Prompt: In this lesson I say that it should be clear that the discourse on nationalism is also about ethnicity and ideologies of “race.” If you trace the historical overview of nationalism in Canada in the CanLit guide, you will find many examples of state legislation and policies that excluded and discriminated against certain peoples based on ideas about racial inferiority and capacities to assimilate. – and in turn, state legislation and policies that worked to try to rectify early policies of exclusion and racial discrimination. As the guide points out, the nation is an imagined community, whereas the state is a “governed group of people.” For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities, such as The Royal Proclamation 1763, the Indian Act 1876, Immigration Act 1910, or the Multiculturalism Act 1989 – you choose the legislation or policy or commission you find most interesting. Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility.

After looking at other peoples’ blogs, and considering my options, I have decided to focus on the Immigration Act of 1910 because I think the time period around World War I and II is very important to the rise of nationalism–particularly Canadian nationalism. Also, since others have focused on other policies, I think this would supplement them well.

Canada’s first Immigration Act (1869) attempted to prevent diseases from entering Canada, and this was around the discovery of bacterial infections (see also). In 1906, the Immigration Act tried to keep out the insane or criminally minded, as well as those previously charged for serious crimes (even if not convicted). The 1910 Immigration Act focused on the deportation and inadmissibility of unwanted immigrants.

Decisions were made based on any evidence deemed credible or trustworthy, and bypassed courts as the executive branch of government had all of the authority. Those “unsuited to the climate and requirements of Canada” were prohibited. Immigrants were required to have a minimum of $25 upon their arrival, but those of Asiatic origin were required to have $200 before even being allowed entry.

Looking at the timeline, you see a pattern from bacterial infections to mental illness to race, coinciding with WWI. Enemy “aliens” were kept in internment camps or deported. The reverberations of the 1910 act continued afterwards, as 1919 prohibited undesirable races and nationalities.

The thinking was that people of British origin deserved to be here.

In 1923, Canada drew up the Chinese Exclusion Act to close the Chinese out and let the European in, and tax those Chinese already living in the country.

After the shell shock of the First World War, and the start of the Great Depression, the Americans went into isolationism, but the Canadians were still very much a British outfit; Loyalists like those Americans who remained loyal during the American Revolution, forming a “fictive ethnicity” where one is Christian, Anglophone and white, as Coleman says it in his White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada (7).

It wasn’t until 1947 that Canadian citizenship was official–prior to that, we were all considered British subjects. Canadians cheered about Vimy Ridge, but it wasn’t until WWII that they got their due. At the same time, we allowed Chinese people to reunite with their immediate relatives in Canada.

However, priority was still given to British, French, and American people. Asians without close relatives living in Canada were discriminated against, along with homosexuals, prostitutes, and mentally handicapped people. Also, Japanese Canadians were put in internment camps in response to Pearl Harbor, and still received harsh treatment.

Discrimination on the basis of race or country of origin was finally dropped by 1962, but the Canadian government did not apologize for the Chinese Exclusion Act or Japanese Internment Camps until 2006 and 1988 respectively. Meanwhile, Aboriginals were not able to vote without relinquishing Indian status until 1960, and did not receive an apology until 2008.

Whether those apologies were genuine is up for debate, but they were definitely overdue.

From what I have found, there is a great deal that justifies Coleman’s argument that Canada is an ‘imagined community’ based on a “fictive ethnicity” that emphasizes “a British model of civility,” occupying British whiteness into a place of privilege (7). However, I think that with war, any positive progress is halted, while negative energy is exacerbated. Three Day Road is one of my favourite books, and it depicts two Native hunters becoming expert snipers, and gaining the respect of those fighting alongside them. Therefore, they are accepted by whites in a way they never were before. But with the reality of war, and the animosity arising from it, any unity is short-lived. One returns home, and it is just as isolating as it was when they left.

Also, as a Psychology major, I am disappointed by how mental illness was linked to criminality, because the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent. It’s like how people jumped to the conclusion that the Charleston shooter is mentally ill, as if they’re deflecting blame on mentally ill people in general.

We often think about eugenics and relate it the Nazi’s Final Solution, but Canada used forced sterilizations in British Columbia and Alberta in an attempt to curb the spread of mental illness.

Works Cited

CanLit Guides. “Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” Canadian Literature. 4 Apr. 2013. Web. 27 Jun. 2015.

Coleman, Daniel. White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2006. Print.

Kathryn. “How and When Were Bacteria Discovered?” Types of Bacteria. 12 Oct. 2014. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.

