During the first wave of COVID-19, Lin Yuan-Su wanted to something to help people stay mentally and physically healthy while they were stuck at home.
So, she started a free online Zumba class – open to all.
“I just thought, what can I do to serve the community?” says the London mom, who became a certified Zumba instructor years ago after auditioning for a position on a whim. “I love helping people. It feels good.”
As a community volunteer, professional dietitian and certified life coach, Lin has devoted her life to helping Londoners for 17 years.
Originally from China, Lin immigrated to Canada in 2002, first moving to St. John, NB, for university. She moved to London a year later, after falling in love with a young man who lived here. Their romance ended, but her love of London has remained strong, said Lin who is now married to London Chinese medicine doctor Hai Su, who immigrated to Canada in 2006.
“Every time I’m driving into the city and I see the sign for London, I’m like ‘LONDON, BABY!’” says Lin with a laugh, recalling the episode from her favourite TV series Friends – when character Joey Tribianni repeatedly shouts that phrase while in London, England.
OK so it’s not that London, but this London has “everything you need,” says Lin.
“It has the best schools . . . the best health care. It’s a perfect size, close enough to Toronto but far enough that you don’t get the craziness dealing with a big municipality,” she said.
Lin became a registered dietitian after being the first international student to graduate Brescia University’s Master of Science program in Food and Nutritional Sciences in 2010. For eight years, she worked at the Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre, where she learned what she could about Indigenous cultures and shared her knowledge with other non-Indigenous folks.
But even while she attended school, Lin was volunteering at many organizations including London Food Bank, the Cancer Society, the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Men’s Mission. She recommends other newcomers to Canada take the opportunity to volunteer while they work to achieve career goals.
“It feels good to know you’re adding value to other people’s lives,” she said. “And also, volunteer experience beefs up your resume.”
During her own immigration journey, Lin said she has received support from Londoners from all backgrounds and has been lucky to have a loving and supportive group of friends from diverse backgrounds who have become her family in Canada.
Lin says she has had good fortune, but she and her husband have also taken care to “enjoy the journey,” that immigration has given them.
“I have had an amazing experience throughout my journey. It’s not because it was easier for me. It’s not because we came with millions of dollars. We enjoyed the journey,” she said. “It was still fun. Challenges are part of life.”

Arun Kunnel Varkey and his wife had only been in Canada a few days when they needed to take the bus across London.
This was all new, they had no idea how the bus system worked here. And it showed.
As the couple used their phone to research routes and procedures, a woman noticed them and came over to help. Then she travelled with them to their transfer stop, got off the bus with them and waited with them until their next bus arrived.
“That was our first impression of dealing with somebody we didn’t know in London,” Arun said in a recent interview. “This very incident – with a random person the first time we went out – formed our perception about the London community. They were ready to help new immigrants without any bias. 
“It was mind-blowing.”
After working as a nurse for eight years in his home country of India, Arun had arrived in Canada in 2017 as a skilled worker.
“Once we came here, we felt like we were Canadians. We learned the culture, we said ‘we are going to be Canadians,’” he said.
While Arun wanted to remain in health care, he would have to return to school to become certified if he wanted to work as a nurse here. .
He found work in a factory that makes car parts. That same year, he completed a personal support worker (PSW) program, so he could get back to working in health care.
As a PSW, Arun works long hours – longer since COVID-19 struck.
But it is a labour of love for someone who has considered health care is a vocation since he was a youth helping neighbours and his grandparents in India.
“I always liked helping people. When I had to choose a profession, I thought this would be good for me,” he said. “I work in the community and I want to make a positive change in people’s lives.”
He said he feels good about helping senior citizens, especially those who live alone and do not receive visits from family or friends.
“These days the only people they are seeing from outside the home are the health care workers and that 45 minute or one-hour visit is really important for them,” he said. “I can see their happiness.”  
As for nursing, Arun says he’s “still working on,” getting his certification in Ontario. “But while I do that, I thought I’d be in the same field and keep helping people.”
His work has given him purpose in Canada.
“As a newcomer it’s difficult in the beginning, but once you find something you enjoy, it will make a difference,” he says.

