According to statistics published by the Print Measurement Bureau (www.pmb.ca), there are now more than 900,000 Hispanics living in Canada. Other sources put the figure at over 1 million. Although this figure looks insignificant against the 45 million people of Hispanic origin living in the United States, it represents a huge increase in numbers over the past decade, and this population explosion is reflected in the increasing number of Hispanic institutions in Canada's major urban centres – particularly in the Greater Toronto Area, where the majority of Canada's Hispanics live (according to a Statistics Canada study conducted in 2008).

Hispanics and Hispanic culture are making an increasing impact on the Canadian cultural landscape, and there has been evidence to suggest that this impact is increasing awareness and appreciation of Latin America in Canada, a country which historically has had virtually no relationship with the Spanish-speaking world. In July 2007, when Stephen Harper made his first tour of Latin America as Canadian prime minister, he described the region as part of Canada’s “neighbourhood”, and expressed the Canadian government’s commitment to foster ties with the region. The Canadian government has since made some significant moves to develop a closer relationship with Latin America, and particularly with Mexico, although this relationship was dealt a tragic blow this summer with the sudden announcement to impose visa restrictions on Mexican nationals. This decision, which was an ill-conceived knee-jerk reaction to the high proportion of rejected refugee claims coming from Mexico in recent years, was announced with virtually no advance warning – even to the Canadian Embassy in Mexico, which was clearly unprepared to deal with the sudden flood of visa applications. There is no doubt that the decision will severely reduce the number of Mexican tourists who choose Canada as a destination (260,000 in 2008, according to some sources) and will therefore represent a substantial loss for the Canadian tourist industry. Canada's image in Mexico has also clearly been affected, and Canada-Mexico business relations will inevitably suffer as a result. The Canadian government justifies the decision on the basis of 8,500 rejected refugee claims from Mexico in 2008, but even the Immigration Minister, Jason Kenney, has admitted that the introduction of the visa requirement does not really address the root problem - Canada’s refugee claimant screening process, which indiscriminately grants refugee claimant status to virtually anyone who requests it, only to reject them a year and thousands of dollars later when it has been determined that they do not meet the definition of refugees. The blunder represents a regrettable step backwards in the development of our relationship with our Mexican neighbours.

Here in Canada itself, Hispanics face some challenges in their efforts to gain recognition in the Canadian multicultural mosaic. A report issued in April this year by the Association for Canadian Studies revealed the shocking data that on average Hispanic males earn 46% less than English- and French-Canadian males, and that Hispanics rank among the lowest income earners in the country. The figures reflect the difficult and often desperate conditions under which many Latin Americans arrive in this country, but also point to some serious flaws in the supposedly immigrant-friendly Canadian workforce to integrate its newest arrivals.

Chaos outside the Canadian Embassy in Mexico following the flash announcement of the visa requirement.

Nevertheless, there are many individuals who are overcoming such obstacles to make Canada a better place for Spanish-speaking peoples. One such individual is Susana Jiménez, a teacher originally from Mexico who has established Toronto's first bilingual Spanish-English elementary school, the Hispano Canadian Intercultural School, which is the subject of our feature article in this issue. The school offers a valuable opportunity for Hispanic Canadians to offer their children an education that will ensure proficiency in both their native language and the official language of their adopted home.

The book reviewed in this issue also represents an important milestone in Hispanic Canadian culture. Retrato de Una Nube, the first full-length anthology of short stories by Hispanic Canadian writers, was published by Ottawa publishing house Lugar Comun last year. As Fernando de Diego Pérez notes in his review, the collection is the first of its kind in that it brings together the work of many of the first generation of Hispanic-Canadian writers who arrived as exiles from Chile in the 1970s with the newer generation of writers representing more recent waves of immigrants from all over Latin America. The stories themselves reflect a shift in the focus of Hispanic Canadian literature from the protest against political oppression that typified the work of the exiles towards the challenges of adapting to a new language and culture that characterizes the writing of the newer generation.

The classic work of Hispanic literature in this issue is a poem by Alfonsina Storni, one of Argentina's most important literary figures, still widely recognized today throughout the Spanish-speaking world for her significant contribution to post-modernism and as a precursor to the feminist movement in Latin America. And in our regular column for translators, Translatology, Lisa Carter offers her reflections on the challenges of running your own business as a freelance translator.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our readers for their continued support, and to remind you that if you have an article or information on a Hispanic Canadian cultural initiative, or a review of a book of significance for Hispanic Canadian literature, please contact me at martin@dialogos.ca. Any submissions for our fall edition must be received by October 15, 2009.