Home

4. Figuring out this place called home is a problem (87).  Why? Why is it so problematic to figure out this place we call home: Canada? Consider this question in context with Chamberlin’s discussion on imagination and reality; belief and truth (use the index).Chamberlin says, “the sad fact is, the history of settlement around the world is the history of displacing other people from their lands, of discounting their livelihoods and destroying their languages” (78).  Chamberlin goes on to “put this differently” (Para. 3). Explain that “different way” of looking at this, and discuss what you think of the differences and possible consequences of these “two ways” of understanding the history of settlement in Canada.

There’s a weight to the word ‘home’, the sound of it, the slowness of its one syllable. It sounds differently in songs, and means different things too. Chamberlin says that “every story about home is like the U2 song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For””, because it’s so hard to describe home “both literally and figuratively” (80). The songs that come to my mind are Bon Jovi’s “Who Says You Can’t Go Home”, a happy song for me about going home, and when I’m feeling sad, Michael Buble’s “Home”, which is really about homelessness. It talks about a longing that I think we all understand, but maybe only at the depth of longing that We who are simply away, and have a home to go back to, can experience. That’s different, I think, than people who can’t go home, because someone stole it or destroyed it. Chamberlin comments that “we may not all know such emptiness, and I hope we never do. But I suspect we all know what it is to be homesick,” on a smaller scale (86). Other songs, like the very bouncy Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ “Home” are great to listen to but don’t describe the concept of home that I subscribe to. For me, this song takes the idea of home, the concept of belonging, and applies it to the feeling between two people in love. I understand that feeling of being at home with another person, and no matter where you are, being away from home without them, but this is a very different concept than a place with history and people and memories and sounds that is called home. I don’t really like that version of ‘home’, just like I don’t like hearing friends referred to as family.

But Chamberlin combines all of these various levels of home into one, a many-faced definition of home that I can’t help but fight against. “It may be the place we came from…or the place we are going to when our time is done. It is the place we still haven’t found but are looking for. The place that gives us a sense of our self, and of others” (87). Michael Buble’s home and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ home and Bon Jovi’s home are all sides of the same coin, Chamberlin says. I disagree, automatically, but that’s probably because I am trying to hold my ground, see my concept of home as the only true one, refusing to find common ground and recognize the multiplicity of the concept of home.

Canada, as our home, is the question. Why is it so hard to figure out Canada? Canada means different things to a lot of different people in Canada, from Canada, or going to Canada. This week in Quebec, politicians were arguing over which vision was real and imaginary. The Liberal premier said that a separatist Quebec is “an imaginary solution to a problem that doesn’t exist” (CP). The Parti Quebecois leader said that Canada is an imaginary country, “an optical illusion” (CP).

The first part might have barely made news outside of Quebec, because it just reaffirms what most people outside of Quebec believe. But the second part was a big headline, because it challenges Us. You think we’re imaginary? You’re imaginary! It reminds me of a Palestinian rap song from DAM with a chorus that translates to “I’m the terrorist? You’re the terrorist!”. The thing that we imagined makes complete sense, and the thing that you imagined is ridiculous. Obviously. This is exactly what Chamberlin counters, with his appeal that we must remember to both believe and not believe (34). If we think that Our story is complete, and Their story is empty, we have no common ground.

In one of Chamberlin’s illustrations, settlement around the world has been about taking over land so that the current inhabitants cannot continue to live on it as they have been, disregarding the way they used that land, and actively attacking their language and culture (78). In another, he describes this process as “dismissing” the things that others believe and the ways they behave and “discrediting” the people who believe and behave differently (78). For all of the different versions of Canada, for all of the people who call Canada home, we dismiss and discredit other options. And, the We that is most powerful is louder than the others, so that the image of Canada presented most commonly and most loudly displaces, discounts, destroys, dismisses and discredits Aboriginal peoples all over this land.

 

Works Cited

Bon Jovi. “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.” Youtube. 14 Oct 2012. Web. 21 May 2015.

Buble, Michael. “Home.” Youtube. 26 Oct 2009. Web. 21 May 2015.

Canadian Press. “Pierre Karl Peladeau: Canada Is An ‘Imaginary Country’.” Huffington Post Canada, 20 May 2015. Web. 21 May 2015.

Chamberlin, Edward. “If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground”. Mississauga, Ontario: Random House of Canada, 2004. Print.

DAM. “Meen Erhabe.” Youtube. 12 June 2007. Web. 21 May 2015.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. “Home.” Youtube. 19 Aug 2009. Web. 21 May 2015.

U2. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Youtube. 20 May 2007. Web. 21 May 2015.

Photo taken by me in 2010.