Alice Zoe Johnson had been in Canada two weeks when she helped save somebody’s life. 
It was 2005 and she, her husband and three children had arrived as refugees after fleeing their war-torn home country of Liberia where Alice had worked as a nurse. 
Seeking familiarity in their new country, the family was at Trinity Lutheran Church in downtown London when a man collapsed. 
Alice rushed over and did CPR until emergency services arrived.
They would learn later that he had suffered a mini-stroke. And to this day, when he sees her, the man thanks Alice for coming to his rescue 15 years ago. 
“I was kind of honoured to do that,” says Alice, who now works as a personal support worker (PSW) in London, while finishing her fourth year of a degree in family studies at Brescia University College. 
But that day in 2005 wasn’t the first time she had helped save a life. 
Alice did three years training as a nurse in Liberia, where she worked before fleeing the country’s civil war to a refugee camp in Ghana. Once there, she continued to work as a nurse. Though there were never enough resources – the camp had one ambulance for 75,000 people –  Alice and the other health practitioners worked tirelessly to help their community members. One shift could include delivering babies, stitching wounds, tend to brutal burns and dealing with diarrhea outbreaks.
Because she arrived in Canada without any educational documents, there were many barriers between herself and a nursing career here. 
But that hasn’t stopped her from working in health care.
She has worked as a PSW in nursing homes as well as home-care since shortly after immigrating. 
She has had two children since moving to London, served as president of the Liberian women’s organization of Canada, volunteered at the London Food Bank and she and her husband support each other to pursue their educational and career goals. 
Alice says she likes to encourage other newcomers to take advantage of English-as-a-Second-Language classes and never give up on opportunity in Canada. 
“There’s no ‘can’t’ in this country. Once you apply the effort there’s always help somewhere,” she says.
These days, as a frontline worker who continues to do homecare during the COVID-19 pandemic, Alice says she is thankful to be working with people in need. 
“I like the interaction with the residents and giving them quality time,” she says. “I love it and I know they love it. As soon as I walk in, they’re happy.”

It was a patient who nominated Dr. Faria Rubab as a candidate for this year’s ‘I am London’ campaign.
“I am happy that Dr. Rubab chose to settle in London, and pleased that she is my doctor,” he wrote on the nomination form. “As a technical person with lots of questions, I have ruffled the feathers of a few doctors and specialists. Dr. Rubab took the time to answer my questions directly and consider my doubts.” 
He’s not alone. In recent years, the mother of three – who worked for years as an internal medicine specialist in Pakistan before moving to London in 2014 – has grown her Byron practice to include more than 1,300 patients. And many of them have thanked her for treating them with kindness they didn’t expect. 
 “It happened to me quite a few times,” said Faria. She recalled one woman who suddenly expressed gratitude to the doctor after two years of being a demanding patient. 
 “She told me, ‘My relationships with my physicians haven’t been very good before. But you’ve dealt with everything I told you,’” recalls Faria. She said ‘You never said ‘why are you coming?’”
But Faria says the appreciation is mutual. She is thankful for the relationships she has been able to build since becoming a family doctor.
“It’s very good,” says Faria, who worked in hospitals for 12 years in Pakistan, before moving to Canada to give her three children, now aged 20, 18 and 14, new opportunities for education and lifestyle. 
“You get to know your people. That’s the beauty of family medicine,” says Faria. “It’s a different kind of connection to the patient. A beautiful relationship and I love it.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic she has seen fewer of her patients in person and she misses them, saying she longs to return to more regular human interactions.
While Faria loves the work she does, she is always looking for new ways to help people. For instance, she has done work in the area of palliative care, and when she learned Canada has a shortage of dermatologists, she did post graduate education in the field so she could take referrals from community doctors who have patients in need. 
“It reduces wait times for people who need to be seen urgently,” says Faria.
Faria says she also loved working as a specialist back in Pakistan, but she and her husband were always looking for opportunities that would help their children see the world and live in a different environment.  
They first arrived in Canada in June 2012,, when “the weather was beautiful,” says Faria. They stayed in Hamilton for two years, living with a friend until Faria was offered a residency for a family medicine program in London. 
Originally, her family intended to move back to Hamilton after Rubab had completed her studies.
“But once I was done, none of us wanted to go back,” she said. “We loved London. It’s a big city in a small city with beautiful outdoors and good educational opportunities including a university here.
“Whatever we were wanted for the kids, we found in London.”

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.”