The Simple Life {Decluttering, Part Two}

So this former tent-dwelling backpacker has acquired a houseful of stuff.

That skinny, salty-water-hair girl would have cringed at the thought, but I've got a basement and crawl spaces, a big second-hand freezer, and a 14-year-old VW. When our former, grandmotherly neighbour shows up on our doorstep with another large kid's toy she wants to give us cause she knows no one else with kids, we say yes, cause hey, we've got the space.

Analogue photos circa 2003. I actually just decluttered that grey vest *today*. This move is necessary. 

And I love it--it is the stage of life we are at, and many of these things have emotions attached to them. In many ways, I'm a different person than the one who left Quebec 10 years ago--we met and married in Europe, our kids were born in this city--which makes the sorting, giving, selling at times painful.

We've lived in this city for 9 years now. At first, it was hard for me to settle down. After 5 years of moving every 4-8 months, from dorm rooms in Toronto to a tent in the islands, from a furnished apartment in Quebec City with a view of the Chateau Frontenac to an attic garret in Austria, to a huge (but freezing) room in Greece one winter with a wrap-around balcony looking out over the Aegean sea. I've been blessed to have lived in some beautiful places, to have met more beautiful people. I got used to leaving, to living a materialistically-speaking "simple life." It was an adventurous period for discovering more of the world, of myself, of people and the faith that runs thick in my veins.

But there came a time to put down roots. To stay awhile. To commit to a place and people, a church family. To let people know me and peel back layers of self-defense and protection, layers of criticism and picking the speck out of your eye while sanding the comfy plank in my own.

After years of the transient life, once it was clear I would be moving to Germany to marry the charming German who swept me off my feet, I gave away dishes, pots and CD player to university friends, leaving a box marked "please help yourself" in the hallway of the dorm I lived in in Toronto for the summer between visiting Europe and living here.

So we planted ourselves in this rich southern German soil, our roots drinking deep from the clear blue Bodensee. Life is no longer simple. Those roots have become a network curling around and enmeshed with hundreds of other lives, not just friends but colleagues, neighbours, church, our children's beloved Kindergarten teachers.
And we're about to yank them up.

This post is the second part in a little series, here is part one.

I am from snow boots drying upside down

I am from snow boots drying upside down on the heating vents, warm air blasting away at soggy lining.

I am from a dishwasher that hadn't worked in years and remained as an island for the microwave to rest on, the microwave dishes stored inside.

I am from "the first long lane on the right" and the house with white siding.

I am from doing the dishes with mom every Tuesday and Saturday after supper, from cooling scalding corn cobs in water in that same sink at harvest time.

I am from meat and potatoes and a vegetable on the side. I am from salt and pepper and mom's cherry pies.

I am from humid August nights and crickets hopping across my bedroom floor.

I am from lining up the marshmallows from Lucky Charms before eating, and real maple syrup from our own woods.

I am from the rich Ontario farmland, humus black and sun bright fields. 

I am from hours trailing behind the tractor picking up stones, from days on the tomatoe harvester snatching clods of dirt, weeds, and frogs off the conveyor belt.

I am from jumping in the ditch when we saw the bus coming, hiding so we wouldn't have to run to catch it. I am from huddling in the grey building to keep out of the icy wind.

I am from sliced carrots and celery every day in my lunch bag, and an apple alongside my sisters, catching up after school.

I'm from treat night on Fridays and popcorn after AWANA on Wednesday nights.

I'm from too much prime time TV and too many isolated hours after school.

I'm from sweaty gyms and a sports team for every season. I'm from cross country races in the warm autumn sun, throwing up afterwards from the exertion.

I am from bus 17, from Kindergarten to OAC, rattling around the same gravel country roads.

I am from a small town church meeting in a municipal office, from spinning in the councillors chairs after service. I am from Sunday school in the basement, filling in the ant holes of the dirt floor with the heels of my shiny Sunday shoes.

I am from an Easter and Christmas dress from Grandma and Grandpa and showing off a Grandpa with the real name "Donald Duck."

I am from "push yourself" and "hold your horses," from unspoken apologies and silent I-love-yous.

I am from Saturdays playing card games at Great Aunt Helene's. I am from Bunco and Rook and stories of the Depression.

