Little Bits of London

Freddy and I are sitting on a leather couch, looking out from a beautiful open-concept living-dining room-kitchen onto a sunny terrace leading to a huge yard with pool, sauna and hot tub, a farmer’s field and beyond that, a large wooded area which we will explore later today and which, I am told, holds small deer, foxes, and bunnies.  This is our Bed and Breakfast in Brookman’s Park, where we will be staying until we leave for Germany on the 17th.  Here is a lovely old tree across from our B&B.

I can’t believe that it is December, my first term at LSE is over, and I haven’t blogged since October 30.  On the one hand it feels like we’ve been here for ages, on the other like we just moved into our Hackney flat yesterday.  The professor that owns our flat returned from Boston on Friday, so we moved here to be closer to Fred’s school while he finishes his last week.  I am sad to have left that beautiful flat with its grand piano and shelves of books, but it will be remembered fondly as the first place we lived together.  And of course, the place that first saw our Masters related stress develop.

Life in London has been hectic, overwhelming, anxiety-infused, exciting, and at times comforting and homey.   My program has been everything I had hoped, and so much more that I had never imagined.  I came to the program because I, like so many others, want to “be the change I see in the world”, as Mahatma Ghandi is so often quoted as saying.  It sounds trite to say it, but there it is – it’s the truth.  There are so many injustices and inequalities today - globally as well as locally – and of course this is nothing new; there always have been, as there always will be.  It is not a new reality, but it is one that is getting worse.  The more we “progress”, the wider the inequality gap becomes between the affluent and the poor.  One of the first things we learned in our course was that income inequality is reflected by differing life expectancies from nation to nation, from city to city within nations, and even from neighbourhood to neighbourhood within cities.  The poorer the area, the lower the life expectancies are in that area.  And this is just one determinant to consider amongst many others such as literacy, level of education, etc.  Although this is a fairly obvious phenomenon, to me it really brings home the fact that inequality and poverty is not just a “problem” for the developing world, but one that saturates every community we are part of.

So what can be done.  So what should be done?  So what can or should one who comes from a privileged background (who is, for instance, able to attend LSE and stay in beautiful Bed and Breakfasts) do about it?   Is wanting to address these issues nothing more than an idealistic and patronizing pursuit?  And what role does art play in all of this?  These are the questions I came to London to have answered.  And they haven’t been answered, of course.  Not at all.  They’ve only been tattered and thrown to the wind and blown about a bit, collected and partially pieced back together.  Because education doesn’t provide answers, it raises questions.  Everything is contested, nothing is known, the only answer is ever “it depends”.  One of our professors, in one of our last lectures, cautioned us with these words: “be careful of wanting to do good.   That will always get you into trouble”.  Interesting parting advice for a room full of people studying Health, Community and Development, no?

So my job over the next few weeks (in addition to reading about 20 articles and two books – “Pedgagy of the Oppressed” by Paolo Freire and “Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last” by Robert Chambers) is to mentally scan all that we talked about over the past few months and try to discern where exactly I should go, given this new critical view and these valuable insights into community development we’ve been exposed to.  Where should I go with my research, and where should I go with my career?  Should I try to “be the change”, or should I just be aware that a change needs to be, and that I have no role in being it.

One thing I keep returning to in thinking about this is the description of our course on the Institute for Social Psychology website, which says that “our starting point in this MSc is that interventions succeed to the extent that they resonate with the needs, interests and worldviews of the communities they serve, and that effective community participation is a necessary precondition for success.  We seek to develop understandings of how health and social development professionals can work in partnership with target communities to improve well-being, fight disease and build 'health-enabling' social environments.”  For me the key words here, which underpin everything we’ve learned, are “participation” and “partnership”.  It’s not about an outsider coming with all the knowledge and imparting it on a “stricken” community.  It’s about outsiders coming in, critically aware of their own overly-valued knowledge and power, and working in true collaboration in communities to create positive change.

So this is all great in theory.  We shall see how it plays out in practice when all 20 of us go out into the world to conduct field research for our theses!

