BLOG

June 2025 Vol 7 Issue 6

Tell Your Story Newsletter (TYSN):

Teaching English-as-a-Second Language to Economic Immigrants

Let us help you tell your story!

 Welcome Mid-June, 2025!

As I prepare this issue of “Tell Your Story” Newsletter, my readers will know that Northern Saskatchewan has already endured a terrible forest fire season. Twenty-three active wildfires were counted last week and 258 over the season so far, well ahead of the average of 147 fires over the past five years.

The Canadian Red Cross has registered evacuees from more than 3,700 homes and from more than 10,500 acres of at-risk land in our beleaguered province.

More urban-based Saskatchewanians have watched with worry, noting the frequent air quality advisories and warnings and knowing how much worse conditions both evacuees and firefighters have faced (some of the latter coming from Europe and Australia to help us). Thank you to them!

Last Saturday, after many parched weeks, we received the grace of some steady rain: what firefighters, farmers and river-boat captains (on our beloved South Saskatchewan River) wouldn’t do, for some more of the same!

Yet, not disregarding these challenges, the month of June (with the official start of summer) marks what we often call the “good weather” in our province! Glorious flowering trees  have flourished.  Busy gardeners are overseeing seedlings, bedding plants and perennials, longing for more heat and rain.

I keenly anticipate generous gifts of plums, berries, zucchini, cucumber, tomatoes and potatoes from the gardens of friends this summer, some of whom read this newsletter!

Yesterday was Father’s Day and I hope each you you found time to spend with your (or someone else’s–lol) father, grandfather or other family members on that gorgeous, sunny day.

Recently, I opted to shorten “Tell Your Story Newsletter” to focus on one article (instead of two), to reduce reading time for you (and to free myself to engage in memoir writing, on-the-side.) But please know that occasional snippets of word stories and jokes may still sometimes return, under the moniker of “Storytellers’ Corner!”

This month, I visit two high-achieving entrepreneurs’ reflections on diversity, a concept democratic countries like Canada must daily fight for, given the state of world politics:

American tradesman-turned-professional gardener, Paul Avellino, and beloved Canadian celebrity investor, Arlene Dickinson, have weighed in on Facebook and Linkedin, respectively. I share their gripping commentary in full-length, because it reminds us of why we must make a stand to preserve democracy, in a world beset by violence and chaos.

Although spring this year began as a season of loss for me (with my elderly mother passing one month ago), I am equally grieved by the nightly news. And yet, I find through the multi-layered nature of grief that slowly, light, love and laughter do seep in.

May the summer that is unfurling around us bring you JOY, good reader. While losses must be faced, I also wish you prosperity in your relationships, in time spent in nature’s diversity, and among the diversity of family, friends, colleagues and newcomers–now and always.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth

Principal

Storytelling Communications

www.elizabethshih.com

++++++

IN THIS ISSUE:

 MAIN ARTICLE: On the value of diversity from Paul Avellino and Arlene Dickinson

SHOP NEWS

ABOUT US

++++++

Main Article: On the value of diversity, from Paul Avellino and Arlene Dickinson

On Facebook recently, my former entrepreneurial coach and valued friend, Deanna Litz (of Powerful Nature Coaching and Consulting, Inc.), shared some philosophy from American farmer, Paul Avellino, aka “The Garden Guinea.” Avellino is a self-described “gardener, writer, chef [and] father.”

Avellino is a former tradesman who took up domestic farming (he prefers the understated term “gardening”) during early Pandemic times. He’s an advocate for growing one’s own food and for living with kindness toward the earth and each other.

Avellino recommends what others call “forest bathing” or time spent in nature, where humans­­–especially in these deeply troubled times–can quickly appreciate the health that comes from ecological diversity. He writes:

“Take a walk through any thriving forest, and you won’t find uniformity­—you’ll find balance through variety. Trees of every kind, fungi laced through the soil, insects, birds, predators, pollinators, and plants that bloom at different times, all playing their part. That’s not an accident. It’s a blueprint.

 

Diversity isn’t something nature tolerates. It’s something it requires to survive.

So when people talk about human diversity like it’s a threat to stability, or when systems are designed to flatten, exclude, and erase—remind them that ecosystems collapse without diversity.