I am from dressing up in olden days clothes, from living most of my childhood in the 19th century of my mind. I am from Ska-Nah-Doht and First Nations beadwork.

I am from beyond-class enrichment and molding a sculpture at the cultural centre.

I am from the green station wagon and packing the car-top carrier for camping trips, sent up on the roof cause I was the lightest.

I am from the Lake Erie beach, cool between my teenage toes in the evenings, writing and dreaming of life yet to come.

I am from Charles Street West and late-night runs for chocolate cake at Raba. I am from new friends in res and sleeping above my desk. I am from 5 a.m. rowing practice in the choppy darkness of Lake Ontario. 

I am from summer in St-Jos, from fires on the beach of the St. Lawrence and a circle of friends who welcomed me in.

I am from rock scree sliding in the Austrian Alps, from "don't argue, just climb" and "there's a time to be wet."

I am from les îles and sleeping in a tent for 4 months. I am from the smell of salt in the air, fresh pine forest and a transparent screen roof between me and an ocean of stars. I am from cigarette smoke Au Centrale. I am from québécois violin and guitar jam sessions late into the night.

I am from Quebec City winters and tire à l'érable. I am from cold that stings the skin around the eyes, the only bit exposed. I am from a view of the Chateau at night, debating God and politics and existentialism.

I am from German pretzels for the kids and a capuccino every morning made by my husband.

I am from crossing borders and erasing them. 

Linking up with SheLoves today - it's easy and fun, come tell us where you are from.

Why I didn't go to my university graduation

Call me a CanLit nerd, but the Giller Prize longlist came out today and that's cool.

I've always been what you might call a "nerd." I got good marks. I liked reading. I was the kind of kid who dreamt of studying at Oxford, who slogged my way through classics of English literature passed down from my seven-years-older brother when he returned home from university in the summer (for some reason I wasn't daunted by titles like Jude the Obscure and Hard Times). The other kids on Bus 17, trundling around the dusty Ontario countryside with the windows half-open and gravel ricocehting off the rattling sides, had a nickname for me: "Coolness Einstein." I was OK with it.

I don't remember anyone ever trying to help me choose a career when I was a teenager. I had a guidance counselor, but I don't recall any meetings with her or personality tests filled out, although I am sure I must have done something of this nature. I always knew which subjects in school interested me the most, and as I was at the top of my class in several subjects my teachers probably assumed I'd turn out alright and left it at that. My parents have always been supportive of whatever I have chosen to do without trying to bend my interests one way or the other.

This resulted in me leaving the farm for university in Toronto at the naive tender age of 18 without having a specific career in mind. Nor did I know what my majors would be. (We only had to decide in second year, as far as I remember, and I could change these later as well.) This all seems very namby-pamby when told to Germans, where there are 3-year apprenticeships for every kind of trade and a university student must apply for a specific program of study, having chosen her major/minor combination before taking her first class (though this can also be changed later, after a lot of wrangling with German bureaucracy and possibly changing universities).

I arrived at Victoria College in the University of Toronto in September 2000, full of romantic ideas about studying in ivy-covered walls, having signed up for five courses in five different subjects. English literature, French language, the History of European Civilization, Political Science 103 and a special first-year seminar with only 10 students taught by an esteemed professor about Renaissance Rome. It was a phenomenal first year, broad, enriching and with all the excitement of a WASP farm girl in an international metropolis (fellow residents on my floor marveled "Your grandparents lived in Canada too?!" while others corrected my pronunciation of Cal-gary).

The following year I chose a double major, but after spending my third year at Université Laval in Québec City I chose not to return to Toronto for my fourth year. I was in love with Quebec and when presented with an invitation/challenge to stay, I jumped at the chance. I changed my double major to a double minor and suddenly, just like that, I had finished my B.A. My graduation was scheduled for a few months later, on my birthday actually. I weighed the cost of the 8 hour train ride, the fact that I would not be graduating with any of my friends, and that I would only be allotted 2 tickets for guests, and decided not to attend the illustrious ceremony at Convocation Hall in Toronto.