Outside of all the theory and academia, my actual “life” in London has been on the whole, exciting.  Here are some delicious crepes we had while out on the town one night:

Eating cupcakes from Bea's of Bloomsbury with Lekha, in Red Lion Square:

There are many things I have yet to do – such as visit Portabello Market, the Tate and the National Museum; go to see some plays or musicals; find some great live music venues and discover the “indie music scene” which I’m sure is thriving in London; bike more around London and travel more around the UK. I have done some fun things too though, such as dancing until the wee hours of the morning to a great DJ in Shoreditch; doing our Saturday morning shopping at Broadway Market;

visiting the enchanting white cliffs of Dover for the weekend; watching contemporary dance with Fred (which he actually did enjoy); hosting and attending house parties with new and amazing friends; going for dinner, drinks and dancing with newly reacquainted friends and family; cooking with Freddy, who is incidentally quite the chef; finding great finds like beautiful street art and vintage and indie designers in Brick Lane and Stoke Newington Church Street;

and generally enjoying the history and architecture of beautiful London.

So, I guess that is my last two months in a nutshell. I will try to be more diligent with blogging from here on out, but I make no promises.  I can’t wait for our tour of Germany, and spending the holidays with great family friends there, although I continue to miss my dear friends and family back home very, very much.

A Saturday in Hackney

Last night was a late one, thanks to our crazy HCD Halloween party at my classmate Emily's place in Clerkenwell.  So today I spent the morning cleaning (while listening to Fleet Foxes whom I love very much, and Yeasayer who I've started listening to recently and also love) and trying to drum up enough energy to actually do something with my day.  Then - laundry done, dishes washed and flat tidied - I decided that I should make my way to Stoke Newington Church Street in search of a nice coffee shop where I could get some reading done.

On my way I walked through Hackney Downs Park, which is right beside where we're living.  The air was nice and cool with a hint of fall but the sun was shining.  The giant sycamores, with their beautifully mottled bark, have turned golden and dropped some of their leaves along the footpath.  The joggers, cyclists and football players in their colourful jerseys were all out and about.  

There's even a newly-planted community orchard in this park!

Along Farleigh Road I stopped to take a photo of this house with its tree.  I love the beautiful row houses of London, especially when they have flower boxes with happy red flowers nodding to their reflections in the windows.

My first stop on Church Street was Of Cabbages and Kings, which is a store that I discovered a few weeks ago and have been meaning to revisit.  It's a sweet little store packed full of handmade everything, from screen prints to necklaces to little crocheted iphone holders, like the one here that I bought for myself today.  I especially love the little red flower button!

 

I asked the girl working the till if there was a particular coffee shop she would recommend for some reading, and she suggested I try out Lemon Monkey back on the High Street.  I followed her advice, and found it to be the sweetest, most welcoming space I could have hoped to find.  Here it is, with my pot of earl grey tea and delicious pistachio tarte with thick cream (and, um, readings).  Mmmmm.....

 Closeup of the tarte.  Anyone who knows me will know how much I appreciated their collection of eclectic, mismatched old wooden chairs.  A shelf full of cookbooks and a couch for lounging on all add to the comfortable, cozy ambience.  I will definitely be coming back here!

Having finished my tarte, tea and one article (yay!), I headed back home to wait for Freddy to get home.  Who has classes on Saturdays?!  Not me...hee hee...

This is where I'm supposed to be.

It’s been a while since I’ve given an update, and I feel like I owe an explanation of what my life is actually like here in this bustling, multicultural, historic city that is London.

I’m not going to pretend that it’s been all buttercups and butterflies.  It’s been tough.  It’s always an adjustment moving to a new place.  The first weeks of the Health, Community and Development (see our Program Director speak about the program here) at LSE  have been exhilarating and terrifying all at once.  The program blends social psychology with community development and health.  If that sounds confusing to you, well trust me - it is for me too!  The psychology-based concepts that underpin what we’re studying are a huge stretch from what I studied in undergrad (Arts Management and Theatre at the University of Toronto).  In the first week in all I could think was – why the hell was I crazy enough to think I could study a completely new discipline at the Graduate level?

