Question 4: Home
Home can be a problematic place to determine, because home only exists in the past. The home we remember, think of, long for, is simply a memory; it is a figment of our imagination, not a reality. The emotions that bring about our fondness for home are only stirred up in its absence. We relish the home we no longer have. Moreover, our surroundings and way of life change from day to day and place to place. Home takes on new meanings, and the things we value in a home change accordingly. Thus there is never a steady definition of home, but rather it embodies a dynamic and fluid existence.
“There’s no place like home!”
As I alluded to in my previous blog post, a lot can change in a time zone, and given the five and half we are home to in Canada, great diversity is manifested within our borders. Thus there is no ubiquitous definition of home throughout Canada. As places change, so do the values that home represents to the people of these places. Moreover, given the cultural diversity we are accustomed to, social norms place an emphasis on accepting a wide diversity of what home symbolizes amongst people of different cultures. While we are all accustomed to ways of life that are considered uniquely Canadian, even these are subject to outside cultural influences that further complicate our definition of home, and lead us to question to what extent “uniquely” satisfies the term “Canadian”.
This bears sharp contrast to Canada as it was several hundred years ago, a place not symbolized by wide acceptance of differing values, but rather outright ignorance of them. This is what Chamberlin alludes to, and that put differently, he suggests much of the conflict that has existed has been characterized by the dismissal of different beliefs, done through condescension and degradation (78). To the European settlers, the ways of life of the Indigenous peoples struck them as barbaric and animal-like, of a lesser pedigree to their own advanced state. However, as Chamberlin notes, the Native people thought of these European strangers in a very similar way (11). They saw them as strange and bizarre, and were sure their own way of life was far more rational and advanced. In such cases, Chamberlin suggests what is considered strange or familiar is thus culturally determined, and it often results in conflict, as absurdity (imagination) clashes with the rationality (reality) (140).
Chamberlin’s illustration into the differing perspectives of Canadian settlement provides an alternate view to what most born and raised Canadians are accustomed to. For the indigenous peoples, their definition of home was subject to drastic change the day Europeans arrived. What constituted home to the Native peoples would become increasingly, if not entirely determined by the Europeans. As European settlement in Canada progressed and increased in size, so too did the rationality of the European story and perspective, while drowning out the voice and story of their Indigenous counterparts. It has become commonplace in our understanding of Canada’s history as a nation: European settlement was a progressive step towards the founding of “our” nation. However, as Chamberlin argues, neither story is true, neither perspective more rational than the other (230). When we fail to acknowledge this, perspectives are ignored while undue emphasis is placed on others, further manifesting the issue and intensifying the distortion of stories.
Works Cited
Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: A.A. Knopf Canada, 2003. Print.
“The Wizard of Oz (1939).” The Wizard of Oz. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
Hello to my fellow Calgarian!
Very good post. I really do agree with your post. I struggled with this question, as there is no real definition to home. Do you feel after reading the text that there can be many definitions of home? Do you feel that it can vary from person to person, culture to culture? That there can really be no wrong answer to what home is?
Hope that question makes sense. After reading a few classmates blogs, I have come to the realization that I do not think there can be a wrong or right answer to what home is. It is how we respect and treat other cultures idea of home that really matters.
Absolutely I think home can mean different things, and I think you are right in your assertion. Given how different we are as people and cultures one could only expect that. Yet I think there are also unmistakable similarities in what home symbolizes that are present throughout the globe, feelings more instinctual and basic.
Hi Alex, thank you for your post on the topic of home. What a universal yet highly personal and subjective term that emerges and evolves as our own environment evolves. Your photo of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and the quote “there’s no place like home” brought me to the thought about “when” the concept of homes emerge for us? Is there a particular point in time when the concept of home becomes real to us? Does that happen only once we’re placed outside of what we define as home, or when it is taken away from us? (speaking both figuratively and literally).
This thought brought me to reflect on my personal experience of growing up in a rather transient environment. I moved from city to village throughout my first 5 years while growing up in China. We then moved to Canada reuniting with my mother and brother. While establishing ourselves in Canada, our family moved between a number of different neighbourhoods thus changing schools on an almost yearly basis. I remember by the time I reached highschool, I had already attended 7 different schools. Therefore, I never established a real physical connection in my concept of home. But at the time, home to me was always Canada. I remember when growing up, my parents’ friends would always tease my brother and I, and ask us if we were Chinese first or Canadian first, and we would always proudly declare that we are Canadian, because that’s what it said on our Citizenship card. However, I remember my personal concept of home emerged in a true way for me, when I first traveled back to China as a teenager where I connected with my extended relatives and made connections to where the roots of my upbringing and saw first hand where the stories my parents’ would often share with us came from.