Photo via utoronto.ca

Deciding to not get the four-year "Honours" BA was a challenging decision for my young self who had always placed a great deal of stock in my grades, measuring my self-worth by whether or not I excelled in academics. I was sent a notice to pick up a package at the post office on a cold November day in Quebec City, my boots squeaking on the narrow, hard-packed snow-path that had replaced the sidewalks. When I picked up the sturdy, flat, cardboard envelope, I knew it contained my Bachelor's degree. I didn't open it.

Not wanting to mar it, I carried the closed envelope gingerly as I tramped onwards to my intended destination, a movie theatre in the pyramide. I was a little distracted by the envelope at my feet while I watched Mona Lisa Smile in French. In the English-speaking world, graduations are a rite of passage, a big deal. I didn't celebrate mine, which felt a little strange. I wasn't sure if I should care. I winced knowingly at how the movie's motif was rather à propos to how I had bucked the expectations I had had for my own life. At the time, I thought I was giving up the possibility of ever doing a graduate degree (little did I know I would end up marrying a German, start a Master's degree 5 years later in English literature, and afterwards do my PhD in Germany where there are no 4-year B.A.s anyway. And where just getting your degree sent to you in the mail is par for the course.)

Now I can see that those hard decisions I made at 21, to "give up" my academic dreams and pride to stay in the culture I loved were a necessary part of sifting my character. I needed to learn how to not find my self-worth and value in my performance, in what I achieve, what I do. Finding my value in who I am in Christ, in being simply a child of God, looking at his promises and what his word says about me has proven to be enough, more than enough, and the only thing I can't lose when life doesn't turn out how I planned.

I find myself this week marking undergraduate term papers and attending an academic conference in Konstanz. That confused, -40 winter in Quebec City with my Bachelor's degree in a cardboard envelope at my feet, I would never have guessed I'd be here in Germany, doing this, exactly a decade later. I still have that envelope, it now houses a few more Very Important Things and has proven handy as I traipse across borders. There is an upcoming crossroads, and again my career could take several diverse turns. The pathway to your dream is not always straight or without delays, and sometimes the way you end up taking is the way that took you. Rarely is it the way you once thought would best get you there. The destination, the dream, often grows up along with you.

How studying literature helps you change the world

"A B.A./M.A./Ph.D. in English? What are you going to do with that?"* 

I've heard variations on this theme. Dave Ramsey, for all his very helpful and practical financial advice, rails against doing a degree in something as asinine as literature on his radio show. Literature isn't useful, you say?  

Knowing how to read, how to intelligently engage with a text (and texts are all around us), how to express your ideas coherently in written and oral form, think critically, engage with culture, explore the struggles and inner lives of characters who are just like the people in the world around you...these are just a few of the benefits of doing a degree in English lit. (Or Québécois, or German, or Hindi literature, of course.) I admit, a degree in literature is not a surefire road to riches, but the skills one learns when reading and studying literature can be used in any career (i.e. right-hand man to a king) and are immensely helpful to anyone who wants to understand, impact and, dare I say it, "change" the world around them. 

Here a brief video about the research of Prof. Dr. Linda Hutcheon (University of Toronto) who will be coming to a conference we are hosting in Konstanz in September, on why an English degree helps you in every career:

For local academic types, she'll be giving an open lecture on September 18, 16:30 in the Audimax entitled "From Reader Response to Reader Response-Ability."

*Note this is not a direct quote from Dave Ramsey, just a typical sentence I have heard several times from various people. And similar to some things I've heard on his podcast :-)

Sense of Space

"The sense of space might have triggered lighter emotions, less depressing thoughts, a sense of well-being."  Dionne Brand, What We All Long For (261)

Brand's novel refers to a downtown Toronto housing project lacking in any landscaping or foliage to ease weary urban eyes, what the sight of some flowers could have done to increase the sense of space the tightly-packed residents had. I find myself on the farm I grew up in in southwestern Ontario, Canada as I write these words. Surrounded by corn, soybeans, mown wheat fields, and no lack of native flora and fauna. Crickets and grasshoppers twirr in the humid night air. Earlier we were privy to a fantastic thunder and light show, the better part of an hour of torrential rain and skies repeatedly lit up like the day. It is 1:54 a.m. My late night imperative to write can not be blamed on jet lag. Our 6 hours ahead caused my little family to go to bed early and our bright-eyed baby to awaken us all at 4:30 a.m. for the first four days, eager to crawl and test her standing legs. But we've been in North America for over a week now, thus adjusted and truly I should be asleep. 