So that’s the terrifying part.  Then there’s the exhilarating part, a huge part of which are my amazing classmates.  There are only twenty of us, and we are already a tight family of inspiring, dedicated people who are all here for each other.  Here we are at a house party I hosted recently: 

Coming together from around the globe (Norway, Greece, Ghana, Sudan, Mexico, South Korea, the US and Canada), we all share the belief that communities are where the true magic happens in terms of creating positive social change.  That marginalized communities, in particular, can empower themselves by first questioning and then reversing the inequalities they face.  I can’t even explain how satisfying it feels to be sitting in a classroom at the London School of Economics – one of the most respected educational institutions in the world – learning about how important it is to engage in grassroots, bottoms-up, community-based projects in order to achieve global social justice aims. It’s legitimizing all of the idealistic thoughts I’ve been storing up and mulling over for my whole life.

Clay and Paper Theatre at City Hall, Summer 2005 (I was a coop student)

I’m sure all you critics out there are rolling your eyes and asking - how does this relate to what I want to do with my life?  What kind of career can you build based on such idealism?  These are the million dollar questions everyone loves to ask and I hate to answer – it always makes me feel defensive.  I really should be used to it by now, though.  Criticism and skepticism about my educational and career decisions are nothing new to me.  Telling people in undergrad that I was studying Arts Management and Theatre always resulted in blank stares or utter confusion.  “So…you’re going to run an art gallery?”  People were also confused when I told them I was working as Manager of Marketing and Community Outreach for LEAF, an urban forestry non-profit in Toronto.  “You mean like taking care of parks?” or “Do you get paid to do that?”  And just when people thought they maybe had me figured out, I go and quit my good job to go into mucho debt way over in London England of all places to study such an abstract topic as Community, Health and Development, with the intent of investigating the link between the arts and community health.  “Whaaaaa…..?” 

LEAF's Beaches Toronto Tree Tour, Summer 2006 (just after I got hired!)

I can’t really blame people for being confused, and maybe thinking I’m a bit crazy.  I feel like my whole life I’ve been on a wild goose hunt.  I often think back to the yearbook message Miranda Bouchard left for me when we were graduating from W.C. Eaket all those years ago.  It was something like “you’ve really branched out and done lots of different things at Eaket.  I hope you found what you were looking for”.  I remember reading that and thinking – hm.  I’d never really thought of it that way.  I didn’t really know why I had been so involved in everything under the sun.  What was I looking for, being the student trustee for the school board, co-president of the students’ council, in the school play, etc. etc. etc. in high school?  What was I looking for when I wrote to the Mayor of Thessalon at age 8 asking why there wasn’t more of an effort to regenerate what was quickly becoming a ghost town?  What was I looking for when I was volunteering for 5 different non profit organizations while going to school full time at U of T, working part time and also being the student representative for my program?  What was I looking for when I switched after a year from a job with benefits at a respected performing arts venue to take a pay cut and work with a grassroots, community-based urban forestry non-profit?

Me with (former!) Mayor of Toronto, David Miller

To me, it’s obvious.  All my life, I’ve been focused on a single aim: to figure out how I can make the most realistic, effective, positive change wherever I am.  And now I want to know where, in the long term, I should focus my energies to make that happen.

For some reason, that life goal doesn’t sit well with a lot of people.  That someone should be so idealistic, instead of getting a good job with benefits, is kind of, well, “out there”.  But in the face of this doubt, there are so many people I look to that inspire me and make me think that it’s not a fruitless endeavour:

Naomi Klein, outspoken author, activist and documentary film maker best known for her controversial book No Logo which spoke out against globalization, corporations and consumer culture. Janet McKay, who founded LEAF (Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests) - a non-profit that engages communities in caring for and protecting the urban forest - way before environmentalism was taken as seriously as it is now.  I learned so much from her while working there for two years.  Laura Reinsborough (in the video below, taken from the GreenHeroes website), who founded Not Far From the Tree, an organization I followed from its inception two years ago to its current role as leader of the urban agriculture movement in Toronto.  

Jane Jacobs, urban philosopher and activist who championed protecting local neighbourhoods over rampant urban expansion and who inspired the creation of Jane’s Walks across Canada and the US.  Jane Goodall, famous for her work with chimpanzees and also the founder of Roots & Shoots which makes the crucial link between social change and long-term environmental protection.  Stephen Lewis, the most inspirational speaker I’ve ever heard, former leader of Ontario’s NDP and founder of Stephen Lewis Foundation, which focuses on providing economic support to women who shoulder the weight of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the hardest-hit African countries.  Not to mention all of my amazing friends back in Toronto who work for little pay and recognition for non-profits that do good work, who inspire me every day to keep truckin’.  

