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Mother's Day gift guides are usually written by one person guessing what your mother might like. For an immigrant mom, especially if it's her first Canadian Mother’s Day, these gifts can fall wide off the mark.
So I asked 33 immigrant women who moved to Canada from 14 different countries what would have actually helped in their first months here. The recommendations come from them, the product picks come from me. And about a third of the recommended gifts can't be wrapped.
If you can't decide, you can rarely go wrong with a Posterjack photo print of her family back home or a Linen Chest gift card for the bedding and basics she’s still building up.
For warmth on the commute
A double-walled stainless tumbler that keeps coffee hot for seven hours, with a handle and a straw lid.
Daria Lysenko, who moved here from Ukraine, recommends a travel mug as owning one helped her in more ways than she expected; long transit rides, cold Canadian mornings, the sense of routine that comes from carrying something familiar through unfamiliar streets. The Quencher can do all that, plus it’ll survive a trip to the transit floor.
A women's parka rated for Canadian cold.
For Inji Mekhemer, who moved from Egypt, went with a good winter jacket. The cold is gone in most places, but it wouldn’t hurt to help a newcomer mom to plan for the coming winter season.
Stew while she works
A no-frills slow cooker big enough for batch-cooking.
Lindsey Machona, who moved here from Zimbabwe, recommends a slow cooker. If you are looking to gift a newcomer mom who likes to bring food to friends and family, the Hamilton Beach Stay or Go has a clip-tight gasket lid for transport. And if her kitchen is small, the Instant Pot Duo Plus 9-in-1 replaces three appliances at once.
For tomato season
A 1100-watt countertop blender with a 72-ounce pitcher and total-crushing blades.
Sharon Adaigbe moved here from Nigeria, and her go-to gift is a Ninja blender to help with prepping peppers and tomatoes for storage in their cheapest month. If you’ve ever gone tomatoes and pepper hunting during winter, you’ll appreciate what Sharon prescribes here. Especially if tomato stews are a staple meal in your home.
For a careful pour
A slim-spouted electric kettle designed for the controlled pour of pour-over coffee and traditional brewing.
Adanech Sahilie moved to Canada from Ethiopia, so it’s not surprising that her pick was a coffee kettle. The KLEAH is no clay jebeana, the ceremonial kettle used when brewing coffee in Ethiopia. But the spout is narrow enough for a real pour-over and the keep-warm function means the water is ready when the newcomer mom is ready to make her coffee.
Right-sized spice jars
Clear-glass airtight spice jars sized for the volumes a Nigerian, Caribbean, Mexican, Indian, or Persian kitchen actually uses.
Eniola Ashaolu moved from Nigeria, and her recommendation was spice jars.The supermarket-sized spice bottle in Canada is built around a kitchen that uses oregano twice a year. If you want larger formats for suya spice, garam masala, or berbere, the IKEA CITRONHAJ jars at around $3.99 each handle the bulk that small jars can't.
One less chore
A Wi-Fi-enabled robot vacuum that runs on a schedule and empties itself into a dock.
Paula Calderon, who moved here from Colombia, recommends a robot vacuum. The point of one is that it cleans while our newcomer mom works. BISSELL is widely available across Canada at Canadian Tire, Walmart and most discount department stores. If her apartment isn't carpet-heavy, a BISSELL stick vacuum at Canadian Tire for $70 does the job without the app.
For zen states on the commute
Adaptive noise-cancelling Bluetooth earbuds with 50-hour total battery life from the case.
Esme Yousseff moved here from the UK, and her pick was earphones. Newcomer life can involve a lot of listening. Language apps, calls to and from home, and the audiobook that gets her through a transit transfer when the wind is doing what Canadian wind does.
Something for the wall
A gift card for the apartment essentials and decorative pieces newcomers usually pick up slowly over the first year.
Angela Polo who moved from Colombia and Azeezat Tijani who moved from Nigeria both recommended furniture. Your first apartment in Canada is usually furnished in stages. You get a bed first, then a couch from Facebook Marketplace, then the slow accumulation of things that turn the house into a home. A HomeSense gift card helps the newcomer mom buy throw pillows, framed art, or a candle, the bowl. An IKEA gift card buys her a bookshelf or a lamp.
Bedding basics
A gift card for one of Canada's oldest family-owned bedding-and-home retailers, with stores from Halifax to Vancouver.
Naina Sureka moved here from India, and her recommendation is the basics: beddings, kitchen essentials, that sort of stuff. A $100 Linen Chest gift card gets the newcomer mom bed sheets, pillow cases, and some kitchen essentials. Plus a gift card means she can pick the colour herself.
Keepsakes for the wall
For framed photo prints made in Toronto with Canada-wide shipping.
