How does one proceed to “look like a Canadian?”

Does one wear beavertails on the scalp and pelts over the shoulders? Or does one lead a moose around by the tail?

Jagmeet Singh is a stereotypical Canadian — polite, inclusive, able to get along with everyone in the world, proudly wearing the maple leaf on his backpack for all to see.

Still, being Canadian can’t be as easy as it seems to the turban-clad, bearded leader of the New Democratic Party — the first person of colour (that we know) to lead a major political party in Canada.

Embraced and celebrated by some, his very presence is off-putting to others.

Racist ideology propels one group to declare Canada as a home for Europeans and advocate sending Singh “back where he came from,” meaning his parents’ homeland in the Punjab.

Then, we have the well-meaning do-gooders, concerned that Singh does not present well, meaning he doesn’t look like the good ole Canadian boy with whom voters might want to share a drink or a movie. Just maybe, if he were to campaign without the religious symbols that betray his deep spiritual strivings, he might present as more mainstream, more acceptable to more Canadians, and possibly win the October 21 election.

Let’s be kind and believe that the man who shook Singh’s hand in Montreal this week, then leaned over to give him campaigning advice in his ear, belonged to the latter.

“You know what? You should cut your turban off,” he said. “You’ll look like a Canadian.”

“Oh, I think Canadians look like all sorts of people,” Singh replied. “That’s the beauty of Canada.”

The beauty, indeed.

I think the first time I saw a picture of Canada was around Expo 67 and it was a multicultural image, including someone wearing headgear that I came to know as a turban. I don’t know how or why, but I felt then, as a child, that I could be comfortable in a place like that.

Clearly, Singh is well practised in such exchanges as he experienced in Montreal.

When the man persisted with, “In Rome, you do as the Romans do,” Singh responded with, “Hey, but this is Canada, you can do whatever you like.” He walked away when someone else might have felt the rejection in another manner.

It’s not that the words didn’t sting. It’s just that the hurt is familiar and masked and so often endured that it has grown benumbing. When you walk in the valley, day after day, as the “other,” you survive by learning to walk away.

The man called after Singh: “All right, take care, eh?” Then, he said, “I hope you win.”

No doubt he meant it. But this happened in Quebec, a place where Sikhs and Muslims are fighting a government law that makes it illegal for government workers to show up to work dressed like the NDP leader. In 2019 Canada.

The Montreal man probably meant well — like so many of us who use the N-word because we hear it on rap videos, or grow misogynistic through cultural exchanges, or use hurtful words because, well, we may not know better, or compare evil men to Hitler because we didn’t know how offensive Jewish friends find the comparison, or wear black face as costume without recognizing how painful it is to someone who can’t peel it off as an artifact — can’t change, don’t wish to change, the very thing that engenders racial trauma.

So, after a lifetime of wearing the mask — sometimes tossing it aside in anger to fight the rejection with fists and sticks and stones — the stoic Canadian emerges. Jagmeet Singh suffers fools gladly because that’s what politicians must do. But he suffers fools because he has acquired the privilege to do so.

Through practice, personality trait, evolutionary restraint that renders one near inured to the snubs, he can whisk it off like dog poop on loafers. Not everyone can.

Consider: four children grow up in an abusive home, enduring unspeakable horrors. Two are tragically traumatized and cannot live “normal” lives. A third dies from the ordeal. The fourth escapes unaffected and there is no telling why and how.

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Remember that the next time someone tells you they are not bothered by racist taunts. Or that they don’t see colour. Or, “I survived it, why can’t you?” Or, “don’t be so sensitive.” Or, “cut off your turban” to look like a Canadian.

We are all striving to be the postcard perfect Canadian — stiff upper lip, friend to the world, with love to all and hatred to none. We’ll arrive there early or late, turban-wrapped or wearing a hijab, speaking many tongues, hiding or brandishing scars, often wearing masks to camouflage the painful journey.

And sometimes the façade crumbles.