Inspirational Friends at Frobel Lake

 Some of these people I’ve met or worked with, others I have just admired from afar.  I’m not putting myself in league with them by any means, but I do feel that their passion and dedication to social justice shows that idealism can be combined with realism to make a career out of making a difference.  The idea that other people – activists, authors, urban developers, politicians, academics, my fellow students – have the same motivations and the same aims as I do is comforting.  And being in the Health, Community and Development program at LSE makes me feel like, for the first time in my life, all of my pursuits have not been in vain.  I feel like I’m finding out, slowly but surely, what I’ve been trying to figure out all these years: what I can do.

Trying Times

I received an email recently from a very dear friend of mine, who expressed to me how, lately, she’s been consumed by feelings of aloneness and uncertainty about where she is going in life, and why.  I wasn’t surprised to hear this, as the “quarter-life crisis” seems to be going through my friends like a plague.  I thought I would share here my response to her, and my thoughts on our seemingly lost and disillusioned generation, in case anyone is interested in hearing my opinion on the matter!

---
Dear Friend,

I am sorry to hear that you are feeling so out of sorts.  I can tell you, though, that you are not alone.  It’s interesting - in the past year most of my closest girl friends have expressed similar feelings to me.  And although I’m feeling pretty good about things right now, I too am often struck by the same kind of “wtf” moments.

Almost every night I lie in bed and think about what I’m doing, where I’ve been, and where I’m  going, and what it culminates in is this black hole of helplessness…questions, questions, questions, rhetorically repeating themselves into infinity.  What am I doing.  Why am I doing it.  Where will it get me.  Specifically, right now I am doggedly pursuing my desire to enact social change, through the arts, in communities where social inequality runs rampant.   And I’ve crossed the ocean and am going sixty grand into debt to do it.  The question that haunts me at night is:  is that even possible?  Or is this just empty idealism?

And then there are the larger, even darker thoughts that steal into my head as I toss and turn.  Does it even matter what I do, when every action is so inconsequential in the face of what is happening in this world – with the waters rising, populations increasing, fresh water disappearing, and our global system plodding along, unstoppable, ever a slave to the consumer-driven greed of our capitalist system?  I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, and it’s not like I’m obsessed with Armageddon or death, but in the face of both of those impending things I feel like any decision I make is pointless.  How’s that for optimism?!

And I think it’s hardest on our generation – and maybe especially the women of our generation – than it has been for generations past.  It’s like the pretenses have all been stripped away for us, and we’re left with reality standing there in all its stark and hideous glory, with us unable to take our eyes off of it.  What good are our dreams and aspirations, our desire to change and shift the world, if in the end we are marching steadily not only to our own demise but a possible descent into social chaos, the destruction of world order, possibly to the extinction of humankind?  And I know it’s not just me that has these moments of hopelessness.  Jane Goodall touched on this phenomenon, wide-spread in the youth of today, in a 2007 TED talk which I would really recommend listening to.

 For those of us who have come to adulthood having developed a tendency to care deeply about things – about people, about community, about the environment, about ourselves – all of this is particularly difficult to come to terms with.  We are, like you said, at the point of life where “everyone is expecting you to say something more profound, or have you feet on the ground, and your head in the air ready for anything, working for something”.  And here we are, looking around at each other, wondering if anyone else around us has more answers then we seem to.

So all this to say, I guess, I hear you when you say you are terrified.  Maybe we are terrified for different reasons, but I am terrified too, and I think a lot of other women (and probably men) our age are as well.  Now, this could be taken as a comfort or as just another reason to be, well, terrified!  But I think it should be the former.  We are in this together.  I am rooting for you, and you are rooting for me.  And one thing that I think will save us in this world – as individuals and as communities – are people like you, and me, believing in each other, believing in our right to be happy, believing that we can make something good of our lives, and something good for the people in our lives.