That monocultures breed disease, and closed loops break.

We don’t thrive despite our differences—we thrive because of them. Just like the forest, just like the coral reef, just like the world we’re all lucky [or blessed] enough to be part of.

Diversity isn’t a threat. It has always been the plan.”

Avellino shares wonderful memes, pairing his philosophy and work on Instagram, which I encourage you to visit! . . . . .

AND, also this week, in a more urban register, immigrant investor, entrepreneur, author and pioneering “dragon” on CBC’s “Dragon’s Den,” Arlene Dickinson, shared her insights on our communities’ diversity on Linkedin.

Dickinson wrote about the need we as Canadians have for diversity as part of our cherished sovereignty, and when false but alarming fear and anxiety are stoked by autocratic politicians who fill the media newsfeed (notably in the US and beyond):

“Do we need to feel fear as much as we do, watching the TV news, these days?“ Dickinson asks.

She continues: “In the USA, fear is now the central tool of politics. Immigrants and migrants are being blamed for economic hardship and crime. DEI [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] programs are painted as dangerous and divisive. Judges, educators and journalists are all being framed as threats and people we should distrust.

In Canada, over 33% of biz owners are immigrants. In the USA, it’s a fact that immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens born there. Undocumented workers pay more than $20 billion in taxes yearly, including into Social Security (which they don’t even receive). And, by the way, being undocumented isn’t a criminal offense; it’s a civil violation.

These people are contributing to society, not taking from it. They are building America, not destroying it.

But fear is way louder than facts, because we don’t feel facts.

We feel fear. So immigrants become political pawns not because the facts support it, but because fear gives [greedy] people power.

The same fear is being used against DEI. The fact is that diverse teams make better decisions, build more trust, and outperform homogeneous ones.

Transgender athletes are another manufactured threat. Fewer than 10 transgender athletes are competing across [more than] 500,000 college student-athletes in the USA, but somehow, they’ve become a national crisis. It’s absurd. And it’s cruel.

Democracies weaken with fear. Fear of each other, of our differences, and of imagined threats.

What frightens me isn’t immigration or diversity. It’s how fast suspicion about each other spreads. How easily neighbours become enemies. How many people fall for the lie that inclusion is dangerous?

I’m so proud to be Canadian. Proud that we’re a mosaic, not a melting pot. Proud that we value difference, not sameness. But that only matters if we’re willing to protect it.

Immigrants aren’t the problem.

Black people aren’t the problem.

Women aren’t the problem.

Gay people aren’t the problem.

Trans people aren’t the problem.

The problem is the super elite in power [i.e. autocrats and oligarchs] who believe they’re entitled to control the rest of us. Who weaponize fear to hold on to power and money.

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of fear. I’m tired of seeing each other as enemies instead of as decent humans trying to survive and live with dignity.

There’s real evil in the world for us to fear and focus on. Hezbollah, Hamas, The IRGC-Quds Force, Al-Qaeda, ISIS. The Wagner Group. And I could go on.

We should fear and fight factions like these, not the people who are escaping from horrors in order to save their lives and live in peace.”

++++++

These fighting words from Avellino and Dickinson rewarded me for visiting Facebook and Linkedin last week, when so often social media elicits only doomscrolling, undue anxiety and despair from consumer-readers.

In my work teaching ESL to economic immigrants and newcomers, who Dickinson rightly says make more than one-third of the business owners in Canada–including in Saskatchewan­–I regularly meet diversity and the strength it brings. When I speak to newcomers about values of mutual respect, understanding of each others’ cultures, values like hard work and responsibility,

 And now it’s your turn: What is happening in your family or circle of friends to help to cultivate and recognize diversity–and to oppose the homogenizing forces of the world? 

What tangible things can we do to overpower the injustice of manufactured fear and despair, in our times?

 

Please write in; I’d be delighted to hear from you. 

 

SHOP NEWS:

I ended this month’s “main article” by asking how each of us can outdo the injustice of manufactured fear and despair, in these times.

Some of my colleagues and friends have been answering that, notably through our most recent Federal election in Canada. Falsehoods and fake news of many kinds were  ably exposed and subverted by entrepreneur Silvia Martini and writer Michael Robin, to name but two. Thank you to them.

