj, who tried to immigrate to Canada. But over the years, we’ve also slammed the door in people’s faces. In the 50s we accepted Hungarians who had been displaced by the revolution. In 1999 we airlifted refugees out of Kosovo. In the 1970s we welcomed people fleeing the war in Vietnam. ‘Canada has a reputation, not always deserved, for being an open and compassionate country. Those ships and their passengers were the inspiration for Sharon Bala’s debut novel, The Boat People. Soon after the Sri Lankan civil war ended, two boats of Tamil refugees landed on Canadian shores.
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