“Apology to Japanese Canadians- September 22, 1988.” Youtube. PrObamaAntiTeaParty, 5 Sept. 2010. Web. 30 Jun. 2015.

“Canada apologizes for residential school systems.” Youtube. Canuck Poltics, 12 Jun. 2008. Web. 30 Jun. 2015.

“Canadian nationalism.” Canada History. N.d. Web. 30 Jun. 2015.

“Dr Snow’s Cholera Dot Map of London” from The History Channel’s Mankind the Story of All of Us. Youtube. 5 Jan. 2013. Web. 29 Jun. 2015.

“Three Day Road.” Amazon. N.d. Web. 30 Jun. 2015.

“Immigration Act, 1910.” Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. N.d. Web. 29 Jun. 2015.

“Immigration Acts (1866-2001).” Canada in the Making. N.d. Web. 29 Jun. 2015.

“Chinese Exclusion Act.” Road to Justice. N.d. Web. 29 Jun. 2015.

“American Isolationism in the 1930s.” Office of the Historian. N.d. Web. 30 Jun. 2015.

“Japanese Internment.” CBClearning. N.d. Web. 29 Jun. 2015.

“PM offers apology for the Chinese Head Tax.” Youtube. Prime Minister of Canada, 21 Mar. 2013. Web. 30 Jun. 2015.

“Facts About Mental Health and Violence.” Mental Health Reporting. N.d. Web. 30 Jun. 2015.

“Eugenics.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. N.d. Web. 29 Jun. 2015.

Prompt: In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures as well as the themes and characters come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story. Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to the story.

First off, I want to point to the disgusting quote by Harper that Erika Paterson brought up in her lesson:

We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.
     —Stephen Harper, speaking at G20 news conference in Pittsburgh, September 2009. David Ljunggren. “Every G20 Nation wants to be Canada, insists PM”. Reuters News Online. 25 Sept 2009.

Suggesting something as ridiculous as this needs a willful ignorance about the history of this country. Or, more likely, it is rewriting history where we are Chapter 1 of this place, rather than Chapter 15, as Asch suggests. In his article “Canadian Sovereignty and Universal History,” Asch uses two quotes from Thomas King as the base of his argument, one is the “If this is your land, where are your stories?” line by the Gitxsan elder that we are already familiar with, and the other is that, to the Gitxsan, we (settlers and their descendants) “came up as Chapter 15 of the story… a little too early perhaps” (29-30). So, it is as if Harper responded to the Gitxsan elder with ‘one hell of a story.’

In the context of his speech, which was delighting in the idea that Canada deserved no blame for the economic crisis, it is a subtle insult; a mean trick; sleight of the backhand slap.

I want to share this video with you:

It was shown at the Bill Reid Gallery recently, in a Beau Dick exhibition (the artist at the end is Beau Dick). Although it is a response to the Enbridge pipeline controversy, it also makes me think of how Canadian lakes are being turned into mine dumps. There is a caricature of Harper – it is quite hilarious.

Harper’s insistence of placing the settlement of Europeans into Canada as the beginning of this place is in itself a trick; for then he is able to say ‘we never colonized other countries, (because we colonized our own).’ With that in mind, let’s read an excerpt of King’s “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial”:

“When I made that rather simplistic comparison between pre-colonial and post-colonial, I left out one of the players, rather like talking about pre-pubescence and post-pubescence without mentioning puberty. My apologies. It was a trick to make you think I was going to say something profound, when, in fact, I was going to make the rather simplistic observation that in the case of pre- and post-colonial, the pivot around which we move is puberty and colonialism. But here, I’m lying again. Another trick, I’m afraid, for in puberty’s case, the precedent, the root, and the antecedent are, at least, all part of a whole, whereas in the case of colonialism–within a discussion of Native literature–the term has little to do with the literature itself. It is both separate from and antithetical to what came before and what came after.” (184)

Here, he uses playful language to make a significant point: The trick of time makes an assumption of chronology dangerous. This goes hand-in-hand with Lutz’ statement that “we are still in that contact zone,” and Paterson’s statement that “we may not be able to listen to the Indigenous stories of the past, but we can learn to listen today” (4). The assumption by Lutz that some of us tackled last week is tempered by his earlier statement that “not only are settler populations and indigenous people still meeting in zones of mutual incomprehension… they are also still creating and telling new contact stories and challenging the old ones” in the aptly titled “First Contact, Over and Over Again” (4). Using the terms “pre-colonial,” “colonial,” and “post-colonial” is unsuitable, because it is hard–or pointless–to delineate what begins and ends.

