Episode Description
In this episode, I am speaking with Templeton Sawyer, who who started his career helping newcomers find work as an employment support practitioner, and then co-founded Alive House and built its Belonging Tour, which heads to Calgary and PEI over the next couple of weeks.
We got into why the tour exists. And it's really all about something I've been guilty of myself, which is spending most of our time proving that the Canadian immigration system is broken. Templeton thinks that's a dead end.
Everyone in the room already knows and saying it again just trains people to see newcomers as a problem to discuss.
So he built the tour to do the opposite. He refuses to cast newcomers as pure victims, and he puts accountability on everyone in the room, the allies and the employers as much as the newcomers themselves.
And instead of listing out the problems, he puts people who actually support newcomers well on stage to talk about what works and how they approach it.
Templeton and I also talk about:
The action-over-words rule that shapes how he leads
This year's workshop sessions with welcoming and grassroots organizations
How East Coast dinner tables became the blueprint for Alive House
Why he skipped Toronto and Alberta for an island off an island when he came to study in Canada
What the famous Atlantic Canadian warmth actually feels like up close
Dozie's Notes
A few things that struck me as I listened through this week's conversation:
Proving the Canadian immigration system is broken has become its own trap. Every panel that re-establishes the obvious burns up energy that could go to a fix, and it quietly teaches the audience to see us as a problem. Templeton wants to get to the point where we focus on the work that needs to be done. For an immigrant who's tired of being cast as the victim, I want more of this, because it treats us as people with agency instead of a problem to be managed.
A guilt gathering changes nobody. When someone walks into a room expecting to be blamed, their defences are up before the first speaker finishes. A conversation that holds all sides accountable gives the guest a job-to-be-done instead of a verdict. Shame has always been a poor recruiter, and fixing Canadian immigration needs everyone.
The size of the place changes the size of the welcome. In a small town you can't disappear, which cuts both ways, but for someone starting over it means a professor learns your name and a neighbour knows that you exist. Templeton chose that on purpose, trading scale for being seen. A lot of us default to the big city for the jobs and the diaspora, and rarely ask what we give up when nobody is keeping track of whether we are ok or just coasting through the shadows that come with starting afresh.
Official Links
✅ Connect with Templeton Sawyer on LinkedIn
✅ Learn more about the Belonging Tour
One Ask
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