Maple Observer - Driving Canada: A front seat view of immigration

Like many newcomers, Anam Zakaria and Haroon Khalid found themselves navigating the Canadian healthcare system after becoming new parents.

Their daughter’s recurring ear infections led to frequent hospital visits, long waits, and a growing frustration with how difficult it was to access specialized care. On one ride home, they struck up a conversation with their Uber driver about his life in Canada. It turned out he had been an ear, nose and throat specialist physician in Afghanistan.

The coincidence and its irony stayed with the couple – they were trying to get an appointment with an ENT specialist while someone with the very expertise they needed was driving them home.

“That encounter showed us how much there was to understand about the person behind the wheel,” Zakaria said. “Their life story and what they were doing before coming here offers such an intimate portrait of Canada right now.”

Sharing stories of immigrant journeys

This story, and others, inspired the couple to launch Qissa, a non-profit that documents the life histories of immigrants. The word Qissa means life story or tale in Urdu and Indo-Persian languages.

Zakaria and Khalid, who are both anthropologists and oral historians, partnered with the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax in 2024 to develop Driving Canada, a project that documents the stories of Uber drivers across the Greater Toronto region.

The project features seven stories of racialized immigrants – veterinarians, professors, lawyers – who were unable to find work in their fields and turned to the gig economy for survival. Their experiences reflect a broader reality: Many newcomers navigate persistent underemployment while grappling with the loss of their professional identity.

“The project uses labour as an entry point to immigrant experiences,” Khalid says, highlighting the systemic underemployment many newcomers face, particularly in their first few years after arrival.

Through these conversations, the couple documented deeply human stories and complex realities often hidden behind migration. Some drivers spoke about children being left behind, including what it meant for a six-year-old not to see her mother for three months and the emotions of their eventual reunion. Others spoke about children born abroad while parents navigate isolated living situations, or reconnecting with former classmates and finding love, all while balancing the pressures and precariousness of life in the gig economy.

“Almost everyone spoke about the day they bid farewell to their families,” Khalid says. “Uber is only a small part of the story. The bigger one is about their aspirations and what it means to come to Canada.”

Shifting the narrative

The initiative also draws attention to the stigma many newcomers face in the gig economy. Several participants initially declined interviews, worried about backlash or judgment for driving Uber, a hesitation that reflects broader assumptions about immigrant labour and worth.

“We wanted to humanize the person behind the wheel and challenge stereotypes that frame immigration as a simple story of upward mobility,” Zakaria says. In the absence of a shared third space, such as a taxi stand, the project seeks to validate immigrant experiences and shift public narratives.

Many newcomers navigate these journeys in isolation and with a sense of shame, often internalizing systemic barriers as personal failure. By highlighting their stories, the project aims to foster recognition and community.

Zakaria said some people shared accounts of road rage, passenger hostility and moments when anti-immigrant sentiments were expressed openly from the back seat. One driver recalled transporting a drunk passenger who complained about immigration “draining” Canada, seemingly unaware or unconcerned that the person driving him embodied the very system he was criticizing.

These moments matter, she said, because they reveal how racism operates not only through overt slurs, but also through casual dismissal, social distance and systemic and institutional failures.

The project ultimately encourages Canadians to pause and reconsider assumptions about who contributes to the country, and how. Their work highlights the obstacles newcomers face, but also the resilience, creativity and humanity that continue to shape Canada today.

Qissa’s continued work on immigrant experiences

The interviews are archived at the Canadian Museum of Immigration as part of the historical record, and the couple is exploring ways to bring the material to wider public audiences. They are considering digital exhibitions and pop-up installations and have already started to develop an immersive online experience that simulates a rideshare journey, allowing audiences to step into the ride and hear immigrants’ stories firsthand.

Their latest project, Creative Canada, focuses on documenting the oral histories of immigrant artists and will be presented at the inaugural Newcomer and Refugee Literary Festival in Toronto in March.The one-day festival brings together visual art, theatre, music, literature and panel discussions spotlighting artists whose work is often labeled “emerging” despite years of professional experience abroad.