The two teachers
Nadia Naqvi, the oldest and fiercest in a family of five children, was born in 1981 in Montreal. Her father, who emigrated from Pakistan in the 1970s, instilled in his children that he was the immigrant in the family.
You are just Canadian, he would tell them, and if anybody asks, you’re Canadian-Pakistani. Always put the Canadian in front, he’d say. But growing up in Montreal’s suburban West Island, Ms. Naqvi never felt fully Canadian. She was bullied more times than she could count, called a “Paki” and “smelly.”
