This First Person column is the experience of Ope Michael, a photographer who lives in Regina. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ. You can read more First Person articles here.
I wake suddenly — the breath catching in my chest, my body reliving a terror from a night long past. As my eyes adjust, the room comes into focus: a white ceiling above me, honey-toned hardwood beneath my feet, a window sealed tight against the Canadian winter pressing outside.
I take my first steady breath as my heart slows, realizing I am no longer in Nigeria. I feel safe. I am in Canada.
The panic that still finds me traces back to one night six years ago, at 2:17 a.m., when my wife shook me awake. In Nigeria, the heat never truly sleeps, so our windows were wide open, inviting any breeze that might cut through the thick night air.
She had seen them first: shadows where there should have been none, movement outside our window, the faint glint of metal. When she whispered my name, her voice was tight with fear.
Then came the sound: metal pounding, glass shuddering. Three men dressed in black stood outside our window. My three dogs — a Rottweiler, a Cane Corso mix and a Lhasa Apso — normally barked at the slightest movement but this time, they’d made no sound. The security man whose duty it was to stay alert had given no warning. I called his name, but there was no response. Silence pressed against the walls, heavier than fear.
I lifted my one-year-old daughter into my arms and told my wife to take our three-year-old son. We moved quickly and quietly into the kitchen storage room. I locked them inside, the keys biting into my palm.
A 12 kilogram granite stone crashed through the front window, exploding glass and metal bars across the dining room floor. The men stood before me, as I stood there dressed only in boxers, and demanded my iPhone. I handed it over. They demanded money. When I told them there was none in the house, one struck me in the head with a machete.
Adrenaline took over. I veered right and climbed through the open window into the compound. I scaled a fence and found two more men waiting. I jumped past one and ran.
In Nigeria, houses are built like fortresses — high concrete walls, metal gates, layers of protection. That night, those same structures became obstacles I had to escape.
My body moved on instinct. One thought carried me forward: “my family must live, even if I don’t.”
I threw sand into my chaser’s face, at which point, his footsteps finally stopped following me. At that point, I knew I’d survived. Upon returning home, I discovered that the intruders had fled, making off with several valuable items, including laptops, phones and jewelry. Thankfully, my wife, children and dogs were unharmed, but I had to be taken to the hospital for a blood transfusion and surgery for a fractured skull. Two weeks later, I returned and sacked the security guard, thinking he may have been an insider in this ordeal.
No place is 100 per cent safe. But that break-in was the moment I realized that staying in Nigeria meant teaching my children how to endure fear. Leaving meant giving them a chance to grow without it.
When I returned home, I looked around at the dented security door and the shattered window.
I thought of my high-paying job and the business I had spent seven years building. Then I looked at my children —so small, so innocent — and knew this was not the life I wanted them to inherit.
I told myself again and again: “We have to get out of here.”
Back to square one
After we immigrated to Canada in April 2022, it felt as though life had reset to zero. We needed a guarantor just to rent a home, but we had no credit history in the country. We had to figure out what kind of car we could buy and had to get our heads around making monthly insurance payments. In Nigeria, once you buy a car, that is often the end of the story. Insurance, if you choose it, is minimal and paid once.
Here, everything came monthly. Our proof of funds dropped quickly. By the second month, the urgency to work was real. I submitted over 30 job applications a day, only to receive automated rejections.
But kindness showed up everywhere. A stranger I met at Walmart referred me to my first survival job at a retail store. It lasted three days. Eight hours standing without rest broke me. It would be the first of a few temporary jobs that didn’t last.
Canadian winter felt isolating. The cold confined us. The darkness lingered. Some days, sadness arrived without reason.
That was when my wife reminded me of a passion of mine she had believed in long before we ever left Nigeria: photography.
Back home, photography had always lived quietly in me — a way of seeing beauty even when life felt fragile. In Canada, people valued art. They valued stories. Starting a photography business here felt like planting a seed in soil that wanted it to grow. Each photograph became a way to heal, to create instead of survive.
And then there were the children.
They loved Canada almost instantly. Parks became something they looked forward to. School was just two minutes from home. My son made friends quickly — playdates, birthday plans, laughter. I had never known this kind of light freedom. This is the life I dreamed of giving them.
In Canada, I was struck by the openness of the homes. No gates, no fences, no barbed wire. Some days, I even forget to lock the door. And nothing happens.
When I turn a key in Canada, I no longer feel terror. Instead, I hold peace in my hand and see a future where my children no longer are afraid to live.
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