I moved around a lot as a kid. I wasn’t a military brat or anything, we were just relatively poor and always seeking out the cheapest rent within the same small town.
When I say “relatively” poor, I mean it. We always had enough food to eat. Most anywhere else in Canada (or the world), we would’ve been solidly middle class. Maybe we still were, in North Vancouver, but it didn’t feel like it.
My friends’ houses felt like mansions — which, I guess, they were. When my classmates would return from winter break and chat about whether they went to Hawaii or Mexico that year, I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. I’d only ever been to Thunder Bay, because my grandparents who lived there paid for the flight. But most of all, when the boys would discuss their hockey seasons I felt sick that I was restricted to watching the sport I loved on TV, instead of playing it on the ice. I felt like I missed out on a key part of the “Canadian childhood.”
Woe is me, right? I lived a Seabus ride from the largest homeless population in Canada and here I was complaining about not being able to afford top-of-the-line shin pads. I was able to make myself feel pangs of guilt by reminding myself of that fact, but it never lasted for long. What an asshole.
All that is to say, we moved six times in ten years, all within Lynn Valley — so I can’t think of one particular house that feels like home. But since all the moving was done in the same small town, I grew to connect other spots there to my idea of home.
The rainforest feels like home. The drizzling rain feels like home. Spicy tuna rolls feel like home.
Even when I left North Van for UBC across the water, my dorm room and the basement apartments that followed still felt like home because the crows would caw in the morning, I smelled the salt air when I stepped outside and the mountains were always there, in the distance.
Eventually, it stopped feeling like home. Vancouver felt small, and I suffered from the same restlessness that grips most in their early 20s, searching for a bigger and better place to make my mark.
The thing they don’t tell you about Toronto is that it kind of sucks.
It’s very cold in the winter and it’s very hot in the summer. People here love the summer because it’s not the winter. I am convinced that this is because the poor souls have never experienced a temperate climate, and their internal thermostats are permanently destroyed.
Luckily, I moved here with the love of my life, and (I’m sorry it’s about to get corny. I know you know what’s coming next) she feels like home.
Also lucky is the fact that a ton of my Vancouver friends felt the same draw to Toronto, and have ended up here with me. I think my friend group is bigger than it’s ever been, since everyone seems to migrate out here. They feel like home, too.
While I cannot abide this grey, raccoon-infested city, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. “Home is where the heart is” is trite for a reason.
Since there’s an abundance of free outdoor rinks, I’ve even started playing hockey.
Eventually, if our careers will allow it, my partner and I want to move back to the west coast, to combine the physical sensations of home — the wonderful sights and smells of the Pacific Northwest — with our emotional idea of home — i.e., each other, and our families.
But for now, we’ll have to make do with occasional trips back to see our parents, eat a spicy tuna roll and flip off Chip Wilson’s house. And each time, it’ll feel a bit more like home.