I can see by yours eyes
that you come from far away
Been travelling all night
and you’d like a place to stay – Shannon McNally
Home means different things to me. It doesn’t strike me as unusual to have more than one place I consider home. Arctic Bay is my home, it is here that I’m making my life. I own my home here (really Leah owns it) and it is here that I’m raising my family. Within Arctic Bay my home is the House. My biggest sense of home is where I grew up, in Roblin Manitoba. Depending on where I was, and the circumstances I was in, my answer to "Where’s home" would differ. On a trip overseas I might answer "Canada", at the local Northern it might be "the big blue house with the pointy roof." And I’ve moved quite a bit so my answers have changed. I’ve always considered the places I’ve lived home, even if I had no intention of ending my days there.
There has been a lot of talk lately in the northern blogosphere about home, and being a "guest". It seems to be the hot button topic this year. So I suppose I should finally try to coalesce these thoughts that have been ricocheting around my head and put them out to the world.
The centre of the storm is that some people who live and work up here have been told (by representatives of their employer) to remember that they are "guests" here and to act accordingly. I pretty sure that if it happened to me, that I’d let the person know in no uncertain terms that living and working in a part of Canada, any part of Canada, pretty much affords me resident status and I’d take it up further up the chain with the department. Could you imagine the uproar if the Nunavumiut who choose to live, work, love or whatever in Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg or anywhere else in the south were told to remember that they were guests down there, whether or not they planned on living there for two years or to the end of their days.
Having said that I’m also aware that, amongst a certain segment of the population, I’ll always be an outsider. But really that is no different than many other parts of the country. I’ve never lived in Cape Breton or Newfoundland but I’ve been told, that there are segments of those societies that would consider someone who couldn’t trace their lineage back some generations would always to be from "away". Welcomed to be sure, but always the outsider, no matter how far they put their roots down.
I’ve just finished an excellent book The Water In Between by Kevin Patterson. Pick it up the first chance you get. Patterson, in a deep melancholy after a breakup with a woman, buys a boat and sails to the South Pacific. I know how he feels, for a long time when Janice was sick and after her death, I dreamed of buying a sailboat and circumnavigating the globe. I read a lot of sailing magazines and books, and it was probably a good thing I didn’t find myself at a boat brokerage with money in my pocket.
Ultimately the book is about home, and the nature of what we truly desire. In between sailing down to Penrhyn Atoll and bringing the boat back to Victoria, Patterson works as a Doctor in both Winnipeg and Rankin Inlet. He talks of conversations with Pere Louis Fournier of Repulse Bay (who had lived there since 1948 – hard to think of as a guest) amongst others. He also mentions "One assertive young woman told me southerners just came up there like a visit to the zoo, to see the oddities, and are relieved to get away again to brag of having been there". It is a little extreme of a view, but to a certain extent I have to raise my hand and say "guilty".
I don’t for a moment claim to speak for all southerners, but I came north (for a large part) for the adventure and the uniqueness of the place. Not like a visit to the zoo but I was filled with stories by members who had been up here years before. One of my NCO’s made the last RCMP dog team patrol in the Eastern Arctic, others had been stationed at Alexander Fiord. And I still delight in the fact that I live in a place that is pretty extreme in most peoples view, I mean lets face it I love telling people that the sun doesn’t rise here for three months in the winter. Yeah, I’m guilty. There were other reasons I wanted to come up here but really they pale in comparison and I could have satisfied them elsewhere.
When I first came to Arctic Bay one of my first priorities was to meet with the Elders here. In that meeting, aside from complaining about the ATV’s driving around all night, their biggest concern was that mounties came here and stayed for a maximum of two years, leaving just when they were starting to get comfortable with them, and then the process would start all over again. I made a commitment to them then and there that, in as much as I could control it, I would stay longer. I didn’t know how long but that it would be longer than two years. At the time I could not possibly have foreseen that I would fall in love here and settle but that’s not the point. I was motivated at the time by my feeling that this was my home for as long as I was here, and that it was important that I wasn’t looking immediately to the end of my stay, counting down the time 730 days, 729, 728…
If you chose to come live in Nunavut (or anywhere else for that matter) you aren’t a guest. But, and this is important, you can encourage other people to see you as a guest. So if you want to encourage that attitude here is the best advice I can give you.
1) Hang out only with other southerners. Be very careful not to make friends with local people, people who have lived here all their lives. Only have other southerners over to your place for suppers etc. and for god sakes don’t go out on the land.
2) Talk all of the time about how you can’t wait to leave on your next vacation. If possible count down the days in a prominent manner.
3) Do not spend any of your vacation up here. Make sure that you hit the plane the first opportunity after your vacation starts.
4) If you don’t like something about where you live think to yourself "I’m only here for 2 years. I can put up with this for two years" That way it will never get improved for people that follow you.
5) Use the term "you people" a lot, it will serve to put distance between you.
There are other points but you get the idea.
Home is where the heart is, of that there is no doubt. Treat your home like your heart is in it. No matter where you are living.
Comments
6 responses
Home for me is one of those places where many of the residents can trace their genealogy to the first few decades of European settlement, and the rest of us are outsiders. OK, I exaggerate a little, and it has been changing in recent years, I think, because so many people are working in the oil industry. Out on the well sites, it is always a mix of local farm boys and footloose followers of the dollars and head office guys from who knows where, and so a different culture develops around the ties of work instead of birthplace. People working in that industry bring those new attitudes back to the community hall and the hearth.
