Sepideh, her husband and daughter at their citizenship ceremony in 2007.It’s a long way from Tehran to St. John’s, but Sepideh is glad she made the trip.
The Iranian-born-and-trained physician immigrated to Canada with her husband and young daughter in the summer of 2002. Sepideh says they left behind a good life.
“I’d been practising medicine for five years. My husband had a good job. We were successful, but we wanted something better for our daughter—a place where we wouldn’t have to worry about bombs being dropped on our heads.”
They settled in Toronto, and while Sepideh says they enjoyed being part of the city’s active Iranian community, she is candid about the family’s difficulties.
“We didn’t speak English very well and our savings ran out within a couple of months. Since we came from Iran, no one here knew anything about our qualifications and we had to take any work we could find just to survive.”
Sepideh’s husband, with a master’s degree in chemistry, worked as a labourer. She went from one medical office to another, searching for work.
“I would have taken anything in the medical field, a clerk’s job, anything,” she says. “I couldn’t even get a job as volunteer!”
While she looked for work, Sepideh took classes to improve her English, and eventually found a job as a cashier in a drug store. Although this helped her family’s finances and gave her a chance to work on her language skills, her health was suffering.
That’s when things started to change. When she visited a doctor and described her symptoms with precise medical terminology, Sepideh was asked by the doctor if she was a nurse.
“As soon as I said I was a doctor, he said he knew exactly what was wrong with me,” says Sepideh, noting that the physician told her that stress was affecting her health because she lacked a way to put her training into practice.
An immigrant to Canada himself, the doctor pointed Sepideh to a special licensing program at the University of Toronto. She was accepted into the program in 2003 and completed the program over the next four years.
Today, Sepideh and her family have moved to St. John’s, where she is now practising medicine.
“It was hard, especially for my husband, who worked all those years at survival jobs to support us while I was training,” she says. “But now my husband is working on his PhD at Memorial University, I have a busy practice, and our daughter is doing well.”
Sepideh is unsure about what the future may hold and says it could depend on where her husband is able to find work after he finishes his PhD.
“I sometimes miss big-city life,” she adds, “although we went back to Toronto last year and it seemed so big and crowded and busy. St. John’s is so relaxed and friendly, and I’m only ten minutes from anywhere I need to be.”
Wherever they settle, this time, it will be as Canadians. In 2007, Sepideh, her husband and daughter all became Canadian citizens.
“It’s like a Cinderella story,” she says. “We went from mopping floors to being flown to Ottawa for the 60th anniversary of Canadian citizenship. We got our certificates from the Governor General.”
“I can’t describe how wonderful I felt that day, and how good it feels to have the freedom of being a Canadian.”
