For Canada Day 2025, the Star tracks down some of the people featured in those stories to see where their journeys have taken them. We look at how their experience compare to immigrants who arrived more recently. Has the country been living up to its promise?

In mid-1990s, Ihsan Kayili accompanied a friend to the Canadian embassy in Ankara, Turkey. While waiting, he casually asked the clerk for an immigration application form.

He said he was an engineer, and she gave him the paper. But the guy behind him had no such luck.

“He was in law or something,” recalled Kayili, who has two graduate diplomas in engineering from Europe and years of experience in planning hydro power, irrigation and water systems in Turkey. “The clerk said to him, ‘We don’t need you. We need engineers.’”

That was a boost of confidence for Kayili. When he was approved, he gladly took the offer, thinking how far a good education in English could take his son in life. Despite their families’ objection, he, his wife and their only child arrived in Toronto in 1997.

After learning the cumbersome licensing process to be an engineer in Canada, Kayili decided not to go for the qualifying exams, figuring he would be fine with a technician job.

While government-funded employment workshops helped sharpen his resumé and interview skills, they couldn’t get him jobs. With bills to pay, he worked as a jewelry vendor in malls.

“My wife said to me, ‘You were a director back home. Why did we come to Canada?’” said Kayili. “Even my Turkish friends made fun of me.”

In his 40s, he went to Centennial College for a computer programming and analyst diploma. But the job market was flooded. In 2003, through his professor, he became a private tutor in math and science.

“I was happy I could do something with my life again,” said Kayili, who taught in private schools and owned a tutoring business with his wife. “I love engineering, but what can you do? We all make mistakes, but I’m not going to live my life every day thinking of my mistakes. All I could do is to do my best and work hard.”

He has some regrets, but instead of dwelling on the could-have-beens, Kayili said he’s proud of his son, who has a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto and works in Ottawa.

Born and raised in Israel, Joseph Martinez went to veterinary school in Italy and married an Australian opera singer. They wanted to move for her career, and Canada was the first to open the door.

A Canadian immigration officer in Milan told him he’d easily find a job as a vet.

“They didn’t tell me even a word on how difficult it would be to get into the licensure in Canada,” said Martinez, who was in his late 30s when he came to Toronto in 1990.

Not only were the licensing exams costly, he said there was no help back then from the professional regulator to prepare internationally trained veterinarians for the practical exam that was not mandatory for Canadian graduates. 

He was hired at one point by a licensed vet, doing surgeries on his own, but was let go after the regulator found out he worked without supervision. He then worked at Riverdale Farm, cleaning up and feeding the animals, among other survival jobs.

Meanwhile, he devoted himself to lobbying politicians, organizing foreign-trained vets and meeting rights advocates to change what he called an unjust licensing process. Martinez said it took him almost 10 years before he passed the practical exam, only after its format was modified. He then moved to B.C. and opened his clinic.

“I know many (foreign-trained) professionals,” said Martinez, who still laments his lost decade. “Canada steals them from other countries to be taxi drivers, and now Uber drivers here. It should just let the licensing bodies do the immigrant selection.”

Ramon Andal got a law degree from the University of the Philippines and joined his parents and siblings in Canada in 1982, when his country was still under the rule of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

He had little expectation of what a new life in Vancouver would look like.

“There were strong reasons to make our life in Canada because of what was happening in the Philippines,” said Andal. “It was not like, ‘Let’s see first and try it out.’ We were here to get established and get settled and raise a family.”

He was disappointed his law degree and licence were worth nothing in Canada. Toiling as a labourer, he saw TV footage of the uprising back home and spotted his university classmates leading protests. It inspired his fight to be a lawyer again.

Andal had his foreign credentials assessed and was admitted to Western University’s law faculty with his father’s financial support, while his wife worked as a dental assistant.

“They probably realized that they were getting good value in getting a dental assistant, who’s already been a licensed dentist in the Philippines,” he said with a chuckle.

Andal set five goals for himself: Be a published author in legal texts, serve the immigrant community, become a litigator in court, teach law and be part of the Canadian justice system as a judge or tribunal adjudicator. 

After law school, he was offered an interview by a huge law firm, but it was cancelled after he was asked to send a photo. He was later told he no longer qualified.