Thank you also to my long-term friend, writer and former fellow U of English student,  Paula Jane Remlinger, for penning cogent analyses over Facebook on the hateful machinations of Trump and allies who threaten our weary world.

Other “thank yous” go out this month to friends Beth Brimner and Lenore Swystun for reminding me that even–or especially--in such times, we find (and need) JOY.

Joy can exist, even as we oppose the violence of Russia in Ukraine; Israel against Palestine in Gaza; North versus South Korea; China versus Taiwan; Afghanistan (the Taliban versus ISIS and insurgents [NRF]); and Sudan (the Sudanese military versus the paramilitary), to name only a few of our global “hot spots.”

Thank you and congratulations to my South African friend, Christel Jordaan Schlebusch, for pursuing Canadian midwifery certification, when her significant skills and experience are greatly needed in Saskatchewan.

The popular English TV program “Call the Midwife” (viewed here on PBS) depicts some of the extraordinary work of midwives in saving infants, mothers and their families from medical and other risks.

Thank you to two remarkable correspondents whose messages are always heartening, even in trying times and as we all age–English Professor (Emeritus) Bob Calder; and former Managing Editor of the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Wilf Popoff.

And thank you, good readers, for continuing to read, share and respond to this monthly newsletter, some 14+ years after I started it as a copywriter and editor, and now as I teach English-as-a-Second Language (ESL).

++++++

 

ABOUT US:

Between 2011 and December 2018, Elizabeth Shih Communications chronicled the stories of B2B marketing and communications on the Prairies and across the country.

Effective January 1, 2019, I rebranded as “Storytelling Communications.” I now help economic immigrants to get better jobs or secure larger contracts by improving their  English language skills (by my ESL classes). And, when time allows, I also edit memoirs and legacy stories of individuals and major companies.

Interested in learning more? Please contact me through my website (www.storytellingcommunications.ca).

After I receive your message, I’ll be pleased to discuss projects with you!

Meantime, please tune in next month for another issue of “Tell Your Story Newsletter!”

 

May 2025 Vol 7 Issue 5

Tell Your Story Newsletter (TYSN)

Teaching English-as-a-Second Language to Economic Immigrants

Let Us Help You Tell Your Story

Welcome Mid-May, 2025!

In the 2020 film, “Wild Mountain Thyme,” based on John Patrick Shanley’s play, Outside Mullingar, the male protagonist, Anthony Reilly, recalls the death of his mother as a time “when all the colour went out of the world.”

I can relate to that observation these days, as I grieve the recent passing of my mother, Bernice Shih, a long-time supporter of my work as a writer, editor and teacher.

I dedicate this simple issue of “Tell Your Story Newsletter” to the memory of Bernice, who died peacefully in her sleep earlier this month — and to all of the amazing women including mothers who read this newsletter, many of whom have known such loss.

Although Bernice and I did not agree on everything in life (who does?), she was a devoted mother.

I will always remember her gentle, kind nature and her deep commitment to her Christian faith.

“Death is not the extinguishing of light;  it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come”–Rabindranath Tagore

Rest in Peace, dear Mum.

Elizabeth

www.elizabethshih.com

+++++

In This Issue: 

Article One: From loss to laughter, with Susie Dent–In memoriam: Bernice Shih

Shop News 

About Us

+++++

Article One: From loss to laughter with Susie Dent

Laughter can provide tremendous medicine when one has been grieving a loss for a while, or a loss that has been expected. Laughter can bring life to a survivor’s weary mind and spirit.

I don’t mean that we should force or rush our ways through times of grief to laugh, but only that tears and heartbreak can gradually give way to humour and hope.

My sense of humour has been influenced by years of reading, writing and teaching English literature and language. Some of that humour I shared with my mother.

So this month, with a nod to my ESL students past and present, I will share ten humourous–or ironic–“curious words” or phrases, their histories and meanings. Each is vivid and often light-hearted. They can inspire us to apply them lightheartedly in daily life.

These words (and many more) have been collected by celebrated British lexicographer, Susie Dent, in her 2023 book, Interesting Stories about Curious Words: From Stealing Thunder to Red Herrings. (John Murray Press).

