My Canada: a home at the end of the road

This is my story;  I just can’t believe the story of Canada, anymore. I mean, the story that most people I encounter think of when I say, “I am from Canada.” I mean the story of how “we” are so nice and tolerant and polite (not at all like people from the USA) and benevolent and peacekeeping with open borders and arms to welcome homeless refugees and medical care provided for everyone — that is the story that everyone, everywhere, seems to know.

I am a traveller – travelled around the world twice, circumnavigated the Atlantic from North Atlantic to the tip of South American and sailed 900 miles up the Amazon River, once. I have lived and worked in education in six different countries. I used to believe the story strangers in strange lands told to each other —  about Canadians, about me.  And, I carried the same story around with me on my travels in the past, I was delighted to share this tale of being a Canadian.  Until about 1990. To be clear, it is not that I think ‘Canada’ has changed – no, not that much. It is the story that has changed for me.

I just can no longer believe in the old story.

Nowadays, Canada is the place I come from, it is no longer home.

But when I was young, I had some good stories about who I was based on where I came from. Like most Canadians back then, I identified myself by my ancestry.

Let’s see, I was born in Montreal in the middle of the last century. That makes me old (er) – but this little bit of information can leave you guessing – am I French or English?  It is only natural to identify a person by ethnicity, isn’t it?  I mean, isn’t that what the question is really asking: “where do you come from”? “Montreal.” “Oh, are you French or English?”  “I am English.”

Identity is different when you are online, you can’t tell if I am French or English by looking at my image. Relationships are different too – including teacher-student- student-teacher relationships.

But, thinking about appearances and ethnicity, in a way that is where we live; our bodies identify us, right?

One set of my great grandparents were Swedish and when I was growing up in the 60’s, everyone knew Swedish women were the most beautiful and alluring, so the story went, so I said I was Swedish.  I can sing “Who hid the Halibut on the Poop Deck’, with my Granma’s Swedish accent, and I can polka too. I have travelled to more than 50 countries, but not Sweden because it is very expensive.

I have a great story about my Irish Great Grandmother that I love to tell.  It’s about how she was  the first fox and mink farmer on Prince Edward Island early in the last century, after her husband died.  Everyone was farming potatoes on PEI when the depression hit in the 30’s. But, when my great grandfather died young, my great grandmother, working on the principle that “the rich get richer and the poor stay poor,” sold off a big chunk of the potato farm and bought some breeding foxes and minks. She was an independent woman, not afraid to take a risk, and full of Irish smarts, so the story goes. So, when the feminist movement hit in the 70’s, I changed my story and became Irish: smart, brave and independent.  She didn’t get rich, but she was successful all through the 1930’s and sent both her children to university. She used to say, “it takes minks to buy an education and it takes an education to buy minks.”  Now that’s a good story and makes me proud to be Irish – too.

I went to Ireland for the first time last year. Some of the people look like my grandfather, but I look more like my Swedish Grandma. To be Swedish is to be beautiful, Irish is to have smarts, I’ll go with that story.  Really, I guess according to my own usage, I am European.

Which could lead you to assume I am also a Christian of some sort. But I am not. But, that doesn’t mean I am not a person of faith – I have great faith. I just have  never been able to believe those Bible stories, and some of them are frightening. My Irish Grand Father was an Anglican minister, and a professor of theology, and I loved him dearly — so, I knew all the stories. When I was young they scared me, when I got older, they were just too bizarre and way too sexist too for me to ever believe  -–not even in the midst of the ceremonies. And today, well that story about it all ending in apocalypse really worries, I mean, if we are indeed the stories we tell ourselves, then I wish like hell people would just stop with that story.

But every one needs ‘something’ to believe in – right?  Nope. Not my mother or father. For them, religion was “the opium of the people”. They would say, there is no heaven and when you die you are gone and where you come from is little organisms that swam in the sea billions of years ago, and where they come from is simply inexplicable. Not a very good story, if you ask me – way too scary, where’s the meaningfulness?

But, my parents were not radicals; they were like a lot of people, a lot of Canadians living in the Montreal and then Toronto. Being an atheist was kind of a Canadian thing, back then – an English Canadian thing I should say. I think maybe that shedding religious beliefs was thought of as a way to be less ‘colonial.’ I grew up thinking that is was ‘we,’ the white English Canadians, who were colonized by Britain.  Until I ran away from home, which was Toronto at that time (1970), with my big sister, about as far as a couple of teenaged kids from Toronto could run, westward to the end of the road and across Queen Charlotte Sound: we stopped running when we got to Wuikinuxv territory.

But, that is another story.

Let’s just say that home, for me, home is at the end of the road  – has been for many years, and I have travelled many roads, and there are many more roads to travel.