That Canada's is an increasingly diverse, or "pluralistic" society as is now the preferred description is undeniable. From a time when I was young when the appearance of Caucasians vastly predominated to the present, there has been as they say, a 'seachange' of vast proportions. Now, the prevalence of readily identifiable ethnics has soared in the population. I don't refer here to people of Asian and African heritage, but people whose cultures are newly introduced and whose social and religious mores mark them as quite different in tone and depth from people who have long lived in the country and who have assimilated over the generations.

It's been a remarkable transformation as Canada has absorbed people from different continents, particularly marked by the fact that previously those admitted to the country were mostly from European backgrounds whose values and substantive cultural underpinnings were similar to that of Canada's. Unsurprisingly, since most of the original settlers to Canada came from those very backgrounds.

Now, when I shop at my supermarket close to my home, the shelves, both fresh produce and canned staples of every variety and commodity, are geared to people from the Indian sub-continent, from across Asia, east and west, from the Middle East and the Caribbean and all points between. Oddly enough, just a few months back when I was shopping at a large rural supermarket in the United States there was shelf space devoted to kosher products; but not here in this nation's capital in a large urban setting.

Yesterday, I viewed in the most cursory manner because I have become accustomed to their presence, and why not? a melange of people faithful to the ethnic garb of the countries from which they hailed, shopping alongside me. Courtesy prevails.

I also saw a youngish man presumably in his 30s, entirely garbed in a long white robe, feet in sandals, his face hirsute and darkly sharp-featured, seemingly intent on never making eye contact with anyone, going about his business. He had taken a shopping cart meant for a mother with a baby, since it came complete with a baby-bed carrier on top, and within that bed he had carefully placed some produce. Two watermelons, large ones, rolled about in the bed of the cart itself, alongside other vegetables. I had taken note because I was lined up behind him at the cash counter awaiting my turn.

He left his cart repeatedly while waiting for the line-up to shorten as those before us took their place at the cash, and each time came back with trifling items like bags of potato chips to augment the more ascetic vegetable-and-fruit selections he had previously made. From the basics to the frivolous consumables, it seems he has made the transition to familiarization with his new environment in part steered by his gustatory appetite, not yet by the fainter allure to assimilate otherwise into the prevailing culture.