I often get asked where I am from. Not because I look different or sound different from most other Canadians but because of my name, Helgi Eyford. “Where did you get a name like Helgi.” I realize that in a country made up of immigrants from many countries and a great diversity of Indigenous peoples, asking where you are from can be a way of finding common ground, of celebrating our respective origin stories.

But for others, the question can be a threatening.

Many of us have heard the catchy phrase in the diversity and inclusion space: Diversity is about counting people; Inclusion is about making people count.

I like that this phrase calls us to go beyond hiring people based on their skin colour, their orientation, their religion, etc.

Many traditions have stories that explain why there is such a diversity of people in the world. A story from my tradition is the Tower of Babel. According to this story in the beginning all people lived in a place called Babel and spoke the same language. Presumably they also looked pretty similar to one another.