Nida Jamshed moved to Canada from South of the border, and her pick was family photos. Most newcomers leave a wall behind. A Posterjack certificate lets her pick the photo and the format herself, whether that's a framed 8x12 of her mother or a canvas print for the hallway.
Meals, on the house
Meal delivery service that ships to BC, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec, with both heat-and-eat prepared meals and 30-minute meal kits on the same menu.
Sarah moved from Nigeria and her recommendation was precooked meals. Freshprep is a great option, plus they’ve got Mother’s Day meals. All the newcomer mom needs to do is pick her meal choice, and the food shows up in an insulated cooler bag, either fully cooked or with a recipe card, depending on the kind of week she's having.
For the bus, the laundry, and the shopping cart
A glass coin jar that holds more than $80 in mixed change.
Chinaemerem Ogbonna, who moved here from England, recommends a coin jar. Most newcomer moms learn the hard way that Canadian transit, laundry machines, and departmental store carts run on coins. A coin jar by the door means she's never caught short.
For the trip back from the grocery store
A folding fabric shopping cart with two wheels and a telescoping handle, sized for a full week of groceries.
Beatriz Zanatelli, who moved here from Brazil, recommends a shopping cart. She didn't own a car when she arrived, like most newcomer moms. Canadian grocery stores assume a trunk and a parking spot and the walk home from the bus stop with four bags is its own kind of welcome. A two-wheeled fabric cart can be a lifesaver.
For the things she wants to write down
A guided journal with three-minute morning and evening prompts.
Fatemeh Alhosseini, who moved here from Iran, recommends a guided journal she can fill out. Most newcomer moms are processing more than they have time to say out loud: a community left behind, missing family, having to rebuild their village from scratch. The Five Minute Journal is short and easy to use; a few minutes in the morning and a few at night. Indigo ships it nationally but you can also find it in almost any of its stores.
About a third of what these women told me can't be wrapped; a library card, a community to go to for support, the phone number of a settlement worker who understands what she’s dealing with. These came up from lots of the contributors that leaving them out of the guide would be a kind of dishonesty.
The roadmap nobody hands her
Elham Ershad from Iran, Dalia el Farra from the UAE, Chioma Eneude and Chika Otu from Nigeria, and Amaka Onwubuya who moved from Zambia all recommended some version of the same thing: a step-by-step guide for the first few weeks and months; how to find the affordable grocery store, how transit works, what PA days are and what that means for childcare.
This information exists but it’s in a million different places, including the hardest place of all, people’s heads.
The IRCC's Welcome to Canada guide is the official baseline. It’s free and available in seventeen languages. Settlement.org's First Days Guide can be helpful if she’s in Ontario. the most practical complement. Moving2Canada has a monster guide that covers everything from education to childcare. Send her the links to all three with notes on where to start.
The IRCC Service Finder also lets you enter her postal code and pull up every funded settlement service near her apartment. Deborah Fissha, who moved here from Ethiopia, recommended immigrant-serving organizations as the thing that made the most difference as she settled into Canada. Most newcomer moms don't know they exist until someone tells them.
Print the list and walk her through it.
Where she goes when the apartment feels small
Rania Younes from the UAE, Veronica Sepehr from Ecuador, Brindha Ganesan from India, and Dima Amad from Palestine all recommended the same thing in some way: community.
Newcomer moms are rebuilding their household and the support group of everyone who used to be a drive away.
You can't buy community but you can buy proximity to it. Walk her to the public library so she has a card before the week is out. Point her to an EarlyON drop-in if she has a child under six, or a Mothercraft postpartum group if she's just given birth, or a Canadian Immigrant Women’s Association (CIWA) family program in Calgary that runs in her language. Most of these are free or close to it.
The systems she’s still learning about
Dalal Al-Waheidi, who moved here from Palestine, recommended a starter credit card. Maria Parra, who moved here from Mexico, recommended retraining at a community college.
Canadian credit history can be a stumbling block, and without one, she’ll face issues with her rental application, getting a phone plan, or even getting a car loan. The major Canadian banks all run newcomer programs that approve without local credit history. Scotiabank's StartRight goes a step further. Through Nova Credit, applicants from fifteen countries can transfer their home-country credit history to qualify for a higher Canadian limit.
Retraining is the other one. Most newcomer professionals arrive with credentials that don't transfer cleanly. And community colleges can be a way to bridge that gap, often with provincial funding most newcomers don't know they qualify for. Ontario's Better Jobs Ontario (formerly Second Career), Alberta's Foreign Qualification Recognition loans, and BC's Adult Upgrading Grant all cover newcomers who meet the criteria.
With thanks to the 37 women who built this guide. If you're an immigrant mom in Canada with a gift you wish someone had given you in your first months here, write to us. Next year's guide is already taking shape and won’t be as late as this one.
