HAPPY CANADA DAY!

Happy Canada Day!

This weekend both our dojos trained under the Canadian flag. Barrie and Mississauga, kids and adults, we stopped class for a few minutes and talked about what that flag actually means to us.

It's easy to walk past a flag every day and stop seeing it. It's just red and white on a wall, something that's always been there. But for a lot of the people in this dojo, myself included, that flag represents a decision. A place we chose. A country that said yes when we asked to come here and build something.

I moved to Canada 16 years ago with my wife Mici. I applied for permanent residency as a karate instructor — not much else to offer on paper, just a black belt and years of training that started in the underground dojos of Communist Romania.

Canada let me in on the strength of that. No guaranteed job, no dojo waiting for me, just an opportunity to try. We built Contact Kicks from there to what it is now.

That's my story, but it's not just mine. Look around either dojo on any given night and you'll find people who came from somewhere else, who found in Canada a place to start over, to train freely, to raise their kids somewhere safe. This country gave a lot of us that chance.

So today we trained under the flag, and we talked to our students — the kids especially — about what it means to respect where you live. Not in some abstract, textbook way. In the real way: showing up, working hard, taking care of the place and the people around you, because none of this happens by accident.

Happy Canada Day from all of us at Contact Kicks.

We're proud to be here, and we don't take it for granted.

Shihan Steve Fogarasi 5th Dan