If you happen to wander through hallways of the Holland College Charlottetown Centre on any given Thursday afternoon, you may hear some vaguely familiar lyrics floating through the air.

"I have a dream/a song to sing/to help me cope/with anything…"*

Follow the singing to its source and you find yourself in front of the gymnasium…swing open the doors…and you will be met with the amazing vision of more than 200 new Canadians passionately singing this ABBA favourite. It's a sight that would bring a tear to the eye of even the most cynical amongst us, for these are indeed people who have dreams.

This is the Holland College International Choir practising, as they do every Thursday, a repertoire of songs that they will perform at various functions throughout the year. The international choir is comprised of students from the college's English Second Language and Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada, or LINC, programs. The songs that they have chosen with their instructors reflect their feelings about being in a new and strange country and their hopes and aspirations for the futures that they are building for themselves.

Hailing from 23 countries, some of the students arrived here under the auspices of the Prince Edward Island Provincial Nominee Program, bringing their skills, entrepreneurial spirit, and sometimes their investment capital, into the province to help enrich the Island's economy. Others are refugees, some of whom have spent as much as half of their lives in "temporary" camps after being displaced from their homes.

As choirmaster and instructor Lorraine Beck prepares the students to rehearse their next piece, "It's a Small World", Joy MacDonald, coordinator of LINC and ESL programs at Holland College explains how the choir started.

"About three years ago, I was playing an ABBA CD in my office. I realized that the students were singing along as they passed the doorway, which struck me as odd at first, but it turned out that many of them were familiar with the group. That led to the sharing of more music between students and instructors, which in turn led to the formation of the choir," she recalls.

In a few weeks, they will sing at the college's annual Festival of Carols and Lessons, a concert put together by staff and students from across the college to celebrate the holidays. Last year, the International Choir debuted, stealing the show with their obvious enthusiasm.

Recently, they sang the national anthem at Citizenship Court. MacDonald says this was one of the choir's bigger challenges.

"They had to learn to sing at least one verse in French, which took a little extra time," she explains. The choir has also performed for Lieutenant Governor Barbara Hagerman, who took a turn conducting them.

The students learn the lyrics in their classrooms and then meet as a group once a week. There are currently 14 full time classes at various language levels at the college, from pre Level 1 to Level 8-the highest level offered anywhere in Canada.

As the students flood into the gym for their practice, they greet family members from other classes and the new friends that they have made since attending the college. A few of the young men shoot hoops while they wait for choir practice to begin. A couple of young women join them, one woman, in a long, flowing skirt, perches daintily on tiptoe as she tosses the ball into the basket.

What strikes a visitor most is the sense of camaraderie amongst all of these very different people.
Thrown together by circumstance not choice, their only common link is the absence of something that the rest of us take for granted-the shared language of the community.

For many of them, memories of home are bittersweet, all too often stained by violence or poverty or both. When asked about Prince Edward Island, they speak of the space, the lack of pollution, the friendliness of the people; but many are homesick, too. Choir seems to take the edge off that homesickness.

Some of the students wrote letters to Lorraine Beck, expressing how they felt about the choir.

"…I am glad to think about chorus time, because I feel like I belong here" writes one.

Another writes, "…I like 'I Have a Dream'. When I sing the song, I get courage, because I'm a newcomer to this country."

"We are many people, but we are one voice," writes a third.

Their vocabulary may be uncomplicated, but the complex emotions contained in each simple sentence are nevertheless explicit. The loneliness and dislocation of moving to a strange country, the excitement and exhilaration as they realise that they are learning a new language, and the gradually easing of their hearts as they realise that every day they are settling into their new lives just a little bit more - all of this is written between the lines.

*I Have a Dream. Written by Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus © Copyright 1979

In this picture: Xiao Yan from China and Annab from Somalia practise with the Holland College International Choir. The International Choir is comprised of students in the college's ESL and Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada programs.