Calgary·First Person

Where am I from? Go ahead, ask. My history is as rich as the fabric of Canada

The question “where are you from?” can make a person feel like an outsider. But Bernice Fonseka says she chooses to see it as an invitation to tell a story.

As I grew older, I started to simply explain my history rather than get offended

Bernice Fonseka · for CBC First Person · Posted: Jun 18, 2023 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: June 18, 2023

A woman turns to smile at the camera while on a street in a mountain town. — Writer Bernice Fonseka says she gets asked where she's from all the time. She sees it as an invitation to tell a story that is as rich as the fabric of Canada. (Submitted by Bernice Fonseka)

This First Person article is by Bernice Fonseka, a family doctor and mother who lives in Calgary. For more information about First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

Where am I from? As someone whose appearance has been described as racially ambiguous, it's a question I've been asked a lot.

As a child, the question was confusing. As a teen, it became frustrating and annoying. But today, I see it as a beautiful opportunity to share my unique story that is much richer than the colour of my skin and shape of my eyes.

I was a little kid at the mall with my mom when I had my first confusing encounter about my race. My mom rummaged in the clearance section at Sears and I hid among the racks of clothing, waiting for her to call my name. Then as we strolled the shiny tiled floors, a group of three women called out a greeting.

I gave a small smile and waved, but what they said sounded like gibberish.

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I gripped my mom's hand tighter. She just shook her head and responded in English that she was Chinese. The women seemed embarrassed and left immediately. My mother muttered under her breath.

During first grade storytime, my teacher asked if I was Indigenous. In my teenage years I played badminton at the local YMCA where others assumed I was Spanish or Indian. At work, someone once told me that I have an accent despite the fact I grew up in Calgary and English is my first and only language. I felt like I had to constantly fight these assumptions.

My university English professor finally helped me understand what I was to everyone else when she called me "racially ambiguous."

I would have been offended, except I think that was how she described herself, too.

A young girl and a woman sit in an arm chair while a man sits on the arm of the chair and all smile for a posed family photograph. — A family photo from 1995 when Fonseka was a child. Her mother, Angie Hii, was born in Borneo to Chinese parents. Her father, Theodore Fonseka, is Sinhalese from Sri Lanka. (Submitted by Bernice Fonseka)

Many view the question "where are you from?" as a microaggression that makes persons of colour feel like they don't belong. As if anyone who isn't white has to constantly justify why they are Canadian. It's an example of an unconscious bias toward whiteness and I don't want to make excuses for it.

But no one ever correctly guessed where I'm from, and as I grew older, I started to simply explain rather than get offended.

It's a complicated story. The short version I often give is that my parents are from Malaysia but that I was born and raised in Calgary. I think the long version is more interesting.

My mom is Chinese. She speaks multiple Chinese dialects including Mandarin, but identifies specifically with the Fuzhou-speaking community and was born in a village on the island of Borneo along with her seven siblings. Her father had ventured there from China to tap rubber, and my grandmother had likewise arrived as an import bride.

Our family's story is complex, and as rich as the fabric of Canada. - Bernice Fonseka

My dad's family is Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka. This explains our surname — Fonseka, a vestige of Sri Lanka's historical colonization by Portugal where last names like Fonseca are common. The Sinhalese language was lost on his side a few generations ago, and he speaks English owing to British colonial influences on Malaysia, which continued formally until the 1950s.

They came to Canada in the early 1990s, sponsored by my aunt who had immigrated several years earlier. Soon after, I was born at the Rockyview General Hospital in Calgary, the same place where I would deliver my own daughter 30 years later.

Our family's story is complex, and as rich as the fabric of Canada.

A woman wearing a white dress sits on a bed holding a baby. — Fonseka with her daughter. She wants her child to grow up celebrating her family story. (Justin & Sash Photography)

I recognize the question — where are you from? — can make a person feel like an outsider. But for me, rather than getting upset, I want to embrace those moments as opportunities to celebrate the increasing diversity of our nation, so young people like my "racially ambiguous" daughter can celebrate their own stories.

Part of my job as a family doctor is to know about my patients' family history so that I can understand the potential cultural and environmental influences on their health. That's why I ask everyone where they're from.

Sometimes I get an odd look, but often I get a globe-trekking glimpse of how that patient's path crossed mine. We end up talking about their family back in Italy or about their childhood in Nigeria. It's a moment of connection.

The question can be an invitation to tell a story. Whether you appear white or racialized, and whether your family has been in this country for days, years, generations, or millennia — these stories are interesting and make us uniquely Canadian.

Telling your story

As part of our ongoing partnership with the Calgary Public Library, CBC Calgary is running in-person writing workshops to support community members telling their own stories. Read more from this workshop, held at the Seton Library in south Calgary.