I am a British Columbian at heart, a Vancouver Islander in my bones.
To be fair, my Ontario roots go just as deep – generations of my people on both sides of my family were born on this Great Canadian Shield scraped level by ancient glaciers, fertile with farms and highways and the dreams of new immigrants. I was born in Toronto, but I grew up in Victoria, and perhaps my return to this city should have felt more like a homecoming.
My Grandma drove me around her town the summer before I started university and told my stories from my Dad’s growing up years – the places they lived and the schools he attended, and I walked up a stranger’s side yard to see a black cross emblazoned in concrete that marked the death of a pet bird. The people who live there now don’t know what that cross means, but I do. And a few months later, my Great Uncle drove me around his hometown and showed me the river my Grandpa used to fish, and the old post office that was a corner store for a few years, and we bought cheese curds at Reid’s Dairy because Grandpa always missed squeaky cheese after he moved out West with my Prairie-born Grandma. I have a rich heritage with deep roots in the earth, but my heart is hungry for a changing tide, for the smell of salt and moss and cherry blossoms, and smoke on the shore rising up to bright stars. Continue reading “Home (born here, not from here)”