Yet I am awake and must write, writing has been pent up in my bones amidst days filled with children's games and squabbles, swimming pools and BBQs, steaks and corn on the cob. Traveling from one sibling's home to another, evenings after my generation's offspring are finally in bed spent catching up on two years of lives lived. We've been crossing borders; national, parental, traditional, faithful. How can four children of the same parents, living in one house on the same plot of land til their 18th birthdays, have developed so differently? We all share the Christian faith, a conviction of God as our Father, Jesus as our Saviour and the Holy Spirit as our Comforter and Empowerer. Yet we manifest quite a wide range of the expressions of that faith. This could lead to tensions and disputes, concerns and arguments, hurt feelings and misunderstandings. I want to choose to see this diversity as a beautiful, life-giving thing. There is space in this upside-down Kingdom for difference, for the beauty and complexity that we see embodied in each person, image-bearer of our beautifully complex, multi-faceted God.

Space, a sense of space in the family of Jesus-followers is what we all need. Space to be who we long to be, the deep calls out to deep inside us, to follow the nudges and Spirit whispers. Freedom from boxed in, pre-conceived ideas of who we ought to be, who others got used to perceiving us as, perhaps from what was inherited or passed down; free from labels, taunts, childhood insecurities.

A post card sent to my great-grandmother in 1906.

I love my family and am deeply grateful for them, for who they are, what they have given me and still give me. We have all settled geographically apart from one another, flung from west coast to middle America to Europe. The longer we live apart, the more we adapt to and are influenced by our cultures, be they national, church, political, or socio-demographic cultures. We find our place. The common bond of family runs deeper than this land on which we were raised, which our ancestors worked for inch by inch, struggling and straining to hold down the family farm, to keep the bank at bay. This hard-fought land may one day be sold to others, our generation having found our niches elsewhere. The family name may vanish and be forgotten from this farming community of which I, the youngest and last to go, have not been a part for almost 15 years now. But loss of land will not weaken the bond, will not change what makes us family, for better, for worse. Through email and Skype, rather than the leather post cards my great-grandmother received, we'll keep checking in, keep loving each other. 

A leather post card my great-grandmother received 1906

We do not have to think, act, decide, spend money, believe, play or work the same to be family. We do not have to be uniform to belong to this great, colourful, eclectic family of God, but if we give each other a sense of space to be who we are our lungs with fill, our chests will rise and we'll be able to fling our arms back in the warm summer rain, inhale the lush moist night, find our footsteps, and dance. 

On Soul Friends and driving 3 hours to give up your bedroom

There's something special about the friendships forged in your early 20s, in those formative adult years when you are discovering who you are apart from your parents and siblings and hometown. When you actually start to choose your friends, rather then being semi-forced into friendships with those who happen to be in your school class, or live on your street, or the children of your parents' friends.

An old friend is going to drive 1.5 hours to pick us up from the airport in Toronto on Friday evening, then take us the 1.5 hours back to his home where he and his wife are going to give up their bedroom to hunker down with their 2 tots so we can crash with them for 2 nights. (Oh, and did I mention the jet-lagged baby and unpredictable almost-3-year-old we're bringing along? Saints is what these people are.) 

I lived in the same residence (Canadian-speak for "dorm") with Jayden for our first two years of university at Vic. Since then we have kept in touch sporadically, my husband I visited him a few times on our returns to Ontario, we were thrilled to meet his lovely wife Amie when she came along. (She's an amazing photographer, check her out! Shameless plug.) We four have seen each other only once or twice over the past 4 years, but manage to have deep soul chats when we do, encouraging and speaking life over each other. Some call these kinds of friends "a friend to your destiny."