(1)   “Right foot foremost”: Historically, in the West, it has been considered unlucky to enter a house, or even a room, on one’s left foot. In ancient Rome, a boy would be stationed at the door of a wealthy homeowner, to caution visitors not to cross the threshold with the left foot!

(2)   “Pecksniff”: This irony-laden term refers to a “hypocrite, who speaks pompously about morality” while doing “heartless things ‘as a duty to society,’ and forgives wrong-doing in nobody but himself. “Pecksniff” is the name given to the arch-hypocrite in Dicken’s novel, Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44).

What I find humourous with this word is the very sound of the term and the absurd clash between the appearance and reality of such characters’ personalities.

(3)    “Shaggy dog story”: This phrase refers to a “supposedly funny story, told laboriously and at great length with an unexpected twist at the end. It is usually more amusing to the teller than the hearer and is so-called from the ‘shaggy dog’ that was featured in many stories of this genre in the 1940s.

Etymologist Eric Partridge shares a classic “shaggy dog story” here:

“ ‘Travelling by train to London from one of its outer dormitories, a businessman got into a compartment and was amazed to see a middle-aged passenger playing chess with a handsome Newfoundland [dog]. The players moved the pieces swiftly and surely. Just before the train pulled in at the London terminus, the game ended, with the dog victorious.”

The businessman commented: “‘That’s an extraordinary dog, beating you like that—and obviously you‘re pretty good yourself.’ –‘Oh, I don’t think he’s so hot; I beat him in the two games before that!’”

(4)   “Yahoo”: This is the name given by Jonathan Swift, in Gulliver Travels (1726), for people with human forms and vicious propensities. Swift may have based the word on a blend of the two exclamations of disgust, ‘yah!’ and ‘ugh!’”

But in common speech today, “yahoo” conveys humour, arguably due to its unpolished sound.

(5)   “Salad days”:  With this phrase, Shakespeare refers to “days of youthful inexperience, when people are very green or naïve”: “My salad days,/When I was green in judgement, cold in/blood, /To say as I said then!” (Antony and Cleopatra, I.v. (1606).

This phrase could also work on a seasonal restaurant menu . . .

(6)   “Mrs. Malaprop”: This name comes from the female character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play, The Rivals (1775), who frequently misuses words. “Malapropisms frequently flourish,” Dent writes, where naïve or ill-read people “try to use technical or professional language.”

Dent continues: “In The Times newspaper (4 May 1985), writer Philip Norman “reported a miners’ leader who denounced his bosses as ‘totally incontinent,’ and a parishioner who complained to her vicar about the church’s poor ‘agnostics.’”

Dent writes that “medical terms” are often “prone to malapropism [with] examples including ‘teutonic’ ulcers, ‘malingering’ tumours, ‘hysterical’ rectums and ‘Cistercian’ deliveries.”

The phrase comes from the French, “mal a propos,” (“not to the purpose”).

(7)   “In the groove”: This phrase refers to being “in the right mood; doing something successfully, fashionable.” From this comes the “dated slang word ‘groovy’ for something fashionable or exciting.” The term alludes “to the accurate reproduction of music by a needle in the groove of a gramophone record.”

Resurrect this expression and you’ll earn the scorn of everyone who hears you (lol)!

(8)   “When the fat lady sings”: This term refers to a time when “everything is finally over. The full expression runs: ‘The opera is never over till the fat lady sings.’”

This refers to “the final act of the opera, in which the heroine often re-appears. Opera singers are stereotypically endowed with figures as full as their voices,”  Dent adds. Politically correct it is not!

(9)   “Pope”: This word is more evocative than funny. It “derives from Old English ‘papa,’ from ecclesiastical Latin, and Greek ‘pappas,’ a child’s word for father” (just to add to the mix of this issue on women and mothers)!

“Pope” may not be a humourous word, but it is very evocative and timely, as Dent writes that “the smoke that emerges from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel during a papal election is known as the fumata.”

She adds: “Black smoke indicates there is no clear majority; white smoke is issued when a final choice has been made.”

This resonates for us, given the recent election of Pope Leo XIV; and with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent comment that “no white smoke” rose from the White House chimney during his recent meeting with US President Donald Trump!