With help of his mentors and hard work, he ultimately landed a job as an insurance lawyer at a major law firm. He has now reached all five of his goals. “I would say only in Canada would I have achieved all that.”

With an MBA from India, Raja Ramanathan, a human resources specialist, and his wife, an accountant, had a comfortable life in Bahrain in the 1980s. But when the first Gulf War started in 1990, the couple had to think of the family’s future.

Although friends had warned they would have a tough time finding the same jobs due to the lack of Canadian experience, they took a chance and came in 1992. He did a short HR certificate program at George Brown College to learn about Canadian laws and practices, and joined a professional association to network.

Six months after arrival, he landed his first gig: helping people on social assistance find jobs. From there, he worked in human resources primarily in the not-for-profit sector before returning to the corporate world in 2000.

“I knew it would not be easy,” said Ramanathan, whose family initially had to cook without traditional spices until they discovered Little India on Gerrard Street. It’s where he took his new Canadian friends for networking.

“I told myself, ‘We’ll give it a try.’ We decided we’re not going anywhere else.”

In his early days, he travelled to the Prairies on business and people were offended when he declined to eat Albertan beef because he’s a vegetarian. Now, 30 years later, those friends he made offer him vegan meals. 

“Canada has changed a lot,” said Ramanathan, who bought his first home in Oakville for $180,000, with savings from their Mideast jobs. His son and daughter are both university-educated and work in investment banking.

While he believes he could have had a more successful career in India, he said a better life has different meanings for different people.

“If I look at the totality that life has given me, I am happy that I moved here,” said Ramanathan. “My children have done well. We’ve all settled down.”

Shiva Kakkar is the prototype of a new wave of Canadian immigrants. He’s young and has Canadian education and work experience — advantages few earlier generations of newcomers had.

He, too, heard Canada was a land of opportunities.

“There are a lot of success stories by some of the people and family acquaintances who have moved here,” said the 25-year-old, who came in 2018 from India for a two-year business diploma program at Lambton College.

“They’ve made a fortune and they’re well known back home. Those success stories were influential in my father’s decision to send me to Canada.”

Though his father paid for his full tuition, Kakkar worked part time at Domino’s Pizza, Freedom Mobile and later Leon’s Furniture to support himself. 

When he graduated in December 2019, he couldn’t find a bank job in the “cutthroat” Toronto market. One day a customer at Freedom Mobile referred him to a job posting at a financial institution in Atlantic Canada. He moved to Halifax in March 2022, after he got his permanent residence.

He soon bought a townhouse with his parents’ help, before marrying in November 2024. Halifax was less diverse than Toronto and he stood out in crowds like “an alien,” though he says that’s changed in the last two years with immigration and people moving east.

Kakkar felt lucky he came before Ottawa started pulling back its welcome mat.

“I believe the future for immigration is kind of bleak and uncertain,” said Kakkar, who is pursuing a bachelor of commerce degree at Saint Mary’s University, fulfilling his father’s wish.

With a master’s degree in linguistics, Anton Ton owned an English-language school in Vietnam but wanted a better future for his two children. Pursuing another postgraduate degree opened the door for permanent residence in Canada.

In 2017, he left his wife and two young sons to pursue a master’s degree in education at Brock University in St. Catharines. They were twice refused visitor visas before joining him in Canada two years later.

Although he had a three-year postgraduation work permit, Ton was under constant pressure to find a full-time job for a shot at permanent residence.

He first got a job as an admissions officer at a private career college but quit after a few months and moved to Hamilton as a supervisor at a cleaning company. He left that job because the employer couldn’t sponsor his immigration.

“I was giving up,” said Anton. “I asked myself, ‘Why do they keep refusing visas to my family? What am I doing here cleaning offices and homes?” But he landed a job in admissions and marketing at a private high school in Mississauga and became a permanent resident in 2021.

At Brock, he delivered food for Uber, Skip the Dishes and DoorDash to help with expenses. He said it’s unfortunate that in the current economy, many international students today are stuck in these jobs after graduation.

Despite the hardships, Ton said Canada has delivered.

“My sons (now 14 and 9) are doing really well in school,” said Ton, whose wife and boys have all adopted anglicized names. “They can speak two languages and have the cultural intelligence and literacy to become global citizens.”