The ivy-covered walls of our residence building and dining hall at Vic

I have lately been amazed at the close bond I still feel with old friends my 18-23-year-old self ma de back in university and during my first travels in Europe. Even though we only spent a short time together (3 months at Tauernhof or in Greece in some cases; 1 or 2 years at uni in Toronto or Quebec City with others), somehow we still stay in touch (with a helping hand from social media). There is still a strong level of trust and appreciation; we deeply value each other. You don't stay in touch with everyone, of course, but those with whom your spirit resonates, with whom your heart really connected. There is a bond there that transcends borders and oceans, marriage and kids and a decade. We don't talk often; we may rarely even directly address one another on said social media. But we lurk follow, we keep up, we still care, and when the chance to see one another again comes, we take it and it is like the intervening ten years were only a few months.

From the ages of 18-23 I was very nomadic; I moved every 4-8 months. I lived in numerous cities, apartments, residences, and in a tent on the Îles-de-la-Madeleine for two summers. I met a lot of brilliant people, who I am still honoured to know and rejoice when our paths cross.  

What about you, do you agree that the friendships forged in your young adult years (circa 18-24) were the strongest? Or does it have more to do with being in a life-changing place/formative experience and less to do with age?

Old Vic, across the quad from home during my first two years of university

Out of the pond

"Only later would I discover that most other people simply floated in mossy little ponds labeled 'French and Catholic' or 'English and Protestant', never wondering what it might be like to step ashore. To be out of a pond is to be in unmapped territory." ~ Mavis Gallant, The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996, 691.

There was a time when I didn't like Montreal. In my self-important, navel-gazing 19-22-year-old phase I was both too Ontarian and too francophile for Montreal.  I was living in Québec City at the time, and only traveled through le metropol on my way back to see my family in Ontario, changing trains in Montreal, or visiting some friends of friends from the islands for a party. I found Montreal to be a strange mix of the things I loved about Toronto and Québec City, neither one nor the other. A vast urban centre second only in size in Canada to Toronto, the city of Montreal is roughly half French-speaking and half Other. I found being greeted in English in stores or restaurants in downtown Montreal off-putting (and if someone detected my accent and switched to English in a conversation: downright insulting! I considered it one of my Major Life Achievements when people stopped switching to English upon hearing me speak.)

Montreal seemed to be a mix of too many other things that didn't fit into the image of Quebec in my head. Having always had an intrinsic desire to become bilingual, a life-long love of the French language and Quebec, I wanted to throw myself into Québécois culture.  During the two years I lived in Quebec City, the only times I spoke English were to my family on the phone once or twice a week. My only English input at the time was occasionally watching the news on CBC, unless it was one of the rare times my francophone coloc wasn't at her boyfriend's place, and she asked me shyly if we couldn't watch the news in French while eating dinner?

Having lived in Europe for the past nine years, I have loosened up about language. When I first came to Germany, I was shocked - shocked! - to hear English (read: American) music on the radio most of the time. To see English signs and slogans liberally scattered over the landscape. And nobody cared. We're not in language-law-territory anymore. 

Montreal is a famously divided city, The Two Solitudes and all of that. I am quite in support of CanCon legislation and measures to protect the French language in Quebec, and I'm not trying to stir the pot today. Living in Europe with its many languages, learning to survive/thrive in my third and being forced to teach business English to pay the rent in our early married days brought me back down to earth. I'm glad I can speak English, it is helpful and I'm no longer too cool or too Québécoise or whatever I thought I was back then to care too much what language people address me in. Whatever the language, it is the heart of the person I want to get to know, and whichever means helps me to do that I'll use. 

The I'm-back-in-Montreal-and-it's-snowing! face, 2009.

Somehow, whenever we have visited North America over the past 9 years most of our travels have brought us to Montreal, and my fascination with this enigmatic city has grown. I love Montreal, the diversity, the cold, the pastries; my old friends who have migrated there from St-Jo or Québec or the islands; the crazy, suicidal outdoor staircases; the code-switching mid-sentence and cacophony of franglais. The quote above is from one of the best short story writers on the planet, Mavis Gallant, born and raised in Montreal in the 1920s-30s. Rare for an English-speaking child at the time, she was sent to francophone convent schools, thus resulting in her rather unique perspective on Montreal, out of the pond, in unmapped territory.  