(10)  “To visit the Spice Islands”: This phrase is one of many euphemisms for using the toilet, and, Dent says, was “favoured by the Victorians” (who else?!).

She further writes that “In the 1800s, those caught short would ‘play arse music,’ ‘use the thunder jug,’ or even ‘starch the potatoes.’”

Contemporary Western culture discourages “bathroom humour,” sometimes referred to as “little boys’ humour,” among adults. And yet, the influence of such idioms, often from Victorian culture, persist.

Dent adds that “in the last hundred years we have turned to” expressions like “‘emptying the anaconda’” for such bodily functions (!)

Many of the words in Dent’s book (including most above) are onomatopoeic, meaning that they phonetically imitate, resemble or suggest the sound associated with it. This may be the main basis of their humourous effect.

Each of the words in Dent’s book carries at least one–or several– stories, as she illustrates in her collection. Words remain the building blocks of all stories and therefore of all of our communication.

Very often, sharing certain words and stories (from an early age) provides the building blocks of our relationships with beloved adults, especially our mothers.

And now it’s your turn: What curious or “gem” words do you use in common speech? Do any of them come from talking with your mother or another family member? 

Please write in; I’d be delighted to hear from you. 

+++++

SHOP NEWS:

In light of family bereavement and related matters, I have temporarily slowed my ESL teaching for a few weeks. But I look forward to welcoming new students in upcoming weeks.

Regarding my mother’s late life care, I want to thank St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church’s parish nurse, Laura Van Loon, for her extraordinary and very compassionate service to Bernice and to my whole family.

Laura helped to intervene when Bernice endured falls, hospitalizations, assessments and moves between care facilities, as most failing seniors do.

While I’m sorry that my mother didn’t live long enough to attend the Mother’s Day lunch I had organized for her, I’m grateful to the staff at Saskatoon Convalescent Home for all of their diligent care for her and so many other seniors.

If you are seeking a long-term care bed for an elderly relative in the city, I encourage you to consider the Convalescent Home, where kindness is evident each day.

The home’s building may be older (some renovations have occurred, with more forthcoming).  But the staff have been remarkable.

There are daily activities, usually six days per week (unlike other long-term care or private care homes), and a beautiful, garden/courtyard in the spring and summer, where residents can appreciate the good weather.

I believe deeply in such an approach to elder care.

My family and I also thank Rev. Roberto De Sandoli and members of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the late Ted and Mrs. Audrey Gilroy and especially Greg Gilroy; Dani VanDriel; Lesley Bens and other close friends who have supported me through these past years of caregiving.

Thanks, too, to the care staff of Sunnyside Adventist Care Home, Luther Heights Intermediate Care Home, The Franklin Retirement Home, City Hospital (Geriatric Care Unit) and Saskatoon Community Clinic, for their service.

I’m deeply grateful to Ben Nussbaum (of Nussbaum and Associates) and Lance Bergen (of the Saskatoon Funeral Home) for their help when dealing with estate or memorial matters.

Thank you to the members of Saskatoon Freelancers’ Roundtable (my writers’ group) for the messages of condolences they have sent me, and for their compassion during times when we as creatives face adversity.

Finally, I thank all of our extended family and friends who wrote, called or visited my mother during the past few years, especially folks affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in Canada (and St. Andrew’s, Saskatoon) or with the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, where my mother volunteered or worked for most of her adult life.

Mother’s Day has passed. But during the month of May, or whenever you can arrange to share physical space with family and friends, I urge you to pause whatever you’re doing to  hug those you love.

We never know how much time any of us has left.

+++++

ABOUT US: 

Between 2011 and December 2018, Elizabeth Shih Communications chronicled the stories of B2B marketing and communications on the Prairies and across the country.

Effective January 1, 2019, I rebranded as “Storytelling Communications.” I  now help newcomers to Canada land better jobs and economic immigrants to secure greater contracts by improving their English skills.

Interested in learning more? Please contact me through my website (www.elizabethshih.com).

After I receive your message, I’ll be pleased to discuss English classes with you!

Please visit my website for more information (www.storytellingcommunications.ca).

+++++

STAY IN TOUCH:

Become a Facebook fan

Subscribe to my blog

Contact us