The Phone Call No Immigrant Wants to Receive
For Stella Igweamaka, the call came while she was still finding her footing in Canada. Her father had died in Nigeria, and she couldn't get home in time for his funeral. No last goodbye. No chance to grieve surrounded by family. Just distance, and the particular ache of being far away when it matters most.
Her story, shared with CBC, is one that resonates deeply across this country. Canada is a nation built by people who left somewhere else behind. And while the opportunity this country offers is real and meaningful, so is the cost that rarely makes it into the immigration brochure.
The Dual Life of the Newcomer
Immigrants navigating life in Canada often describe a kind of emotional split-screen existence. On one side: the gratitude, the ambition, the slow building of something new. On the other: aging parents, sick relatives, weddings and funerals and ordinary Tuesday dinners that happen without you.
Stella describes her gratitude for Canada as tangled up with her grief, not contradictory, but genuinely intertwined. You can be thankful for where you are and still ache for what you left behind. That complexity doesn't resolve neatly.
For many newcomers, the financial and logistical barriers to returning home during a crisis are enormous. International flights are expensive. Immigration status can complicate travel. Work and family obligations don't pause for bereavement. The result is that thousands of people in this country are quietly carrying losses that their new communities may not fully see.
A Grief Without a Community Ritual
One of the hardest parts of long-distance mourning is the absence of communal grieving. In many cultures, funerals and mourning periods are collective, drawn-out rituals designed to hold the bereaved. When you're an ocean away, you grieve largely alone, or cobble together something with a diaspora community that is itself navigating the same displacement.
For those in cities like Toronto, Calgary, or Ottawa, where large immigrant communities have formed. There are sometimes cultural organizations, religious communities, or diaspora groups that can offer some of that shared support. But it's never quite the same as being home.
The Conversation Canada Needs to Have
Stella's story is a reminder that the immigrant experience in Canada isn't just a story of success metrics, jobs obtained, degrees earned, citizenship granted. It's also a story of ongoing sacrifice and grief that doesn't end when someone lands at Pearson or Ottawa International.
Supporting newcomers means acknowledging the full weight of what they carry. Employers, healthcare providers, settlement agencies, and communities can all do more to recognize that the people building new lives here are also, often, mourning old ones.
Her father is gone. She couldn't say goodbye. And still, she stays, building the life he believed she could have. That's not a small thing. That's the quiet, complicated heart of what it means to be an immigrant in Canada.
Source: CBC News, First Person. Original story by Stella Igweamaka.
