We See, We Name, We Assume
I read somewhere that tales are born out of related stories. Or is it that stories carry tales within themselves. Also stories never die. They change, resurface with different actors, situations and modified events, and reappear as new stories or tales. Within every story there are hidden stories that require care to notice.
Learning Canada Through Citizenship
After retirement I began living as a Permanent Resident in Canada with my daughter’s family. The reasons for making Canada a new home were not straightforward—complicated, yet in the end simple. I will not bore the reader with the why and how. I would rather focus on what prompted this particular reflection.
When I applied for Canadian citizenship, the website indicated that the process might take a year or more. I began preparing for the citizenship test and started going through the relevant material. Ultimately I did not have to take the test because I was already eighty and my case fell under the exempt category and I got my citizenship in less than five months since making an application.
That was the period when I became especially interested, among other things, in learning who had discovered Canada.
Who Discovered the Continent?
Who discovered the North American continent? Who discovered Canada?
Was it Columbus? He was looking for a sea route from Europe to India. Did he find it? No. Instead he ended up finding a sea route to the “New World,” a vast landmass that Europeans later called America, and whose inhabitants they called Red Indians—now more accurately known as Indigenous peoples or First Nations.
Columbus landed on 12 October 1492 on a small island off the coast of present-day Bahamas ( not Canada) and declared that he had reached the coast of India. To prove it on his return to Spain he took some of the Indigenous people of this “New World” with him and called them Indians. That is how the earlier nomenclature for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas—“Red Indians”—came into being.
Canada belongs, first and always, to the Indigenous peoples. Long before Europeans arrived, nations thrived across these lands with systems of governance, spirituality and trade. The word “Canada” itself comes from “Kanata,” meaning “settlement” in the language of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.
Learning Canada Through History and Citizenship
The actual sea route to India was found by Vasco da Gama six years later, when he landed at Kozhikode on 20 May 1498.
Long before Columbus, Leif Erikson, a Norseman, sailed from Greenland to what is now Newfoundland around the year 1000 and even established a short-lived settlement. In a strict sense, yes—he was the first European to land on the shores of North America. Yet his voyage left no lasting European presence or continuous knowledge of the land, and the wider world remained unaware of it for nearly five centuries. So, in another sense, no.
John Cabot, sailing under the English flag in 1497—five years after Columbus—encountered the rich fisheries of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. In 1534 Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River and claimed the land for France, calling it “Canada.”
Indigenous Lands and Early Encounters
Canada belongs, first and always, to the Indigenous peoples. Long before Europeans arrived, nations thrived across these lands with systems of governance, spirituality and trade. The word “Canada” itself comes from “Kanata,” meaning “settlement” in the language of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.
From the beginning the land became a site of competing settlements and clashing visions of belonging.
While living in Canada I have, over the years, travelled to the United States, Cuba, Mexico and, in December 2025, Panama.
Balcony in Casco Viejo, Panama
Unlike our stays in Cuba and Mexico, in Panama we stayed in an Airbnb apartment in the older part of Panama City—Casco Viejo—now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The area once stood inside a fortress built to ward off pirate attacks and carries a colourful history. Only fragments of the fort walls remain, along with churches and other historical buildings, many of them destroyed and rebuilt over time.
Our apartment was on the third floor. A continuous balcony ran around the building on that level. Large doors opened onto the north side. Whenever I stepped out—morning, noon or evening—I would notice birds perched on the roof of a dilapidated house across the way, a structure waiting to be renovated, in sharp contrast to the modern Airbnb we occupied.
I was puzzled. Were these some variety of crow? Or gidh (vulture)? My wife and daughter said they were vultures. But vultures are usually found where they can feed on carcasses. This was a bustling part of town full of eateries, historical buildings, shops and places of tourist interest. The residence of the President was only a short walk away. It could not be a vulture.
I took a photograph and used Google Lens. It identified the bird as a Greater Antillean Grackle (Quiscalus niger)—a medium-sized, all-black songbird (males glossy with iridescence, females slightly duller) commonly seen in urban and settled areas.
