Redwood Meadows is one of those subdivisions that probably looks something like a circuit-board from above- tiny squares in rows intersected by crystalline systems of lines (roads) and strangely erratic ones (rivers). I lived there for a very short time, but I lived nearby for most of my adolescence and always had friends living there. Home is usually thought of in a possessive sense (as in “my home”) but ownership of land is incredibly complicated (maybe impossible) and the dubiousness of having a home is perfectly embodied in this community.
Every Canada Day, we’d watch the fireworks in Redwood. I’d skate at the community rink in the winters. I would take my beloved dog, the mysterious and stately Glenn Danzig, to play fetch in the park
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The neighbourhood had its own myths: house number 6969 allegedly played host to the swingers’ club, and so on. It was a neighbourhood where you’d go to hang out with one friend and wind up with a crew of 15 skateboarding down the middle of the street, holding up the traffic. Where I lived was insular and lonely, so visits to Redwood were a treat. This sense of community, or propinquity to all your friends and enemies, to the houses of girls you liked, and those of your teachers, made Redwood feel kind of like my home even though it wasn’t. Through the years, an increasing number of friends’ moved closer to the city. Redwood became a place coloured by the tincture of memories. Though a select few of the Old Guard remained, I began to think of it less as a real place and more as a some suburban ideal.
One evening, in my final year of high school, a party was held in Redwood. A wallflower is on the Cook family crest, so while I usually stayed in, I decided to indulge my more romantic side by visiting this part of my childhood I felt alienated from. Drinks were had and drama ensued as is typical of high school parties, and I ended up back in the aforementioned park consoling a dear friend who had just had a nasty fight with his girlfriend. He was visibly and audibly upset, and I sat on the other side of the picnic table chain-smoking and trying my best to alleviate his distress with silent nods and understanding grunts. A large figure emerged from the nearby woods. He asked for a cigarette. I gave him one to appease and send him on his way. To my chagrin, he stood and smoked it by the table, seemingly deaf to my friend’s tears and to the silence with which I responded to his anecdote about doing mushrooms in this park. After a long pause in conversation, during which only stilted sobs could be heard, the man returned to the woods. We laughed about his brazen lack of tact and the stupid story he had told. It was a moment of absurdity that added some levity to the dismal situation. Later I remembered him as the victim of some rather severe childhood bullying (I recall a bus-full of children chanting “FAT-YEW,” a rather uninspired pun on the name Matthew, repeatedly while our bus was stuck in the snow one afternoon), As I drove my friend home to get some much-needed sleep, I thought of that man’s complete lack of social awareness, his desire to have a conversation with or without willing participants. In light of my recollection, his awkwardness made sense. I felt guilt for wanting this guy to take the hint and shove off, after all, even though I hadn’t been party to the bullying, I hadn’t spoken out against it either.
Needless to say, the evening was not a romantic trip down memory lane. I was confronted by my own willful ignorance of past reality. Now when I think of Redwood, I do not think of it as “home,” I think of that night’s unsettling revelations.
Dr. Paterson quotes Thomas King, who asserts that assumptions are “especially dangerous when we do not even see that the premise from which we start a discussion is not the hard fact that we thought it was” (“Godzilla vs Post-Colonial” (183)). Indeed, Redwood rests on land owned by the Tsuu T’ina band. No one “owns” their home (and a home is something one usually assumes ownership of), technically the houses are all on a lease, which is up in 2049. People are becoming more reluctant to buy there because out and out ownership is not in the cards. These non-Indigenous people don’t want to make their home, or the memories or whatever it is that constitutes home, on one big rug waiting to be ripped out from under them. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? The idea of having to share their home with those whose inhabitance preceded theirs has provoked some (though certainly not all) residents to outrage.
As it turns out, the government restrictions on what Aboriginals are allowed to develop on reservations is incredibly limited and tightly controlled, to the point where it may as well not be theirs at all; the government doesn’t give them autonomy, doesn’t treat them “like grown-ups” (Libin).
The story of Redwood Meadows is confusing, mired in bureaucratic nonsense that precludes easy answers. If home is something we carry with us, that we can go back to (if only in our thoughts) when we feel lost or uncertain, than stories like this are alarming. The bottom of that mental box in which we store all of our memories is ready to fall out if only we look at our assumptions closely.For whom is Redwood a “home:” the people who live there, the Tsuu T’ina, the government who restricts development, or me, with my stupid memories? The answer (as I’m sure J. Edward Chamberlin would agree) is both all and none of the above.
Libin, Kevin. “Shackled by red tape.” The National Post 15 Feb 2008. Web. 4 June 2015.
“Tsuu T’ina flag vandalism angers Redwood Meadows residents.” CBC News Calgary 3 Jan 2013. Web. 4 June 2015