What those terms suggest is that there is a “time of attrition” vs. a “time of progress,” which is wrong. As King says, “Ironically, while the term itself–post-colonial–strives to find new centres, it remains, in the end, a hostage to nationalism” (185).

King prefers the terms “tribal,” “polemical,” “associational,” and “interfusional” to describe Native literature. The latter is pertinent, as it’s the fusion of the oral and the written, and he points to Harry Robinson as the best example.

Upon reading King, I did not know that his almost-oral way of writing is largely influenced by Robinson. So much of his writing seemed like a speech, delivered in the spur of the moment. However, I found the Coyote sections of Green Grass Running Water very jarring. I had no idea that Coyote was the trickster figure, or divinity–“Father”–of Indigenous storytelling, although that soon became apparent. These pages became magical, especially when I read out loud.

So, when I read Robinson’s “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England,” I jumped straight to performance. It reminded me of story-signing, for speaking is slowed down to allow for the fluidity of sign language. I must admit, I groaned when I saw how long it was; nonetheless, the many punctuated pauses allowed for the ease of breath, as well as the use of gesture. It eschewed literary grammar to uphold oral syntax, because who cares about grammar when you have the magic of storytelling?

While reading, there was the pervading sense of “this is Coyote’s time, his moment.” This reminded me of switching from the past to present tense to create urgency, one of my favourite tricks in writing dialogue. Robinson is not only the master of blending orality and literacy, but manipulating time–when the Indians suddenly appear in the King’s chamber, he does not need to say “all of a sudden” to do that.

After performing for my friend, she read the King’s lines and imitated Harper. It was hilarious.

Works Cited

Asch, Michael. “Canadian Sovereingty and Universal History.” Stored Communities: Narratives of Contact and Arrivial in Constituting Political Community. Ed. Rebecca Johnson, and Jeremmy Webber Hester Lessard. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Print, 2011. 29-39. Print.

Franey, Evan. “(Spiritual) Assumption(s).” Liminal Space between Story and Literature. UBC Blogs, 13 Jun. 2015. Web. 20 Jun. 2015.

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183-190. Print.

Milewski, Terry. “Lakes across Canada face being turned into mine dump sites.” CBC News. 16 Jun. 2008. Web. 19 Jun. 2015.

Leung, Marlene. “Pipeline primer: What you need to know about Northern Gateway.” CTV News. 17 Jun. 2014. Web. 19 Jun. 2015.

Lutz, John. “Myth Understandings: First Contact, Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Conflict. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 1-15. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2.3.” ENGL 470A: Canadian Studies. UBC Blogs, 2015. Web. 19 Jun. 2015.

Stephen Harper, speaking at G20 news conference in Pittsburgh, September 2009. David Ljunggren. “Every G20 Nation Wants to be Canada, Insists PM.” Reuters News Online. 25 Sept. 2009. Web. 20 Jun. 2015.

“Meet Beau Dick ‘Maker of Monsters’.” Youtube. LaTiesha Fazakas, 12 Jul. 2012. Web. 19 Jun. 2015.

“Haida 3: Save Our Waters” by KINNIE STARR feat. Ja$e El Nino. Youtube. Amanda Strong, 1 Dec. 2014. Web. 19 Jun. 2015.

Prompt: We began this unit by discussing assumptions and differences that we carry into our class. In “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz makes an assumption about his readers (Lutz, “First Contact” 32). He asks us to begin with the assumption that comprehending the performances of the Indigenous participants is “one of the most obvious difficulties.” He explains that this is so because “one must of necessity enter a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the Europeans.” Here, Lutz is assuming either that his readers belong to the European tradition, or he is assuming that it is more difficult for a European to understand Indigenous performances – than the other way around. What do you make of this reading? Am I being fair when I point to this assumption? If so, is Lutz being fair when he makes this assumption?

I found the Lutz readings very interesting. They challenged my beliefs, and supplemented some of what I already knew (or thought I knew) about “first contact.” He makes a few assumptions–including the one above–but that is a natural fallacy of the human condition. In stating that “one of necessary enter a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the Europeans,” he is not necessarily assuming that the reader is European in heritage, as he acknowledges that people have different worldviews, especially in different times, or even over time. 