That identification, however, does not fit. The Greater Antillean Grackle is confined to the Greater Antilles—Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Cayman Islands. It does not occur on the mainland of Central America. The bird so common on rooftops and wires in Panama City, including Casco Viejo, is its close relative, the Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus). It is equally glossy black, equally at home in noisy urban settings, and equally fond of perching on buildings. Google Lens almost certainly mistook one for the other because the two species look very similar and because the colonial architecture of the old town can easily be confused with that of Havana or Old San Juan.
A small misidentification, yet it sits neatly beside the larger ones that opened this piece.
Columbus declared he had reached India when he had not. He called the people he met Indians, and the name stuck for centuries. A modern app, looking at a black bird on a colonial rooftop in Panama, declared it a Caribbean species when it was a Central American one. We see, we name, we assume—and only later, sometimes, do we correct ourselves.
The “New World” has been discovered and rediscovered many times. Each discovery carries its own errors of naming and understanding. Standing on that balcony in Casco Viejo, watching the grackles, I was simply adding one more small chapter to the long story of arriving somewhere and not quite knowing, at first, where one has arrived.
The Tale Within: Vasco Núñez de Balboa
The currency of Panama is the balboa, used alongside the US dollar. The Panamanian balboa is named after Vasco Núñez de Balboa, a sixteenth-century Spanish explorer, pirate, conqueror and governor. More of his fascinating story belongs in a separate piece, but here is the essence.
He was the first European to find a land route from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the Isthmus of Panama in 1513—something the local inhabitants of the “New World” already knew: that another ocean lay on the far side. With the help of friendly local tribes, who warned him of fierce peoples, dense jungles, storms and swamps, Balboa and roughly 190 of his men made the crossing. On a peak in Darién he sighted the great South Sea and later claimed it for Spain.
Born into minor nobility, Balboa was restless and adventurous. He took risks, sailed to the New World, fell into debt and something close to imprisonment on Hispaniola, then escaped by stowing away. Once free, he turned pirate-like in spirit—seizing opportunity, ships and power by force of will—and grew rich and influential. The Spanish kings of the time operated under a simple and powerful rule that greatly encouraged such men: of any gold or wealth obtained by whatever means, one-fifth went to the Crown and the adventurer kept the remaining four-fifths.
Balboa was made interim governor of the Panama region. When a full-time governor, Pedrarias, arrived, the two men fell out. Balboa was shifted to control another area, yet the rivalry only deepened. In the end Pedrarias levelled charges of treason against him and had Balboa executed.
His name, however, lived on. Panama’s currency still bears it, and near Old Panama and the President’s house a broad, handsome boulevard was later built to honour his memory.
Much later, in 1914, the Panama Canal was built by the United States to enable movement of ships between the Pacific and Atlantic, avoiding the very long and hazardous route around Cape Horn.
The stories keep returning—sometimes as grand claims of discovery, sometimes as a bird misnamed on a rooftop, sometimes as a currency that still carries the name of a restless man who crossed an isthmus others already knew. We arrive, we name, we assume. And the quiet correction, when it comes, becomes another tale inside the larger story.
Whenever I read text written/created by you sir, it throws me to the time when you were working in NDDB with Dr Kurien, in Anand, Gujarat. No offending to Gujarati English (which Ma’am several times pointed out during meetings), even Dr Kurup was one among the good english text makers (writers), especially for official documents, many others, it is difficult to name all; your style of texting the stories runs far from writers whith whome I worked (In never worked with you, I did not get such opportunity)/ or know even today. Leaving those aside, your stories, event descriptions or real stories about the warriors of old NDDB, always push me to believe why you were in the core group of Dr Kurien’s army.
This one is a very nicely written text with lots of facts, packaging in a wrapper of smooth readable interesting story- Great sir. Please keep writing. No sir, your mind is still as agile and eble as was earlier. In know putting events in a form of good palatable stories takes lot of thinking & time. This one is a great piece of such text sir.