"Hello, young man, I'm Kara Gravel, I see you often in the library, what are you studying?" the tall, short-haired, older white woman as she pushed her glasses on the bridge of her nose, and looked at Stewart. The big and tall young black man sat on the third floor of the Carleton University library, where he'd been working on his criminology assignment. The woman who approached him appeared to be in her late fifties and possibly early sixties, and there was a weird gleam to her eyes...
"Nice to meet you Kara, I'm Stewart Lucien," he replied, and then the old white lady smiled, and a frisson coursed through Stewart's back. After moving to the City of Ottawa, Ontario, from his hometown of Quartier Morin, northern Haiti, he'd experienced a lot of strange things. The people in the Canadian capital amazed him with their ways. So passive aggressive and fake it's almost scary. Definitely takes some getting used to...
Stewart Lucien thought of a time when he walked around the Rideau Shopping Center in downtown Ottawa. The place was crowded, as befitting a mall located in the center of a national capital. People of all hues walked about, going in all directions, in and out of different stores. Africans, Asians, Europeans, Arabs, Aboriginal Canadians, and people whose ethnicity Stewart Lucien could only guess at. And everyone seemed to be looking intently at the young black man as he walked by...
In Ontario, Canada, it seemed that a lot of people got the urge to cough, glare hostilely, spit, sneeze or otherwise lash out in a passive aggressive manner whenever they saw a black person come near them. Such uncouth behavior disgusted Stewart, and he didn't care for these bozos one bit. The myth about Canadians being super friendly and polite was just that, a myth. Stewart genuinely felt unsafe at times, Ottawa was far less quaint than it first seemed.
Stewart tried to keep an open mind as he began his journey in the Canadian capital. All he wanted was complete his university studies, get his degree and either go to the United States or return to the island of Haiti to work for his people's government. The locals were covertly and at times overtly hostile, Stewart figured that out pretty quickly. Hence why he was puzzled as to why this older white lady was approaching him in the library...