In the nineteen fifties and sixties, I lived in a diverse neighbourhood in downtown Toronto.  There were immigrants from Europe, Chinese and Japanese Canadians and a sprinkling of aboriginals and blacks along with a very few Jews. 
 

Except for what you could see, however, this diversity was not recognized except when it got negative attention.  The majority was of some British descent and all the children spoke English.  Our schools taught us loyalty to the Crown and the Empire (oops, wink, wink, the “Commonwealth”).   We were always very impressed when we saw maps of the world with all these pink areas that were “ours”.   We had Anglican, United Church and Presbyterian clergy come to address us on a regular basis and our morning song was “God Save the King (later Queen)”, not “Oh Canada”, followed by the Lord’s Prayer.   More often than not, we sang “The Maple Leaf forever” during Remembrance Day services, for which I also learned some hymns.
 

I came to understand that I went to a “Protestant” school and that the Catholics were our enemies.  I am old enough to remember William of Orange riding down Yonge Street on a white horse, dressed in a brown orange costume from the eighteenth century with long brown boots and a broad brown orange hat with a white plume.  There was a large unruly crowd following him and occasionally someone would heave a brick at a Catholic business.  Only my parents kept me from joining my school chums in what was then called “a parade”.
 

My experience with Catholics tended to reinforce my loyalties because groups of them would surround me on occasion when I was coming back from Jewish School and taunt me that I had killed Jesus.   My classmates at school never did that.  Some just called me a dirty f***ing Jew and then stopped after I confronted them physically.  My attitude changed when I realized many of my closest friends at “Protestant” school were actually Catholics who had chosen the public system.
 

My best friend was Don Bain, whose family I learned were French Canadians from Timmins.  My friend Tony Orlando was a Catholic Italian.  Brian Keenan was an Irish Catholic and Paul was an Austrian Catholic.  I had been surrounded by Catholics all along without knowing it!  In addition, as I got to know families, many turned out to be Finnish, Estonian, German and Hungarian, not as my parents called them, “dee Englishe”.  For Jews we saw in and around our shul, there were the “Romaynishe”, the “gayle”, the “greene”, the “yekes”, the “galitsyane” and the “litvaks”.  There is always more diversity in what you know that in what you don’t know.
 

The first gay nightclub in Toronto opened above the Laundromat just across the street and a half block down from our store.  I was warned to stay away from the first house on Saint Joseph because it had been taken over by “queers”, which is one way we had of speaking about gays.  The other was “fruit”.  My major problem with that was that I loved fruit.  A moral crisis.  I don’t think I heard the word “gay” until I was in university but then I began to hesitate when singing the camp song, “One finger, one thumb, keep moving”, because the last line is “And we’ll all be happy and gay.”  Was this OK?
 

I also probably heard and learned just about every racial epithet then current.  It was not until grade two or so that someone stressed that “eenie meenie mynie mo” ended with “catch a tiger” NOT “a nigger”, “by the toe”.  I continued to use the verb “to gyp” until I understood its parallel with the verb, “to jew”.
 

So this is how I learned about diversity – by being surrounded by it and making mistakes.  If you want to learn how to swim you have jump into the water.  If you’re Jewish, though, just make sure you go in with a strong Jewish identity to keep you afloat.