Moving from Karachi to Canada was one of the most significant transitions of my life, a journey that uprooted me from a familiar world and planted me in an entirely new one. It was 1997, and I was leaving behind a city/country I had grown to love and a life I had worked hard to build.

In Karachi, life was anchored in family traditions and a close-knit community. My father’s side had a long history of stability—generations often stayed in one place, with sons taking over family businesses, living in the same house, and continuing the family legacy. This was my reality, the “normal” I had known. In contrast, my mother’s side was full of travelers, moving from India to Pakistan, from Canada to US, seemingly always in pursuit of something new and unknown.

This divide between rootedness and wanderlust often felt like the foundation of my upbringing. Although I was hesitant to leave, my family ultimately decided that Canada would offer us better higher education. So, in 1997, we made the leap. Our first home in Toronto, Canada was a small, semi-detached house on Tambrook Drive in Scarborough, located in the Warden/Finch area. This was a modest, three-bedroom space where my brother and I shared rooms, and Ed lived in the basement. At first, it felt strange—Karachi’s vibrant streets, warm climate, and close-knit neighborhoods were swapped for Scarborough’s quieter, colder suburbs.

Scarborough, however, was not without its challenges. Our new neighborhood had its issues; after a few years, we faced thefts, and eventually, my parents decided it wasn’t the safest place for us. (We had to come all the way to Toronto to deal with crime coming from Karachi). That realization prompted another move, this time to Richmond Hill, into a townhouse on Observatory Lane. Although it was smaller than our previous home, it marked our first experience of building a life in a new neighborhood where we would stay for several years.

Starting fresh in a new country taught me resilience in a way I hadn’t known before. Simple things I had taken for granted in Karachi, like daily interactions with familiar faces, suddenly felt foreign in a country where I had to rebuild my community from scratch. The winters were long, often starkly silent, and very different from Karachi’s bustling warmth. Our early years in Canada were marked by this transition: long walks to bus stops in frigid weather, navigating through the snow, and learning to appreciate the beauty of winter. That first snowfall in Canada left an indelible impression—though I had seen snow on a childhood scouting trip to Kalam in Pakistan, seeing it blanket Richmond Hill was another experience entirely.

Reflecting on those early years, I can see how each move, from Karachi to Scarborough to Richmond Hill, built layers of resilience and adaptability that would shape my perspective. As hard as it was to leave, starting fresh in Canada taught me the value of holding onto one’s roots while embracing the change and growth that come with each step into the unknown.