Francis Shim

Francis Shim was born in Jamaica to a family and culture rich in diversity. The island of Jamaica was a beautiful place for him to experience many different cultures since it has a rich history involving peoples from Spain, Britain, India, Africa, China and, of course, Jamaica itself. His family's ancestry also testify to that diversity since it is a complex weaving of Jamaican, Chinese, Scottish and Irish backgrounds.

At an early age, it was noticed that Francis was not speaking and would walk away during story telling. Some people thought that he might be mentally challenged or simply slow. At the same time, given the opportunity, young Francis would put his ear to a speaker's chest or his hand gently on their throat to feel the vibrations. Some thought that he was simply being an affectionate child; however, with the help of an observant kindergarten teacher and a family friend, who was a doctor, it was realized that Francis was actually compensating for hearing loss! Once testing confirmed hearing loss, Francis received speech therapy from kind hearted speech pathologists. Naturally, since some of the speech pathologists were Canadian, his family learned about the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children, a world-renowned hospital, at that time, specializing in childhood ailments and treatments, including an excellent audiology program. As a result of this fortunate turn of events, Francis was able to continue his regular education in a prepatory school operated by Catholic nuns.

It was then no surprise that when his family decided to leave Jamaica in 1974, it was to travel to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Although it was difficult to leave behind familiar friends, Francis found Canada to be a country of golden opportunities. One important opportunity was an advanced health care system that provided him access to better audiology and hearing aid programs that he needed. Even though the hearing aids can only partially compensate for his hearing loss, it was enough to allow him to excel in school and to contribute to his completion of his undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto.

All throughout, Francis was one of many who saw Toronto become more and more culturally diverse. Although he too has experienced racial prejudice first-hand, Francis determined that such prejudice could not stop what was simply a natural process that the world was undergoing: globalization. Although most prejudices were easy to witness and, therefore, obvious to handle, there were also prejudices that Francis experienced because of hidden and less known diversity in human beings. One of which was, of course, society's insensitive attitudes to the needs of the Deaf culture. Although he was not totally deaf, Francis had a kinship with the Deaf community and desired to understand more about it. While studying the Deaf culture, Francis witnessed a beauty in the language of the Deaf and decided to take sign language classes with the Canadian Hearing Society. It would prove to become one of his loves and enduring way of expressing his belief that we are all human beings and we are all of one family.

It was only until 1995 that Francis was to learn the full extent of his disability and to realize that he was also experiencing a progressively deteriorating vision loss. This revelation along with other ensuing difficulties in his life at the time sent Francis into a major bout of depression; however, through his recovery therapies Francis was able to discover more meaning in his life as he realize just how wonderful an opportunity he had being a human being of many races and cultures, both visible and invisible and that this was to reaffirm the truth of his belief that we all should be of one family. As a result, he was able to slowly recover a more spiritual and philosophical outlook on the course of his life.

Naturally, in 2005, when Francis moved to Cornwall and heard about the Bahá'i Faith and that one of its basic tenet was the unification of humankind in a spiritual way, he realized that he had found an important threshold in his life's journey. Francis then continued his life-long love of learning about the wide diversity of the human family, to which he belongs, and hoping that we can be more accepting of each other. It is with hope that he seeks a way to use his creative signing to create bridges between cultures, visible and invisible, and to foster a sense of unity among them.