Over the past few years, I’ve really been to some pretty dark moments of doubt and unhappiness.  I have always been an ambitious person, and to reach a point in life where I can’t see clearly where that ambition should lead or how or why it should lead there was…deflating, to say the least.  But what brought me out of this was a renewed focus on being content.  It was Stefania who said to me, that maybe happiness is too much to ask for – that we should focus instead of being content.  It’s a smaller goal, it demands less of us, but if we get there we can find peace with ourselves and with the demands of our environment.  It is just a matter of bringing good things - comforts, simple pleasures - into our lives.  Getting back to doing what we love.  And above all, giving ourselves a break and expecting less of ourselves.

We only have one tiny stretch of time in an infinite universe of existence, and I think the most we can aim for in that time is to spend as much of our lives being as content as we can.  It’s not about knowing exactly where you’re going or how to get there.  It’s not about having the most money, the best boyfriend, the most impressive job.  It’s not about having the most active social life, or even making the most difference in your community.  If these things happen in your life, it should be gravy.  The meat and potatoes that we need to live on are the things that give you that little warm glow of peace inside, that lead to soft, far-away gazes and subtle smiles.

It’s different for everyone, but think of the things that lead to this inner contentment as those which are easily experienced, as often as you need them to be.  For me it’s keeping close to my family and my most genuine and inspiring friends, and letting them know how much they mean to me.  It’s being by a lake.  It’s sitting by a campfire, or remembering the smell of woodfire in the fall.  It’s cooking while singing along to Leonard Cohen.  It’s having faith in my inner artist - writing, taking pictures, and going to life drawing classes that let me explore and express and release.  It’s doing yoga – the kind of yoga that brings me to a place where I can breathe better and relax more than I ever thought possible.  And my two favourites – because of their constancy and ease of access – are having a warm cup of tea and a good book to read.

So I don’t know if this helps at all, all of this theorizing and I know it all sounds a bit idealistic and maybe doesn’t help if you still feel lost in the grander scheme of things.  But I believe that if you find your small comforts, and focus on them, and keep yourself happy, then the rest will follow.  Don’t think you have to have it all figured out.  Don’t think you have to know where home is.  Don’t worry about being terrified, or about being alone.  We’re all terrified, and we’re none of us alone.  I have so much faith in you.  And it’s not faith that is predicated on you doing anything world-changing (although I don’t doubt you could and maybe you will).  I have faith that you will find your own way of being content, and at peace with yourself, and that you will continue to enjoy great joys and loves and and laughs and all those little things that make our lives worth living.  Because you are one of the funnest, most joyous and most caring people I know.  You are a unique and beautiful person.  And so you are already a success – everything else is just gravy.

All my love,

Robin

At home in London

I often used to think when living in Toronto how nice it must be to live with a significant other.  I had the most wonderful roommates one could hope for, and I absolutely loved living with them.  But when I got home from work, too exhausted to cook, I would think...it would be nice to have someone to help take care of that. 

With roommates, we were each living our own separate lives, in the same house.  This is the first time I’ve lived with someone in this new way, where we’re delicately intertwining our lives: sharing a space, sharing costs, sharing a closet...

I love planning meals together, doing our grocery shopping, carrying home fresh potted herbs and then cooking together, and talking over dinner about what we’ve seen and thought that day. It’s all those little things, and then also the larger, more philosophical, sudden realization: I don’t have to shoulder the weight of life’s challenges alone any more.  We’re in this together.  And so far, that is a beautiful thing.

All that life can afford

I’ve been thinking that I should blog again for a couple of days, but I’m not really quite sure what to say.  Everything feels eerily normal.  It feels like we’ve been here for ages.  It feels like we belong.  Even Fred said yesterday, as we’re about to watch a movie on his laptop – “Robin, we’re in London England and it doesn’t even feel any different.”  And he’s right.  It doesn’t.

It’s not that nothing is different here.  In fact, everything is different.  Every detail is similar but slightly altered – the cars are mostly the same make but much smaller (Fred noted early on the lack of pickup trucks).  The streets are similar but the signs are different.  Traffic drives on the left side of the road.   The roads are tinier, and come and go from every which way.  There is one intersection nearby where we have to cross seven times just to get to the other side.  And don’t even get me started about navigating roundabouts as a pedestrian.

