It was a week of despair — and hope. A week of mourning — and faith in resurrection. It was a homecoming to a home that no longer exists. A city that fell victim to an invasion of incomprehensible scale, of overwhelming numbers and laundered money.
Last week I went to Vancouver, the city of my birth, the city where eons ago my grandparents first met, like tens of thousands of other European immigrants. My hope was that I would find traces of their legacy. I knew before my departure that the city had undergone massive and dramatic change in my decade long absence, that it was no longer just the gateway to Asia but a colony of Asia, and that some architectural landmarks had fallen to the wrecking ball of mass immigration and the pressure on land that follows from it. But never did I expect to see this much devastation, nor the ubiquity and predominance of Chinese migrants. No longer were they confined to the inner city and the suburb of Richmond, and other suburbs as well — including the one I grew up in. Every school ground, every sidewalk, every park, every mall was dominated by the Chinese. Not Chinese “Canadians”, but Chinese speaking Mandarin, as well as Cantonese. Their feet stand on Canada, but their heads have a different postal code. ...
https://www.eurocanadian.ca/2018/11/vancouver-city-of-white-ghosts-and-vanishing-memories.html
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