We needed a good travel bundle that did not cost well, a bundle, and checked with a phone company in a mall in Montreal.

The young Canadian woman who helped us choose a plan for the month that included 2 GB data and unlimited international texting, among other things, had a nice, lilting accent and either had been born in North America or had done her schooling here as she was fluently bilingual in English and French.

She seemed to be a second-generation Canadian but I could not guess where her parents are from originally. Her hair was done up in a fashionable look, her features seemed Caucasian and her skin was chocolate-brown.

She was obviously the offspring of an intermarriage or of mixed parentage. It is not unusual to see mixed couples walking hand-in-hand on the busy streets of Montreal and no one pays any attention or gives a second look. While America is said to be a “melting pot” of various nationalities, Canada is more like a “mash-up”, a mix, a fusion of cultures.

There is little Italy, a Chinatown or Little India in some Canadian cities, just as Dubai has its ‘Hindi Lane’, a tiny, charming Indian enclave in the textile souq downtown, or the Karama district where most Filipino expatriates reside. A friend once remarked that Dubai’s diversity makes it look and feel as if it is a mini United Nations.

As Dubai and the UAE’s population is mostly multinational, interracial marriages also happen. You read from time to time about an Indian or a Pakistani getting married, but that does not really count as an intermarriage as Indians and Pakistanis come from the same stock and are neighbours and share many customs, traditions and the cuisine.

I had interviewed a Hindu couple who had got married across the border line, in Dubai — one an Indian and the other a Pakistani, and neither had visited their respective countries because of the mutual distrust that exists between the governments of the two countries and its subsequent visa restrictions.

One famous Indian-Pakistani couple, however, is cricketer Shoaib Malek and Indian tennis star Sania Mirza, who have a home on Palm Jumeirah.

It’s also not uncommon to see Indian-Filipino couples in Dubai and western and Chinese couples. Statistics Canada had released some interesting figures that more couples are moving beyond racial and ethnic lines to find a partner.

According to one magazine, love in Canada is colour-blind. Figures show that there are nearly 400,000 mixed-race couples, either married or common-law. It is still a small number, but the number of interracial marriages is slowly growing. A study shows the people most likely to “marry-out” of their community are the Japanese. The Chinese and South Asians are the least likely to marry somebody else from another community, though you can see a few Chinese and Indian couples among the younger population.

This is in contrast to what happens in India, where parents make sure that the marriage arranged for their son or daughter is to a person from the same caste or religion.

One Chinese woman who has written an anonymous blog says it is usually the parents who object to their son or daughter marrying across ethnic lines in Canada and resort to psychological pressure to get the child back into their racial fold. Across the border in America, Indian Americans are the most likely to “marry out” and it is the woman who is more likely to choose someone out of her community.

Canada may seem to be a wonderland where there is no bigotry and prejudice as far as skin colour or ethnicity is concerned, but according to a major poll done a couple of years ago, couples still find it difficult to overcome religious barriers.

Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ mahmood_saberi.