Many would say that this contact zone of cultures and languages, everyday bordercrossings and forays into unmapped territories is what makes Montreal such fertile ground for cultural creatives. Today I read that, among its many other illustrious cultural achievements, Montreal has been called "the spoken word capital of North America" (see Anglo-Quebec Poetry 1976 to the 21st Century edited by Jason Camlot and Todd Swift). Cultural geographers have a field day with Montreal, attempting to chart its the depth and width and breadth. 

What I love about this international life I've been called to, married to a German, having left chunks of my heart in Quebec and Ontario, Greece and Austria and Uganda and Konstanz, is being out of the pond. Out of breath and laughing on the sandy beach, exhausted but jumping back in again. Sloshing water from one pond into another, disrupting stagnant ecosystems, adding a little fresh water, a little salty. Bathing in alterity and resurfacing with new perspectives, wider range of vision, beyond any one cultural or linguistic group. Crawling back into my kayak and learning to surf the waves.

Narrative Saves Lives

So there is a new "narrative mapping" tool out there, touted as the "new instagram for writers." You (may have) heard it here first.

Story + maps = me happy! 

A lot of my research has to do with concepts of place and space and how the spaces we inhabit shape us and we shape them, and how all of this is represented in fiction. (I am working on my doctoral dissertation in North American literature and cultural studies, specifically focusing on comparative English-Canadian and Québécois fiction.) These ideas can seem very abstract, or even "obvious," to the uninitiated. ("You are writing an entire book about 'the North?'" Eyes glaze over.) I have always had trouble wrapping my mind around some philosophical concepts, and I am thankful for those scholars who have summed up and deconstructed Lefebvre, Soja and Bhabha for the rest of us.

It took me a long time to decide to pursue a Master's degree in literature because I struggled with thoughts that it wasn't "important enough." (I started in 2008 and finished my final oral exam in 2010, the day before my maternity leave with our first child began.) I always wanted to make a difference in the world, to do something of eternal value. I had a five-year break between finishing my Bachelor's degree (from U of T while living in Quebec, another story) and starting my Master. During those intervening years I got to travel and volunteer at two Bible schools in Austria and Greece, met the man of my dreams (and beyond what I had on my little checklist), got married and settled in Konstanz. I started, then stopped, another M.A. program that wasn't for me. (In Toronto, we used words and books to study political science, not the statistics and SPSS of the KN school of public policy and management! Numbers are not my friend.) Getting over the shock of not succeeding in my studies for the first time was a major life lesson in not putting my self-worth in what I do and achieve, but who I am in Christ.

I had often felt divided, pulled between a career in academia and serving in "ministry." I knew doing an M.A. would take time and hard work and thus would leave less time to be directly invested in other things. A desire to learn, research, study and write has been inside of me since I was an embryo (or, as we tell our son when he asks where he was when we got married, or when mommy lived in Canada, since I was "in God's thoughts, but not on Earth yet.")

So back in 2006-08, I took a long time to decide to do an M.A. in literature. My husband has always encouraged me, he has always supported me in chasing my dreams and fulfilling my potential. Finally, I found encouragement in Daniel's story. Yes, that guy with the lions, though not that part specifically. Daniel the man God used greatly in a foreign kingdom to have a place of influence in society, he did a B.A. in literature and cultural studies (check it out.) Good enough for an OT prophet, good enough for me. But before this epiphany, I struggled with thoughts that literature didn't "really matter." I mean, this isn't medicine, it isn't going to save someone's life. 

Or could it?

Could narrative save someone's life? Could telling a story, and telling it well, actually give hope to someone in the pit of despair? Actually resonate with a stranger on the other side of the planet and make them feel less alone? Could it shine light on the evils of forced sex slavery, motivate just one person to kick up a fuss, to spread awareness, to raise funds, to facilitate freedom for a victim? Could narrative literally save the life of a 13 year old girl who is at this very moment locked in a dirty room near Hamburg's port, handcuffed and brutalized up to 40 times a day?

Hot tears burn my eyes as I write these words but they must be written. I must tell their stories.

Freedom starts with us.

Join me in the fight against human trafficking, won't you? To learn more about the problem and see how you can be part of the solution go to the A21 Campaign, whose goal is abolish the injustice of human trafficking and sex slavery in the 21st century. They are on the ground in several European source and destination countries, working to rescue and rehabilitate victims as well as prosecuting perpetrators. Join us in spreading freedom in Europe. It isn't just happening “over there,” it happens here. In our city, our country. Freedom starts with us.

