I’m so grateful to have read stories of home from many of my classmates this week. So many of them have touched my heart and brought me to realizations about my own definition of home.
Cycling through homes – physical and personal
One of the most inspiration aspects of these stories was how many of us spoke about finding and making new homes. For a variety of reasons, many of us have left a previous home behind. Whether it was unhealthy, unstable, dangerous, or simply no longer fulfilling a need, we’ve moved out of old homes, and taken the brave and scary risk of trying to find another. Some of you have moved to new houses, new cities and new countries, and I have so much admiration for all of your courage.
While in all of the stories I read, old homes were left, not all of these stories ended in finding a new home. For many of us this is an ongoing process, and many of us will continue to change our homes throughout our lives. Kevin Hatch’s post made me consider how cycling through communities and friendships is also a form of moving from home to home, as we find acceptance in different circles and lay our hearts in different hands.
Reading many of your posts helped me realize that it’s okay not to know if I’ve found a home yet, it’s okay to be looking, and that home does not always come easily.
West Coast Dreams
One recurring idea I found in the posts I read was that of the West Coast ideal, what Vancouver symbolizes to people living elsewhere, or as Marianne Brownie puts it, what it means to “live among soaring mountains and beautiful but unpredictable oceans”. While I was still living in Winnipeg, coming to BC was a dream for me and my friends too; we saw it as a way to escape the snow, and as a city all-together more fabulous and exciting. Of course, this idealized envisioning of what life on the West Coast is like was not entirely accurate and likely didn’t prepare us for Vancouver’s high cost of living. However, the idea of this land as physically and naturally beautiful and thus a desirable home is deeply entrenched in Canadian ideology.
As someone who adores nature and loves to be in it, it’s difficult but important for me to consider the conflict which lies between a love of this land and my presence here as a settler whose society is responsible for actively exploiting and harming it. Here’s an interesting book called Reinventing Eden by environmentalist Carolyn Merchant which discusses our perceptions of nature as a commodity.
Homes and Shelter
Finally, in my reflection on this assignment and reading your blogs, I want to talk about the important distinction between being a person looking for a home in which they feel they belong, and being a person truly dealing with homelessness. While I may not have felt at home in a lot of the spaces I’ve lived, I have always had shelter and a place to rest my head, something which far too many Canadians don’t have today.
With the (even more freezing than usual) temperatures in Manitoba this year, stories of needless suffering due to the cold have been emerging. While governments are undeniably responsible for the ongoing homelessness in our country, they’ve failed to rectify their errors, or even to provide the basic means of living to many homeless people. While there are shelters in Winnipeg, many of them are difficult to get into, and fill up quickly. I was happy to see this new warming shelter opening up, and I think more spaces need to be created which allow people to come and rest their heads, no questions asked, because shelter is a basic human right which we all deserve.
Work Cited
Bae, Tony. “Home”. Web blog post. J.T. Bae: Korean and Canadian. UBC Blogs WordPress. 30 Jan. 2019.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/golgiapp/2019/01/30/home/
Brownie, Marianne. “To Home and Back”. ENGL 470 Blog. UBC Blogs WordPress. 27 Jan. 2019.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/marianneengl470/2019/01/27/to-home-and-back/
Hatch, Kevin. “Home is Where Your Rump Rests”. Web blog post. ENGL 470 99C Blog: Oh! Canada? UBC Blogs WordPress. 28 Jan. 2019.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/kevinhatch/2019/02/04/45/
Lu, Katrina. “Assignment 2:2 | The Terrifying but Beautiful Sea”. English 470 Blog: Identity in Stories. UBC Blogs WordPress. 30 Jan. 2019.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/katrinalu470/2019/01/29/assignment-22-the-terrifying-but-beautiful-sea/
Lumsden, Cassie. “2:2 – Home: The Family and the Familiar” Canada’s Literature: UBC ENGL 470A Blog. UBC Blogs WordPress. 28 Jan. 2019.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl470blog/2019/01/28/2-2-home-the-family-and-the-familiar/
Merchant, Carolyn. Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, New York, 2013.
https://www-taylorfrancis-com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/books/9780203079645
Stackelberg, Marina von. “Winnipeg’s First 24/7 Warming Centre for People Under the Influence Set to Open This Week | CBC News.” CBC News, CBC Radio Canada, 4 Feb. 2019,
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-warming-shelter-opening-1.5004365.
Truhar-Pejnovic, Vladana. “Assignment 2:2 – My Home Story”. Dana’s CanLit Blog. UBC Blogs WordPress. 30 Jan. 2019.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/canlit470dana/2019/01/28/assignment-22-my-home-story/