Acquiring permanent residence wasn’t part of Yalcin Parmaksiz’s plan when the business executive came here in 2020 with his wife for her post-doctoral research job at Ontario Tech University. 

But COVID changed their mind as they considered the way Turkey and Canada handled the pandemic and the subsequent collapse of the Turkish economy.

“This may shock you but the cost of living in Turkey is actually higher than in Toronto,” said Parmaksiz, who has a PhD in business from back home and has been teaching business and marketing in Canadian colleges and universities.

He and his family struggled to make Canadian friends, especially during the lockdowns. But all changed when his daughter, now eight, started school and they met parents in the community and through volunteering.

What really made them feel belonged was when they got their permanent residence in 2022, he said, because their status was no longer tied to having a job. 

“It gave us a stronger sense of stability and connection,” said Parmaksiz. “We created an RESP account for my daughter. We opened our RRSP accounts. We started investing in Canada.”

Rabaa Biry had big dreams with her law degree from Damascus but those dreams vanished when she left war-torn Syria in 2015.

She was a protected person in Turkey and couldn’t work as a lawyer. Instead, she became a support worker for newcomer youth. “There’s no stability,” said Biry. “You don’t feel you belong.”

Through work projects, she met business people from around the world and was hired at a law firm, which sponsored her permanent residence under a Canadian program that resettles refugees based on skills and education. The single mother arrived in Toronto in April 2024 with her nine-year-old son.

“I thought I would never dream again,” said Biry, who was met with a supportive team at the law firm Fragomen and can provide a better environment for her autistic child.

“Quality of life for me is safety,” said Biry, who is a senior business immigration analyst and wants to be a paralegal or lawyer one day. “You feel safe when you are not afraid of the future or rejection, and when you feel you belong.”

A highly successful management consultant in India, Vijayant Yadav moved to Canada for two reasons: to live an “authentic life” as a gay man and to work globally.

In 2022, he arrived on a work permit through an internal transfer to the Toronto office. While the nature of his job was the same, he needed to adapt to a new work culture.

Unlike Canada, people in India don’t spend a lot of time brainstorming, but would spring into action to get things done, he said.

“People there are very direct. If I think what you have created or what you have done is crap, I would tell you,” said Yadav. “Over here, people are very passive-aggressive. You would hear, ‘Oh, this is a good first draft.’ I don’t know what that means. With time, I learned that means it’s s—t.”

In Canada, he also notices different treatment of people that goes beyond skin colour.

“You could be a brown person but from the U.K. here versus you’re a brown person from India,” said Yadav, whose husband, Kshitiz Ahuja, an executive in public relations, joined him in 2023. The two got their permanent residence in March 2024.

“Your experience would be very different in what I’ve seen in my profession in the kind of projects that you would get” assigned.

While moving to a country might be a big deal for earlier waves of immigrants, he said today’s skilled immigrants are more mobile and may move multiple times following opportunities and money. A Canadian passport makes travel easier, he noted.

“I’m a senior manager here but in India, I would’ve become a partner maybe by now,” said Yadav. “But I’ve also gained a lot more. What I’ve realized is, India is where my heart beats and Canada is where I breathe.”

A fan of American TV and movies as well as British music, Ariel Sanchez longed as a kid to move abroad for an adventure. Now in his adulthood, the Mexican man just wants to live in a place where he feels safe.

In 2023, he arrived in Toronto on a work permit under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, as a technical writer for a health tech company. His wife, however, is struggling to find a job as a project manager, being told she lacks Canadian experience.

The couple, both university-educated, loves the city’s green space and cultural diversity. Most importantly, they feel safe here, worried more about “seeing a skunk than being robbed” walking their dog at night.

However, Toronto is much more expensive than Mexico City when it comes to fees for cellphone, internet, groceries, bank services and housing in particular. “I don’t have much hope about owning a home in Canada,” said Sanchez, who became a permanent resident in March.

He does feel the Canada that he and his wife came to was very different from the Canada today that he feels scapegoats immigrants.

“It’s terrible,” Sanchez said. “But it only goes to show that Canadians are no different from other people in the world. There’s nothing that makes Canadians inherently more accepting than Americans about immigration.”