By Shae Hadden
Bio

I live in a country where multiculturalism was once the watchword of a generation. I attended high school in a ‘multicultural district’ in an inner city, took several language courses at university and hung out with people from diverse racial, social and cultural backgrounds. Today, I am disheartened to hear how ‘terrorist paranoia’ creeps into our everyday lives and has us question whether we will accept new people into our lives.

Today, two of my cousins asked for my
perspective on something that happened to them recently. They each,
obviously, had opposing perspectives on what had occurred and wanted me
to objectively give my opinion. Their story goes something like this…

A
young woman of Chinese descent, an engineer by trade, is living in our
city, working here temporarily. She has no friends or relatives here
and has been attending a downtown church in an effort to meet people.

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