However, he does seem to assume that it was exceedingly more difficult for Europeans to understand the greeting performances of Indigenous people than it was for the other way around. Nonetheless, in the context of his argument, that is a pretty intriguing assumption to make. He’s challenging us to be mindful of our own assumptions–be aware of our imagination. As he points out, “The hidden, and so more rarely engaged challenge, is to step outside and see one’s own culture as alien and to discern the mythic in the performances of one’s own histories” (32).

Although saying, “Native people lived in a world where there was no firm divide between the natural and the spirit world” seems to gloss things over, he qualifies that by saying, “a closer look at the Europeans shows that their rational behaviour was determined in part, by their non-rational spiritual beliefs” (32). In his notes, he clarifies his use of the word ‘spiritual’:

“Admittedly, the word ‘spiritual’ fits imperfectly, since the distinction between the spiritual and non-spiritual world probably did not exist in indigenous thinking, nor would it have for many Europeans at the time; it is an approximation, referring to the more ‘immaterial’ features of their world views” (n. 180).

Keep in mind, Lutz is not trying to undersell the strangeness of the Europeans to Indigenous people; but rather, emphasize that ‘spirituality’ contours the lens one looks at the world through.

In “Myth Understandings: First Contact, Over and Over Again,” Lutz points out that when “comparing indigenous and explorer accounts… we are asked to evaluate written versus oral traditions and then even more challenging, to decide between explanations based on different notions of what is real and what is imaginary” (2).

In other words, they are stories, told by people with different cultural lenses. But while the Indigenous may not have distinguished nature from spirit, the Europeans confused religion, science, and conquest.

The idea of divinity, or spirituality, is something that has been assumed in many cultures over time, going all the way back to pre-History. However, Abrahamic religions like Christianity are rather unique in assuming that there is One Almighty God that rules over everything, rather than individual deities or spirits that preside in different places. Therefore, Indigenous superstition was compared to “mythology” —the religions they replaced. Thus, it was considered “primitive,” according to “rational thought,” or Spencer’s “scientific knowledge” (for more on Spencer, see my second blog).

Colombus’ account of the “Indies” was largely coloured by his readings of Marco Polo, and Classical discussions of “the Other” by Pliny, Homer, and Herodotus (2). He may well have believed Raleigh’s Discovery of Guiana, if he lived during that time. Travel-books were all the rage in the 17th century, and they were marked by an outlandish fascination with the exotic–a winking “I was here, and you weren’t.”

Lutz argues “that the ‘rational European stories’ that pass for realist accounts, are in fact as rooted in a European mythology as others are in an indigenous ‘myth world'” (6). He illustrates that while different Indigenous groups became disillusioned with their original assumptions about the Europeans, even if they never quite distinguished imagination from reality, European nations stayed firm in their belief that they were superior. So, it is wrong to assume that he meant the Indigenous people were at fault when he said understanding their performances was “one of the most obvious difficulties” (32). Both participated in first contact, and the stories that arose, but “whether or not indigenous people thought of the Europeans as gods, European observers were hoping to see themselves in that role” (32).

If they were made in “God’s image,” the Natives were something “inferior.”

Now that is an assumption.

Works Cited:

Franey, Evan. “Examining the Intersection Between Orality and Literacy.” Liminal Space between Story and Literature. UBC Blogs, 22 May 2015. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.

Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Encounters on the North American West Coast.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 30-45. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.

Lutz, John. “Myth Understandings: First Contact, Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Conflict. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 1-15. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.

Narr, Karl J. “Prehistoric religion.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.

Raliegh, Walter. “The Discovery of Guiana” [full title: The discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden city of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado)]. Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, 7 Feb. 2013. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.

I had a hard time trying to distill single lines into a list, because the way I related to these stories was through the writer’s elaboration. They way they built thoughts upon thoughts—intersecting ideas like a spider does silk, creating a web of memories—struck a chord with me.

“My home was within the pages of a good fantasy book, or the home I created with my sister in our doll and toy imagining. My imaginary world was a home of sorts. I cannot say I have ever had a sense of that in reality…

Despite this lack of homeyness I experienced growing up, the ocean was always a place that I go to feel ‘home’. From an early age, my grandparents cottage on a cliff overlooking Ganges Harbour on Salt Spring Island was my home… The sadness would be there always, but the water, with its renewing waves, had a cleansing effect. During the confusion and drama of adolescence, I ran to the beach five blocks from my house in Tsawwassen. I knew that the beach was a sign of something bigger than myself.”

— Hannah Vaartnou, .home is in your heart.