The concept of home to me became real when I came to terms that it is both China and Canada, Chinese and Canadian, where my family and friends are, it is spiritual and natural natural world, it is neither one particular location, social environment or ‘way of life’. And it is constantly evolving.
As Chamberlin puts it “here and nowhere. Or maybe it is elsewhere” (Chamberlin 74).
Vivian
Hi Vivian
I really identified with your story. As a dual citizen between the U.S. and Canada, who moved at a similar age to yourself, I always found myself facing the same question. Which one are you? For the first 5-7 years I truly identified myself as an American. I despised Canada when I first moved here, for the sole reason that I missed what I had come to know as home. But I also think it’s fun to be different. Now when I go back to the U.S. I always identify myself as a Canadian, largely because I’ve spent the majority of my life here, but also because its a unique experience, and reminds you of home
Hi Alex,
I enjoyed your response to this question of home. I believe the different perspectives and positions of home are what make it such a unique word/concept. As you mentioned throughout European settlement certain perspectives of home were and are ignored while others are put to the forefront. When it comes to industrialization throughout Canada I think the concept of home plays an interesting role.
As most of us know the Enbridge pipeline deal is looming within BC. Personally I don’t agree with the pipeline for many reasons that I wont go into, but at the same time I understand some of the necessities many believe will come from it. Bringing the concept of home into the equation paints the scenario in a way that has been all too familiar throughout the history of First Nations and European settlers interaction. Which is one of displacement and degradation of land (home) and nature that contains much history, or as Chamberlain might say underlying aboriginal title. Today it’s not just First Nation’s people who are against the degradation of “home” by the pipeline but also a reported 60% British Colombians who are against it.
It also shows the values of home differ from place to place as @jrobichaud alluded to. On the other side of the BC-Alberta border, the majority of values with regards to the pipeline a far different from those on the west. To many people in Alberta, the energy industry provides a high standard of life that other industries do not provide, and to them the pipeline represents another stepping stone in the strong economy they’ve become accustomed to.
Hi Alex,
I think it is important to emphasize as you have that home is a construct and not something concrete that we can reach out and touch, though the abstract can be associated with the tangible. This is often done when people associate houses with home, and it can be easy to think of home simply as one’s house or residence, but it is not always that simple. When I am at my house, whether I feel at home is based on what type of people are around. Likewise, I can be miles from my house and feel at home when I’m with the right people. In this way, my conception of home is one of a favorable condition that is largely but not fundamentally social; I think feeling at home is ultimately being comfortable with and having an affinity for my surroundings, and having the right people around me is what most frequently induces these feelings. Home in this sense is fluid, as you mention in your opening paragraph, because my social environment is also fluid and regularly shifting.
I think you also raise interesting points about how certain feelings for home are evoked only when one is away from home. I believe this is comparable to an issue that I have thought about a lot, that being our conceptions of our ethnicity or nationality. When we are in Canada, many of us acknowledge that we are Canadian but refer to ourselves as something else; I may tell people that I am Dutch even though I was born and raised in Canada, do not speak Dutch, and have never been to the Netherlands. For me and many others, our identity as Canadians becomes far more pronounced when we are outside Canada, which many of us consider home in a broad sense. When we put ourselves in different contexts, our feelings about who we are and what is important to us can change, and in this way presence—the presence of a particular identity and the feelings, practices, and symbols that accompany it—is seemingly magnified by the absence of certain conditions.
However, while notions of home can be magnified by its absence in the same way, are ‘the emotions that bring about our fondness for home’ really only excited in its absence, as suggested? Often feelings of comfort and warmth cause me to feel at home because those are what I associate with it, and feeling at home involves me reflecting on my fondness of it. This in turn contributes to the arousal of the emotions responsible for my fondness of home, even though I already consider myself there. So I think there may be room to say that the emotions contributing to our affinity for home can be excited in its presence, even though absence also plays an important role in the process, especially at the start.
-Spencer
You make a great point Spencer. Emotions of home can definitely be amplified, if not most felt in the initial presence of home. I do find however, that when we are at home we often come to take these feelings for granted however, and it is only in its sudden or soon-to be absence that we began to desire them again.