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Well oddly enough, part of my college education um in geography was Canada. So I knew—well I knew the provinces, at the time, the Canadian Shield. I knew your exports, your gross national product, whatever, and all the statistics and everything about it. So it wasn’t um—as foreign to me. However, um, the geography books never tell you how cold it is, how big the country is um, how diverse it is, you know. So it was—that was the eye-opener—was what it didn’t have in the geography books.
Anthony (Tony) Athanas was born in 1959 in Santa Flora, Trinidad and Tobago. Santa Flora was a town owned by an oil company and Tony’s father worked as an x-ray technician at the oil company’s medical centre. After graduation, Tony also began working for the oil company.
Tony’s family decided to immigrate to Canada after his father passed away in 1979. Tony’s older brother and sister had already immigrated to Canada a few years earlier and encouraged the rest of the family to join them. In August 1981, Tony, his mother, and two younger siblings were able to immigrate to Canada under the sponsorship of his brother, Patrick. The family settled in Brampton, Ontario.
At the time of the interview, Tony worked as a business analyst for Enbridge. He became a Canadian citizen in January 2012.