In the first few days we were here, all the newness culminated into a general feeling of unease, a slight discomfort with my surroundings.  Even though I’ve lived in the UK before, and I know what to expect, the changeover still has to happen.  It will happen when we go back too.  I think that’s what people who are uncomfortable with travelling to – and especially living in – foreign countries can’t deal with.  Life is more or less the same everywhere – we all eat, have conversations, get from one place to the next - but changing over from one culture to the next is…hard.  It’s challenging, anyway.  It’s like walking out of your house one day and seeing everything familiar flipped into a mirror image.

The way that I deal it is, every time I’m out, I think to myself “today that is new.  Tomorrow it will no longer be new.  Every day more and more things will not be new, and then I will be adjusted.”  And it happens much quicker than one ever expects it might.

We’ve now visited both of our campuses and done a fair bit of exploring around London.  It’s amazing how comfortable it all feels.  I think it’s because we know that we’re not just living here: this is our home.  Even if it is for just a year.

One of the more exciting things that has happened came about entirely by happy accident.  Fred and I had hiked it downtown to see about opening a bank account, we sat down in a pub to have a pint and a tea and two gentlemen asked if they could share our table for a bit.  We got acquainted, and soon found out that they were both East Londoners – who fit to the “T” the stereotype that North Americans would have of them based on Mary Poppins.  One of them even sang the “Chim-chiminee” song to me so I could place the Cockney accent.  They were out to celebrate a new job one of them had just gotten that day.  They were doing a bit of a pub crawl, and asked if we wanted to join in.  Of course we said yes – and we couldn’t have possibly found better tour guides!

They introduced us to London Pride, a darkish beer which I found to be extremely delicious, some hearty steak and ale pie, and Ye Ole Cheshire Cheese, a beautiful, dark, low-ceilinged pub just off of Fleet Street that oozed mystery and history, where Dickens is said to have penned a good portion of his famed novels - it's even alluded to in A Tale of Two Cities.  We also visited a statue of Samuel Johnson’s cat, which was in a courtyard outside of where they used to live.

Among other things, Johnson wrote the first English dictionary, and is well known in London for having said of the city “"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." 

After a whirlwind of a first week in this beautiful, historic and bustling town, I couldn’t agree more!

First post from London

I’m in London. I’m in London. I’m in London. It’s like a mantra I have to keep repeating in order to make it real. It doesn’t help that I’m in that sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, fuzzy-minded mental state where everything inside your body feels like it is swimming. We’re here, and it’s like my body and mind don’t know what to do with themselves.

The good thing is that all the goodbyes have been said, and now it’s only time for hellos…many many hellos. Hello city, hello flat, hello left-sided driving, hello Freddy every morning and every day after school…! But more on that later.

Saying goodbye to Mikey at the airport was very difficult. I was definitely an airport crier. Then we had three hours to wait for our plane to board. We only realized after the first two hours that we in fact did have free Internet access, which is definitely a change from previous times I’ve travelled and cursed the idea that public access to the Internet might not be a basic human right.

And then there was the seven hour flight. It wasn’t terrible, but it did remind me of the hours spent on Greyhound busses going up north, where you want to sleep so badly but there is only the white noise of engines and other peoples’ conversations that keep you in a kind of static alertness, ever-restless. Freddy was definitely not pleased with how poorly his body fit between those normal-sized-person seats, but I think I appeased him a bit when I offered him half of my headphone set to watch Ironman 2. Which is not such a terrible movie, for that kind of movie, although I’m pretty sure Scarlett Johansson’s role in it was completely superfluous, no matter how dead sexy she may be.

And then we were landing in London, at Gatwick airport, and everyone was speaking in stereotypically English accents, which aren’t stereotypical at all because now we are the stereotypical North Americans – and as I recall from my time in Scotland, while we’re here we will indubitably be assumed American until proven Canadian. We weren’t even to the baggage collection area before Freddy started saying things like “cheerio” and “jolly good”. Fact is, it is almost impossible to resist the urge to put on a fake British accent once here.