“To cope with my homesickness my dreams quickly became my home and acted as a temporary salvation. I dreamed about the pink house and my grandmother’s farm in Zimbabwe. I would wake up thinking I was back on the farm visiting the elephants, and in the canoe that we would take down the crocodile infested river. Over time with making new friends, the memories in my dreams slowly started to become part of the present… The same sense of adventurousness I felt canoeing down the river in Zimbabwe was replicated in the forests of Bowen Island were I would participate in thrilling games of hide and seek…  I began to realize that I could have more than one home. After all, it is a fluid concept that can be recreated through nostalgia and collective memory. Places are always connected, because ‘there’ is what creates ‘here’.” 

— Sarah Steer, “Wherever I go I carry ‘home’ on my back”

“My first home was in a friendly neighbourhood next to all of my childhood friends. It was a great home with a big backyard, a trampoline and friendly neighbours, but eventually we moved. This was frightening for me as a child; moving my entire life into an unfamiliar place with unexplored corners was absolutely devastating. Yet, like my mom explained to me, this new house would soon become my home and it would feel just as warm and welcoming as the house before. The backyard was smaller, but it was big enough to fit our trampoline.”

— Hailey Froehler, The Ambiguity of “Home”

I have a trampoline in my story too, except it was a friend’s not mine. I found it hard to articulate how special it was–in oral storytelling, you can just change your tone. I loved wrestling and spending my days there. A trampoline is a kind of a bouncy doormat that says ‘All Kids Welcome.’

For Hailey, her trampoline was something that helped the transition into her new home; some piece of memory that represented her resting place, at the same time as excitement and play. For me, my friend’s trampoline was something new–something that beckoned, “Hey, don’t you want to jump off the roof onto me?”–but now I feel at home whenever I see a trampoline.

The idea of home is more important than home in a way. “Home” is a way of organizing our memories. Someone can recreate memories to fit in their new homes, or use memorabilia to remind of their old homes. According to the Psychologist Gordon Bower, memories are organized into nodes–an activation of one node may set off a bunch of other nodes, like when one memory spurs another memory, or even when a smell evokes something from the past. That can be your mother’s cooking, the ocean, a canoe, or a trampoline. Nodes are organized into hierarchical trees, depending on how many associations one has. “Home” is always powerful–near the center of one’s life–it can mean so many things, and draw so many connections.

A web of memories.

As Sarah says: “Places are always connected, because ‘there’ is what creates ‘here.’

The ambiguity of home lies in the impossibility to fully define it. Is it “there,” or is it “here”? Is it a tangible place, or a feeling within you?

The thing I love about Chamberlin’s If This is your Land, Where are your Stories? is the close relationship he draws between home, stories, and dreaming. As he illustrates, the Odyssey is predicated on a ten year dream of “home,” and makes for an amazing story. In a way, the journey is more essential than the destination, and many First Nations long for home in the same way, weaving stories in remembrance. If you think about it, so many stories revolve around the same dream.

Hannah and Sarah both talk about using their imagination to inspire a sense of home. Yet, they used tangible things that informed their sense of belonging.

Both Salt Spring and Tsawwassen are very dear to me, and I felt like I’ve been cleansed in those beaches like Hannah. So, Sarah’s story naturally reminded me of canoeing there. When I was young I was very imaginative, and I’d imagine being Robin Hood in the woods, or being chased by serpents in the canoe. While Hannah used dolls, I used action figures. But personally, I preferred dressing up. Whether, I was Batman or James Bond, I wanted to meet my match–especially if he was evil. One Halloween I knocked on a door, and when it opened up I saw Captain Hook, who looked at my costume and said, “Finally!” I was Robin Hood, but it was close enough. I didn’t say “Trick or Treat,” I just drew my sword for a duel. However, I was oblivious. In my dreaming, I did not realize others antagonized me. Those things become apparent when you grow up; you just have to take the good with the bad. When I was 19, my grandma died of brain cancer in Salt Spring, and my grandpa died of lung cancer in Tsawwassen. But those places are still home.

Nonetheless, you must be allowed to dream.

A starved dream, that just makes me think of Tess of the D’Urbervilles –

“She was kneeling in the window-bench, her face close to the casement, where an outer pane of rain-water was sliding down the inner pane of glass. Her eyes rested on the web of a spider, probably starved long ago, which had been mistakenly placed in a corner where no flies ever came, and shivered in the slight draught through the casement.”

