Mary Gianan has been extra careful since COVID-19 struck. She has tried to avoid going out other than to work, and when she must, she always wears a mask.
As a personal support worker (PSW) in a long-term care facility, she says she feels it’s important to take the extra precautions.
“You really are with the residents,” as a PSW, she said. “You are holding them, you are in their bubble, so you have to make sure you’re safe.
“I love my job. I see my residents as family.”
Originally from the Philippines, Mary came to Canada to work as a nanny in 2005. She had to leave her family – her husband, four-year-old daughter and one-and-a-half-year-old son – back home in order to start the family’s immigration process.
“I left pretty early in the morning, I tried to sneak out, but my son was awake. He started calling out to me,” Mary recalled of the day she left for Canada.
“I can still hear him to this day. It was heartbreaking to leave,” she said. “But it was a good decision. I gave a good life to my children.”
Mary lived in London when she first immigrated, then moved to Burlington. But when her family was finally able to join her, she and her husband came back to London to raise their kids.
They had some tough times. Shortly after her husband arrived, her family didn’t have enough money for groceries, so they got help from the food bank.
“I was really down at that time,” Mary recalled. But they persevered and now he also works as a PSW – along with their daughter, who is now 20 – and they recently bought their first home.
With all three of them working in health care, life has changed drastically over the past six months. “We stay in our bubble. We get tested (for COVID-19) every two weeks and we are strict about everything. We wear our masks. We try to be very safe.”
Mary, who was a teacher in the Philippines, feels like working in health care – especially with elderly patients – is a vocation.
“It’s fulfilling. You can give them the love they don’t have now,” she said, adding some residents at her facility have no visitors. ”We hold their hands. They love that. You see how they light up from a simple hug. It’s like having 30 grandmothers and grandfathers.”
Working as a health care provider is just one of the ways Mary is giving back to the community that she said has given her and her family so much. She also volunteers with the Filipino Association for London and District, where she reaches out to newcomers who are “frustrated.” She tells them about her own struggles as a new immigrant.
“I tell them to have patience and to hang on, because Canada is a lovely country,” said Mary.

When he started working as a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner in London, Hai Su brought speaking notes to every appointment.
The notes contained all the questions he needed to ask in English: “Do you have pain? What kind of pain? How long have you had pain? Is it sharp or dull?”
Eventually he memorized them. But for a while in those early days, he still had to write down all the answers, too. That way, he could check the translation to be sure he understood.
“I needed to take notes for every single sentence,” said Hai, whose first language is Mandarin. “At that time, my English was still very poor.”
So, he did what he needed to do to communicate with the people he was trying to help. Because helping people has always been Hai’s goal.
That was back in 2006, shortly after Hai had moved to London from China to give his daughter the opportunity to grow up in Canada. It was before his daughter and parents  joined him in Canada, and before he bought his house in Northwest London or opened his own business.
Fourteen years later, Hai is now the owner of Shang Gong Chinese Medical Wellness Centre, with more than 3,000 clients in London’s Hyde Park neighbourhood. In 2010, he married his wife Lin Yuan-Su, who also immigrated to Canada from China, and together they had a child in 2016.
Hai attributes much of his settlement success to the kindness of Canadian friends he met through school and work after arriving in London. He was open to meeting new people and despite feeling insecure about his language barrier, he accepted offers to join new friends for visits, dinners and even Christmas parties.
He tried to stick to “small talk,” until he became more familiar with English, and he still enjoys connecting with people who speak Mandarin like he does.
Aside from language, the biggest challenge Hai said he faced in those early years was the food. He likes trying new things, but he missed the taste of food that he remembered from China.
He used to travel to Toronto to find the food he was craving, but as London has become more diverse and multicultural over the past decade, he is happy that food is much easier to find these days.
Hai said he would encourage all newcomers to Canada to try to “enjoy the journey,” and focus on what they want out of life in their new country, especially when they find themselves facing new obstacles and cultural barriers. His dream of helping people has motivated him.
And his wife, Lin Yuan-Su said Hai’s positive attitude has played a big part.  
“Nothing bothers him. He has a calm demeanour,” Lin said. “He’s so focused on what he’s doing, the diagnosis and treatment of his patients. His mission is to help each person get better.”