Reflective Essay: Cultural Diversity In Canada

I was born in Toronto and I have lived here my entire life. I grew accustomed to the city’s lively streets, crammed streetcars, and cultural diversity. In Toronto, we especially pride ourselves on our cultural diversity. We celebrate our cultural diversity, education, medical advancements, and we celebrate our city. In this way, all I knew was about what Toronto had to offer and I had no idea about the world outside of this city. My belief was that the world consisted only of large cities full of career opportunities and farms consisting of farmers. Thus, I developed a negative bias against rural areas and farmers.

This bias formed due to my limited knowledge of the world and people I surrounded myself with. For example, many of my peers in high school attended the same middle school as me and the majority of them live within a small distance from one another. When I was younger, a few of them even lived in the apartment building that I had lived in. So, I saw and spoke to the same people for years and these people shared a similar education, environment, and experiences as me. Clearly, I limited my view the world by surrounding myself with those who shared such similar experiences as me. Conversations about

To my youthful and naïve self, Canada was comprised of metropolitans, the barren territories, and “the farmers.” The media I was exposed to only solidified this perception as very few shows, books, and nursery rhymes were set in rural or suburban areas. The few that did only depicted them as farms and farmers. For example, “Old Macdonald” was a nursery rhyme about his farm and his livestock. As nursery rhymes are usually sung to children, I associated farmers with immaturity and low levels of education. In this way, part of my bias against rural areas stemmed from the negative connotations I had associated with