It has been very interesting to return here with a family of my own, after fifteen years away. When I lived here before, I guess I was seen as part of my parents’ family and thus an outsider. Mom and Dad moved here in the mid ’70s and when I returned in the late ’90s they were still feeling isolated. It didn’t help that Dad worked part of each year away in the city, or that they eventually got a house in the city and lived in both places for five years while he worked full time. Many people here didn’t even know that they were still living on the farm as well.
Things changed when we came back. I had the peculiar experience of finding that everyone knew me, while I had only vague recollections of their faces. After all, I had filled my head with hundreds of new faces, whereas to the people here, I was just one slightly changed face in a familiar setting. It got worse when I became the church organist, so everyone who came to funerals got to check my name in the bulletin or whisper to their neighbour in the pew. But I also noticed that I was not an outsider in the same way my parents had been, since I had grown up here. And then there was Garth, the extrovert, who very quickly knew far more people than I. He worked at the auction barn, drove school buses, fixed computers for all sorts of people, started Tai Chi classes…
…and encouraged my Dad to get involved with the rebuilding of the rinks after the fire. He was reluctant to offer his experience as an engineer, because he is not a structural engineer, and there are liability issues. But he had tremendous knowledge of everything from the building industry to how to write grant applications, and once he got involved, he was very quickly in the thick of things. Mom was too. I haven’t asked them about it lately, but when I see them at community events I have to think, they aren’t outsiders anymore.
I must admit I am guilty of counting down to vacations. However I would count down to a vacation, living in any part of the world. Especially if that vacation is going to be warmer then the place I am living :). I don’t think that makes me less at home.
This post has made me consider what home is. Since I have lived in a few different countries and have experienced feeling like an outsider before, living here isn’t too unusual (at least I have the familiar Canadian foods here). I think because of that, I feel home is wherever the people you love are. And more importantly where your junk is stored. 🙂
So beautifully and sadly written Clare.
I’ve worked and lived all over the world. I was often in a different continent every week. Home, I’ve learned is where my wife (and now daughter) is.
I’ve made friends all over the world. People are pretty much the same all over the world – happy, sad, friendly and parochial. Whenever I’ve done the expat thing I’ve always noticed there’s an expat ghetto. In old times it was British in flavor – as the Indian writer RK Narayan said, “the British carry their culture on their back like snails carry their shells.”
In modern times, Americans are one of the new imperialists. Individual Americans abroad, in contrast to the ancient Brits, seek to blend with the culture, sometimes inappropriately so (I can’t tell you how odd it is to see a moonstruck religous white groupie in an Indian temple).
But I’ve seen the business expat Americans too…the touch of imperial America is too tempting – they create an expat ghetto, and reinforce each other’s wish to be special and above the natives.
So sad. With all the expats I worked with, I never found a cure for that one. It’s part of the cure to wish to be cured.
A wise friend once remarked that you can tell the health of a culture by its willingness to absorb immigrants.
You can tell the kindness of a culture by its ability to be an immigrant.
laura,
The small towns on the prairies always seem to have this strange dichotomy, intolerant and welcoming at the same time. Connie Kaldor described “the look” when you walk into coffee row of a strange town perfectly in a concert of hers I was at. I think, however, that most prairie towns are quite accepting of new arrivals, given the almost constant rate of arrivals or new immigrants over the fairly recent past. Growing up I remember the “strangeness” of having neighbours from India (Dr. Patel and his family), but also being friends with the boys and my parents treating them no different than anyone else and the admonishments to do the same. But at the same time I remember friends moving to other small towns and telling me about how they never fully belonged. Roblin is, despite the fact I haven’t lived there in over thir…a while, where the core of home is for me. It is where my roots run deepest. It feels somewhat strange when I return there that I’m no longer “Clare” but “Larry’s brother” or “Hugh’s son.”
I’m afraid that my writing has let me down again Jen, as I didn’t express that point so well. Everyone looks forwards to their trips and vacations, it is only natural. What I was trying to get at, so imperfectly, was not the looking forward to going “to” a destination so much as looking forward to “escaping” from where one is. It’s the sentiment of “Only 11 days until I get out of here! (or this god damned place)” that rankles me. Not the “Ah, Hawaii (France, India, Branson, whereever) here I come.
Welcome Ashok, and thank you for your thoughts. I’ve often thought it strange when travelling to, say Mexico, and seeing these huge resorts where no one interacts with anyone other than people from their own country. Give me a hotel in the “old” part of town where there is at least a chance of carrying on a conversation with someone from the country any day.
Part of the expat ghetto I know stems from people not wanting to leave their comfort zones. Let’s face it, it is easier, more comfortable, to surround yourself with similar things and ideas. Sometimes confronting things in strange places can be mighty uncomfortable, we often don’t like the view that it awakens in us.
I very much like the last line of your comment, is it your thoughts?
And I greatly enjoyed your bird pictures BTW.
Hi. Being in a self-imposed Blog Blackout, feeling homesick and singing The Ex-Pat Blues this post, stumbled over by chance as I followed the footprints in the snow from C’est Moi, struck a chord… Thanks
You’re welcome Mouse.