To the editor,
It was a real pleasure to read last month that the Avon-Maitland District School Board was looking for host families to take in students for the school year (Aug. 9, 2023 issue). I encourage any family that has the space for another student in the house to apply to the board to be host parents. If you have a teen of your own, I guarantee the experience will last a lifetime.
My wife and I started a host family business in the mid-1990s quite by accident. We lived in Waterloo at the time. A Korean-Canadian friend had asked me if I knew anyone who could take in his cousin’s 14-year-old daughter. It is well known that if a young person can be immersed in a foreign language before age 15 or 16, that child will likely be able to learn that language very well and have very little accent, if any.
Many Asian parents willingly give up the pleasure of having their child at home for a couple of school years in order to give that child a “leg up” in the business world back home. We had an extra room so we took her in. The school year was starting soon, so we helped the girl’s parents find the right high school for her and she started in Grade 10.
The first week was very interesting and we spent a lot of time talking about food and possibly making a trip to Koreatown in Toronto to get some “special groceries.” The girl’s English was far better than my Korean.
It was in the second week when things got really interesting. I got a call from our new daughter during the day. She asked if she could bring a friend home for dinner. I agreed. The new girl was in our daughter’s class and was from Nanjing in China. Her English was quite good so the conversation around the dinner table was certainly something my wife and I had never experienced – the world’s political, economic and cultural views from two very knowledgeable 14-year-old girls.
After dinner, our daughter asked if she could show our guest around the house. We could hear them giggling and laughing upstairs and then silence, then giggling and laughing again. When they came downstairs, our daughter asked if we could take in our guest since she noticed that there was still another spare room. We agreed to look into it since our guest said that she wasn’t getting along with the family where she was staying. There were discussions with parents, the school and so on and by the end of the second week, we had two daughters. We have two sons who were in their 20s by then and had moved out.
My wife worked at the University of Waterloo and I worked from home, so I made most of the meals and therefore became a very willing student in the lessons being taught by my two young teachers about “easy” Korean and Chinese meals.
Well before the end of that first year with the two girls, we had almost 20 inquiries to take in students for the next school year. It was time to charge for this, charge for the boarding, charge for helping find the right school for each child, and most importantly, find the right host family. There was a lot of night-time interviewing to find the right families for all the students. I realized how important it was to find the right school when one of the inquiries for the second year was for a 13-year-old girl who was superb on the violin. I learned that the teacher who led the music department at Waterloo Collegiate was the exact kind of teacher that this girl needed, so I had to also find a host family fairly close to WCI. The really funny story about this girl was that her parents had, at first, sent her to a school in Scotland (Parents in Korea can go into an agency and select an English-speaking country and school from dozens of binders. At least that’s the way it was pre-internet. Scotland must have seemed pretty good). The girl didn’t like the school or the host family because she couldn’t understand their English!
We grew quickly in numbers. By the end of the third school year, we were the largest independent homestay business in Waterloo Region, and we hadn’t even advertised!
I spent a lot of time teaching my host families some of the basics in preparing meals for the students. We didn’t feel the kids should have to eat Western food all the time.
I wish there was space to tell you all of the wonderful adventures that we had with all of our kids over the 10 years we had the business. One of the most memorable was when my wife was sick in bed and our two daughters almost fought over which ancient remedy was better for her ailment, Korean or Chinese. Then they would curl up beside her on the bed like kittens and convince her that she was going to be better soon.
John McVicar
Listowel
