New Parnian for a Sympathetic Community

گزارش — 03 اکتبر 2012

In the last year, the Iranian community in Canada has experienced many not-so pleasant days as the severity of problems for the Iranian community continues to gradually increase. The expansion of various international sanctions on finance and customs against Iranian citizens has made the lives of many Iranian-Canadians even more difficult, and has had double the effect on the businesses and incomes of Iranians. This has had a particularly strong effect on people who rely on their incomes from Iran, especially the retired. The long term effects of such stresses will be shown through the reduction in the quality of life of these people and the gradual weakness of the community in the years to come.

Unfortunately, in making these decisions, the Canadian conservative government, which is interested in depicting itself as a strong leader by following the policies of the USA, has not tried to help make up for some of the harmful consequences of such decisions on the citizens of the country. The latest of these decisions, that is the closing of the Canadian embassy’s visa office in Tehran, is not justifiable with any logic of thought; even by the same reasons that the Canadian immigration office claimed (i.e. cutting of expenses). On the other hand however, the negative effects of such a decision on our lives and those of our beloved ones in Iran are too important to be ignored. Fortunately, the Iranian community in Canada, including media, associations, and outstanding figures of the community, have reacted well to this improper and unjust decision. Hopefully their activities will help to fix the problem, as well as help to lead future affairs in a proper direction.

No matter what the results are however, such cases have shown that the widely populated and diverse Iranian community in Canada, which possesses statistically high status in terms of the average income, education, the number of entrepreneurs, the number of faculty members, and tens of other important factors and parameters, does not have the capability to efficiently influence such political decisions or to even defend itself. It is evident that a lack of required coordination and unity is the cause, and that if the community possessed this ability, such decisions would not be made without coordination and consultation with the community. The solution is only unity and unity will not be reached through order, advice, and begging. Every single member of this community should feel the need to have unity and to try to have it through democratically accepted mechanisms, and to stumble until they could stand on their own feet.

Parnian tries to do its best to keep up with the growth of this community to materialize a more unified society in which people listen to each other better, know more about the problems of each other, and solve their problems more effectively and with more coordination. The new Parnian is a step towards this goal.

In the last Parnian volume, we talked about the idea of future changes. The volume you are reading now is a different magazine with much more material and a complete different format. The main difference is visible through how Parnian is distributed: a different distribution than what is common in the magazines of the Iranian community in Canada. This is all part of an effort to make Parnian available to a larger group of Iranians interested in the subject. This new distribution method, although common in Canada, is still very fresh in our Iranian community and not well known.

Although free distribution has allowed Parnian to be a success so far, free distribution of magazines in stores also has a number of disadvantages. Not all Iranians shop at these stores and many of them do not even know about the magazines that are distributed in these stores. In addition, many Iranians do not live in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, or Ottawa and thus do not live in a city where a centralized gathering of Iranians is readily available. Therefore, if free distribution in stores was the only method of distribution used, a large group of audience would be out of reach of our magazines and deprived of its important content.

Our goal is to have a prestigious magazine with lots of useful material and articles pertaining to our life style and needs in Canada. This can be a linking point for our academic community and a step forward in making us more united. Canpars and the Parnian team do their best to fulfill this goal, but this endeavor will not yield any results without practical support from the Iranian community. Please introduce Parnian to your friends, and give its subscription as a gift to whomever you love. By expanding the number of readers of the magazine, you can help us in preparing a prestigious and informative press magazine to the best interest of this community.

Ali Mokhtari

Parnian tries to do its best to keep up with the growth of this community to materialize a more unified society