top of page
essays | places
Canada
northern warmth
I've given Canada years, and it's given me some of the most worthwhile things one can do with years. It was an accident at first, then home, then heart. A big heart and one I gravitate towards, again and again, tiny me, a vessel traveling the veins of civilization’s larger body – a body in which I’ve discovered a whole bunch of hearts.
places / stories
BC / You Gotta B to C
If Montreal is the heart and Toronto the mind, then Vancouver is the smoothie you get when those two make out in a blender.
A city by the sea is not a bad idea. The sea climate though in some places. Vancouver is plagued by a misty rain or rainy mist, a fizzle drizzle that is like a sea in the skies. At least it doesn’t do winters the way Toronto and Montreal do.
Newfoundland / Idle Idyll
Port Rexton / Unsung Towns of Unknown Dreams
the welcome illusion projected onto a place's surface
For imagination lives in the unknown, and in the foreigner’s head any town can tell any story.
Their accent worked. It sounded as far off as its place. "Newfinland" they'd pronounce it. Its own thing but without trying. I ordered the cod tongues, not taking that literally either, until they served me cod tongues. Very coastal, very fishermany – an idle idyll.
Nova Scotia / Canada's Coastal Suburb
Nova Scotia felt like a place where you'd want to start a family. Canada's coastal suburb. It made sense to experience it through the eyes and ties of someone who grew up there and who took us down memory lane to some cornerstones of her belonging.
Ontario / A Little Faster
Toronto seems a little more turbo than the rest of the country, its people busier, its lines straighter. Whether that’s a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing, is one of those things. It isn't for me per se, but it isn't not for me either. If I weren’t such a sucker for Montreal, Toronto would likely be a different story in my book.
So there we were, a congregation of trash bags, trying as hard as we could to make the majestic look ridonculous.
PEI / About that
A province that is an island or an island that is a province? Island, smiland, that's all I know. Can't say that I can say much more about Prince Edward Island. Can I offer you some pictures instead?
Quebec / Its Own Canada
Half of Quebec wants Quebec to be its own place because it is its own place. The other half wants it to be Canada because it is Canada.
In Montreal I can be myself, whoever that may be at a given time. I can live any sort of life there and most days I live a few. A culture life, a nature life, a love life.
Sliding on this rainbow of neighborhoods, I've passed through nine different apartments so far, from Point St Charles to the Mile End, and my feet have tickled many more, always with a big smile from toe to toe.
The French heritage is omnipresent and firmly embraced, sometimes with a chokehold, and very sometimes so hard that it might separate the Quebecois head from the Canadian body. More subtly, but no less notably, the French revolutionary spirit is also encoded in the local activism DNA.
I could live in Montreal for some centuries without getting bored, but of course Montrealese winters are excessive.
elsewhere
bottom of page