Next stop: Museum

When I saw these pictures of a surprising flash flood in Toronto yesterday, I got all nostalgic seeing someone's Twitter pic of water pouring into Museum subway station. The residence buildings where I lived for two years were just down the street from Museum station while I was attending U of T. Stale, lukewarm TTC dank air gusting in your face a minute after the train arrives; quiver of fear in my belly when returning home after dark. Sigh. Free Friday nights at the ROM, feeling slightly sophisticated, listening to the live string quartet while gazing repeatedly at the beautiful Roberta Bondar exhibit of photography of Canada's national parks. As a Canadian Studies major I think I visited the exhibit a dozen times.

Growing up on a farm in rural southwestern Ontario, I always dreamt of moving to the big city. We went to Toronto, a three hour drive away, fairly often, especially after my brother, and later one of my sisters, went to university there. I felt so grown up taking the VIA train by myself to visit my brother, 7 years my elder, while he studied at Ryerson. I loved the excitement of things happening, the vibrancy of the streets filled with people of all ages, shapes, sizes, colours and languages. One of many things this farm-girl enjoyed was trying to spot mice (rats?) while waiting for the subway, something that seemed to me truly urban. I loved the notices glued to mailboxes and light posts, the movie sets and actor's trucks on our street, and the thrill of danger observing some sly drug deal along the counter beside us while eating burgers at Harveys. 

I took my Quebec exchange student Jessie with me to sleep on the floor of my brother's apartment for a few muggy city nights the summer we were 15. (Poor girl. She was from Quebec City and spent 4 weeks on our farm that summer, in my rather slow-paced summer social circle. I remember my teenage shame and shock finding a letter she wrote to a friend - yes I was snooping - in which she said her trip to my place was not as fun as a previous exchange to Cambridge Bay. That's in the Arctic, people.) 

So I was trying to show my cosmopolitan Québécoise some of the urban life Ontario has to offer. I have two strong memories from those few days in Toronto: rollerblading downhill into the Don Valley from Bloor; me not knowing how to brake and throwing my body onto a little piece of grass just in time before careening onto the street. 

My other memory is of some sort of miscommunication which left Jessie and I sitting outside of my brother's high-rise apartment building on a sweltering afternoon waiting for him to return (this was in the land before cell phones). He lived in a somewhat seedy area on Sherbourne, downtown, in the contact zone of ordinary life. Sitting on the planter box that day, waiting, smelling rotting garbage in the oppressive August humidity; watching a man, probably homeless, definitely on drugs, rambling to himself and sometimes shouting at others. Little children playing on the sidewalk, clapping and dancing on the cement steps and chasing each other around stunted bushes. I was confronted with poverty, difference, Otherness from which my farm-life usually sheltered me. I don't think I was afraid as I waited for my brother, but I was intrigued and felt terribly alive.

Three years later, even though I was offered scholarships to the other two universities I applied to, I still chose U of T because it had always been my dream to live in Toronto (and thankfully some scholarships showed up later). I remember deciding this the preceding winter on another visit (staying with my sister that time). I walked around downtown and made that decision while sitting in a coffee shop, on a bar stool by a window overlooking the street, writing in my journal. Choosing the messiness of downtown mega-city life over the security of scholarships and mid-sized-cities.

We've now lived in a small German city for 7 years, and smaller village-part of that city for 1. We love our city. Now, when we visit Toronto or Montreal every year or two I feel like a country bumpkin (perhaps even more so than I felt at 15), I am dizzied by the pace of life, the sheer variety of products/buildings/possibilities. And of course, the people, the beautiful, mixed, vibrant people of every background, continent, socio-economic bracket imaginable. The city is a crossroads where identities mingle and new lives can be begun. Our current town is very similar in size to the town in which I attended school and church as a child. It is peaceful, clean, safe, a typically "great place to raise kids." But I have a feeling we won't be here forever. Part of us longs for the heartbeat of a metropolis, being at a cultural centre, the convergence of streams of thought which carries influence downstream.