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The importance of neighbourhood to an immigrant is evoked in Our Street Was Paved with Gold. The film portrays the immigrant experience in Montreal’s multiethnic immigrant gateway known as “the Main.” With the English population to the west and the French to the east, the Main offered a neighbourhood where immigrants could continue to savour their countries of origin as they adjusted to their new surroundings. To ease the newcomers’ adjustment, networks of support were provided by members of immigrant communities through various forms of mutual assistance. Ethnic cuisine was important not only to the immigrants’ palate but also to their cultural identity. As the film’s narrator indicates, those who eventually left the area for parts East and West were introduced to staples of Canadian cuisine like the hot dog. In turn, immigrants exported their cuisines beyond the neighbourhood and they became part of the increasingly diverse Canadian menu. “The Main” remains a reference point for many immigrant children who are drawn back to the neighbourhood, “not for the hot dog, but for the bagel.”

Strong family ties, supportive neighbourhoods and a sense of community are amongst the most important ingredients towards successful immigrant adjustment. In the film Twenty Years Later a Moroccan-born Montreal Jewish community leader describes the desire for community belonging as the “need to hold on to something…that has meaning and that defines you.” The film reminds us that communities are not monolithic and, much like the broader society in which they evolve, their identities are in flux. In the 1970s the predominantly French-speaking Sephardic North African Jewish community attempted to gain acceptance of its cultural difference within the broader established English-speaking Jewish community which itself sought recognition within a predominantly French Catholic society that for its part was in the midst of a significant introspection about its place within Canada.

Preoccupied by the preservation of its identity, the established Jewish community was concerned that the Sephardic segment would choose to act as an independent sub-community thereby undercutting the purported need for a broader sense of cohesion. According to one Sephardic leader, a feeling of security about one’s identity, knowing that it will not be “swallowed up and engulfed,” is a pre-condition for constructive dialogue with others. Efforts to suppress minority identities in the name of cohesion are more likely to have the opposite effect. Identities are defined and re-defined by the journey to a new country and the dual identities of many immigrants give rise to a generation of Canadians that possesses multiple identities. Ultimately, it is the ability to reasonably accommodate our diversity that makes people feel at home, fosters inclusion and maximizes opportunities for the vitality of society.

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