Dalia, St. Lucia
My name is Dalia, I’m 32 and originally from St. Lucia, a country that is not very accepting of the LGBTQ community. People make fun of you and they’ll call you names. It’s not easy to be open and be free. You have to always be hiding and watching your back. It’s not easy to express yourself. Growing up, I began to feel that I was a lesbian around the age of 10 and I was not acting how other young girls were expected to act. I didn’t really know what sexuality was when I was younger. I didn’t know it because there was no language for it and I also didn’t know how to express or define myself or how to act on it. You have to figure everything yourself and you can’t really talk to anyone about it. Most of the time you’re learning on your own because you don’t know who to trust or who to tell. I remember the first person I told was a good friend in school and she was shocked. I continued to hide it from my family until one day my mom caught me in a situation, and despite it, I still never came out and fully admitted I was a lesbian. Even though I was caught, I was still in denial. I eventually decided to leave St. Lucia because I realized my family would never accept me and I wouldn’t be able to live a free life. It was hard to be in that house and knowing that my family hated this about me.
I knew I had to get out of there and even though I didn’t want to, I knew I had to. I heard that Toronto was one of the cities that was accepting of LGBTQ people and it was easy to come to Canada because I didn’t need a visa, all I had to do was buy a ticket. I arrived here in 2005 and my family doesn’t talk to me anymore. I’m married now to a woman I met in Toronto who’s also a refugee from St. Lucia.
PhotoGRAPHED by
Ammar is a Yemeni newcomer who arrived in Canada at the age of 17. Upon arriving in Toronto he took up photography in high school and realized that he had an intense passion for photography. Since, he continues to shoot with a variety of film and digital cameras and focuses on street photography while capturing Toronto's diverse communities.