23/52 Vik Hovanisian

23/52 Vik Hovanisian

“I wasn’t expecting it to be that hard [moving from Paris to Toronto]. I’ve lived on 4 continents and I never had any problem being multicultural, but when we moved to Canada I was like “oh gosh, what is this world”. I was amazed by how people are nice but cold at the same time. It was very hard to meet people here. I remember it was the first week, I’m like ok I’m going for the Canadian experience, I’m going to a bar to grab a beer…there’s this guy there who’s like a dad. He’s talking to the barman, the barman is talking to me, and I like that because it felt familiar to the culture in France, but also different. I’m like “oh ya I like this, I like this” then the dad turns to me and begins to tell me about his life. That he’s in the middle of this horrible divorce, that he’s losing his kids, it was horrible! I’m like oh my god! So we talked for more than 2 hours. I went to the washroom, came back and the guy was gone! I was so lost I looked at the barman and he was like “yeah, welcome to Canada” I was like “is he going to be ok!?”. He was sort of like, this is Canada, this is how it goes. We confide more in people that we meet one time than to our own people. I’m like, ok…the adventure begins”