Works Cited:

Bower, Gordon. “Orginizational Factors in Memory.” Cognitive Psychology 1 (1970): 18-46. Web. 08 Jun. 2015.

Froehler, Hailey. “The Ambiguity of Home.” English 470A- Oh Canada, Exploring Canadian Literature and Storytelling. Blogs.ubc, 05 Jun. 2015. Web. 08 Jun. 2015.

Hardy, Thomas. “Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891): Chapter LI.” Victorian London. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Jun. 2015.

Steer, Sarah. “Wherever I go, I carry “home” on my back.” English 470A | Canadian Studies. Blogs.ubc, 05 Jun. 2015. Web. 08 Jun. 2015.

Vaartnou, Hannah. “.home is in your heart.” Hannah and Canada. Blogs.ubc, o5 Jun. 2015. Web. 08 Jun. 2015.

2000 was a big year for me. It was one of the first real turning points in my life, and it included a transition away from my home of almost 10 years. Right around the turn of the century, our house was being renovated, so we lived with my aunt’s family in Boundary Bay.

Boundary Bay is between Point Roberts and Tsawwassen, and its beautiful beach lets in crescent pools of water that you can walk over for miles.

It’s hard to believe it was only six months. When you are younger time goes by so slowly. I guess that’s why home is so important in the formative years, but I felt at home there. I quickly became best friends with a neighbour two houses from us. He had a trampoline, and a great dane cross that jumped from that trampoline over the fence, or from the roof to the trampoline.

For the first time in my life, it was complete freedom. I came and went between the two houses, and no one kept tabs on me. In the summer we went to the beach, and in the fall we dealt a small trade in mighty mite fire crackers.

We would always sneak through the border (a hedge) to Point Roberts on missions for candy, and stand over it joking we were half American half Canadian. There was a house that had Canadian flags on one window, and American on the other. It served as a reminder that there are borders—a difference between home and homeland; but I knew the First Nations lived without borders, and found that interesting about them.

Being away from home, the idea of home became more abstract to me.

As a deaf boy my vocabulary was improving every day, and it seemed like that ran parallel to my experience of culture. I was going to Sexsmith Elementary School, which had a special class for the hard-of-hearing. I was one of the only white students in the school, which was mostly made up of Asians – part Vietnamese, Chinese and Filipino, and half Indian. But, while I noticed the uniqueness of our cultures, I noticed the larger difference between the hearing and the deaf.

Sexsmith was a long way from my own neighbourhood, but I was pretty much only one in that small group of hard-of-hearing students that was able to interact with the hearing kids.

I remember going to assemblies for cultural events like Chinese New Year and Diwali—there were fireworks in the gym, which I loved. The school did a good job valuing the diversity of the student body, and everyone was respectful. Nonetheless, on the playground, we congregated according to ethnicity. When we played soccer the Indians formed an exclusive fighting force so it was often me, Kevin (who was Chinese), my best friend Gevan (who was white), and Nelson (the lone Indian who would play on our side) against them. So basically: It was twelve of them, led by someone who was popular for giving everyone yogurt and hustling lunchables under the table, versus a trifecta of Evans—Evan, Gevan, and Kevin—with Nelson, our fellow outcast. However, the games went on forever; they decided when games ended, so they always ‘won.’

We were all kind of connected by popular culture, so we traded Pokemon cards in the hallway, or emulated our favourite wrestlers in the carpeted area.

I’ll layeth the smack down on your candy ass, jabroni.

Every day, I would get up at five in the morning to drive into the city to school. We would beat rush hour, and I would get dropped off at Gevan’s an hour before class. After daycare, I would go back there. I felt at home at his place, just like I did at my aunt’s or my best friend’s in Boundary Bay.

I kind of throw around the word “best friend,” but I think anyone who’s important to your idea of “home” is your best friend. Whether story signing or verbally, I always felt at home telling stories–having friends to share stories with is special.

In the year 2000, my teacher-of-the-deaf told me to go to normal classes full time, but that I was always welcome. Last year, I told her that was really important to me and my sense of belonging, and she cried. It just goes to show that stories can diverge, parallel, and intersect.

Works Cited

Taylor, Steve. “Why Does Time Seem to Pass at Different Speeds?” Psychology Today. Psychology Today Magazine, 03 Jul. 2011. Web. 05 Jun. 2015.

“Boundary Bay.” Boundary Bay Weather. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Jun 2015.

“The Rock makes fun of Triple H [still]”. Youtube. 27 Jan. 2009. Web. 05 Jun. 2015.