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By Juliet Obianuju Bushi

Canada’s population is at an all-time high, thanks to its rich and ever growing immigrant population. In 2009, Canada welcomed 252,179 new immigrants (principal applicants and dependents), an increase of two per cent compared to 2008, (Government of Saskatchewan, 2009). The largest group, equivalent to 153,498, or 61 per cent of total immigrants, arrived under the federal Economic class. Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia continue to be the top destination provinces for immigrants; however, since 2005 there has been a gradual decline in the flow of immigrants to Ontario while the Prairie Provinces have seen steady increases (Government of Saskatchewan, 2009). Some regions that have not been traditionally popular destinations for immigrants, such as the Atlantic Provinces and Saskatchewan, have experienced rapid growth in the number of immigrants. The largest increases since 2007 have occurred in Prince Edward Island (74 per cent), Saskatchewan (96 percent) and Yukon (110 per cent) (Government of Saskatchewan, 2009). Canada’s immigrant populations play a crucial role in Canada’s socio-economic growth therefore, in order to maintain this trend, Canada needs to develop sustainable and efficient immigration policies and better transition programs for skilled immigrants.

By Trevor Lehmann

A criticism of career theories that conceptualize individuals as developing through social and biological developmental stages with defined personal values fixed across the lifespan is that they do not account for the uncertainty of an individual’s future due to the myriad of factors influencing career choices. The Chaos Theory of Careers (CTC) notes that decisions are influenced by the interplay of family, labour markets, friends, media, culture, education, gender, sexual orientation, politics, climate, health (Bright & Pryor, 2011). Adding to CTC, Planned Happenstance theory (PHT) acknowledges the important role chance plays in our career paths and suggests that clients be empowered to act in ways that generate higher frequencies of beneficial chance events as well as identify and capitalize on chance events (Mitchell, Levin, & Krumboltz,1999).

By David Marulanda

Skilled immigrants comprise a significant portion of the population in our country (Statistics Canada, 2017). Their successful settlement in Canada largely hinges on finding employment commensurate with their professional experience. Nevertheless, skilled immigrants face barriers such as stringent accreditation requirements and lack of recognition of foreign credentials that lead them to unemployment or underemployment (Chen & Hong, 2016; Elez, 2014). For those who are able to overcome the aforementioned barriers and are eligible to seek professional employment in their field of expertise, there still remains the significant challenge of becoming proficient in a job search process that may not resemble the professional culture in their home country (Chen, 2008; Kennedy & Chen, 2012).

By Caroline Locher-Lo

Canada’s demographic makeup has been influenced dramatically by a large infusion of Asian immigrants over the past 25 years (Guo & DeVoretz, 2006). Visible minorities now comprise 19 percent of the Canadian population (Liodakis & Satzewich, 2010). In the year 2010 alone, Canada received over 280,000 new immigrants, the highest level in 50 years. These migrants came from over 170 countries (ibid), with Mainland China continuing to be the top source country to British Columbia since 1998 (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2016). Since 1991, the Chinese language cluster has been the top non-official language spoken in the Greater Vancouver Area (Statistics Canada, 2016), and over 250,000 individuals in British Columbia, including immigrants from Taiwan, identify Mandarin as their spoken language at home (ibid).

By Heejin Kim

According to Gordon (1983), “[ballet dancers] are not ordinary people with ordinary needs and ordinary desires; they are a breed apart” (p. 7). The ballet world is unique that it has its own set of norms and customs (Hamilton, 1998). Dancers are famous for their extraordinary dedication for their pursuit (Hamilton, 1998; Hamilton, Solomon & Solomon, 2006), and “art does not exist to serve life; life exists to serve art” in the ballet world (Gordon, 1986, p. 102). Ballet dancers are required to sustain their deep sense of commitment and single-minded focus from their early childhood to adulthood (Hamilton, 1998; Kelman, 2000; Pickard & Bailey, 2009) to perform on the professional level. Ballet dancers endure exceptional adversity not only during their training (Montanari & Zietkiewicz, 2000), but also in their performance career (Hernandez, 2012; Kelman, 2000). The adversity experienced by ballet dancers are well documented in the existing literature, and the majority of the previous studies on ballet dancers has largely focused on one specific challenge, such as psychological distress (Mainwaring & Finney, 2017), body image (Radell, Keneman, Mandradjieff, Adame, & Cole, 2017), physical injury (Smith, Gerrie, Varner, McCulloch, Lintner, & Harris, 2015), nutrition (Lee, Kim, & Kim, 2015), eating disorder (Peric, Zenic, Sekulic, Kondric, & Zaletel, 2016), or retirement and career transition (Roncaglia, 2008; Wainwright & Turner, 2006; Willard & Lavallee, 2016). It is worth noting that there is dearth of research on a more integrative exploration of ballet dancers’ experiences using their voice (Gray & Kunkel, 2001).