And then we were trying to navigate ourselves through this crazy new megopolous to our flat in Hackney, which we were pretty much as far from as possible when landing at Gatwick aiport. Luckily transit here is just as straightforward as I remembered it to be. Cramming a large Fred with a large bag into a small Tube, on the other hand, was definitely a challenge. I don’t doubt that in that moment he felt the claustrophobic side of city life quite sharply. I couldn’t help but looking at him every five minutes to smile weakly and try to read whether his face was saying “why the hell did I let Robin convince me to do this”.

Yes, there are definitely doubts. I was feeling nervous, trying to find our way here. And that nervousness was magnified times one million by my being nervous about whether Fred was nervous, and whether he might come to hate me for dragging him, this lovely Northern boy who is most at home fishing in a canoe miles from civilization, to one of the world’s largest, most city-est of cities to live my dream. I’ve never been afraid to take risks, but taking risks while someone else is holding your hand is quite a different cup of tea.

Speaking of tea, I did have a lovely cuppa already, and also soaked in a luxurious deep bathtub. I don’t know what I’ve done right to be blessed by such beautiful flats in recent years, but I am glad that that good apartment karma has come my way. This post has been long enough, but I will just say that I already know this lovely space will be a needed and welcome respite while we settle into this new life.

Now for some sleep….

This life

What better morning to say goodbye than this one, when outside my windows the lake and sky blend together into a uniform greyness, and every leaf and needle drips beneath the slow and constant rain.

Such a melancholy setting calls for sustained hugs and red eyes, unasked unanswerable questions of what might happen between now and the next time we meet – how we might be different, what we might have missed, how much time less there will be in our lives when we come together again.

The summer has been short and long at once, leaving me with irreconcilable feelings of loss and gain that tug at my heartstrings from opposite directions – let go, hold on, let go. A deep and familiar aching for my childhood in this pristine northern wilderness collides with nostalgia and for my adult life of urban excitement, the complexity of grown up relationships, responsibility, all of what was mine now gone.

Now the independence of making and living a life made up of choices mine and mine alone seeps into the need to hold onto this one man. Now we are finding balance, sharing decisions, seeking common ground. Balancing personal integrity with compromise, learning how to love well and live long and well together. Fitting in all the right places and working on the rest of it together – and talking, and talking, and talking it all out until it is right and good. Until it is comfort and home in each other.

Soon each will rely completely on the other. This reality becomes clearer with every goodbye, slowly counting down each piece of stability we had found in our independent lives – the bookends that held it all together. Goodbye house, goodbye family, goodbye friends, goodbye cat. Goodbye to the city and goodbye to the lake. Even goodbye to our cabin tucked far in the woods, with its well-worn path, its chuckling woodstove, the only home we’ve known together, a place that recalls so many of our best memories, our most beautiful moments, our aloneness with each other and with the trees and mountains, with the stars.

Where we are going we will have so little of ourselves to bring with us we will fear becoming lost. We will need each other, in that difficult way that sometimes brings out the worst in us for fear of leaning too much and fearing the fall. We will learn together, travel and experience, taste and see – we will live together, we will really live together and tie ourselves to one another in a serious way that is difficult to undo.

I feel now, where I did not feel it before, that it is time to go. It comes with that kind of sudden urgency when here and now is slipping quickly into what is to come, and the in-between-ness of it becomes unbearable. One more goodbye may finish me. It is not the goodbyes I want now but the gone, the on our way, the we’re finally doing it. The plane lifts off, the ground quickly fades through a tiny oval window, and out there, far away, is all that was, and now it is unquestionable that yes, we are going and yes, everything that was going to change has now changed, and no, there is no going back. So make it good, and make it right, or at least make it exactly what it is going to be and don’t regret, not this choice, not this life, not anything from before or next or after.

The view outside the window tells me this. The melancholy morning. The dreary lake. The move from one season to the next. The finality of it all.

The time passing. This life.

It's time to start again

It's time to start again. It's time to change, again. It's time to say goodbye to dear friends and much loved things and places.



After six years of living in Toronto I'm leaving. First for two months on a lake at home in Northern Ontario, then a year in London UK, and then who knows. It's so hard to believe as I sit here in this apartment that I love so much that soon this place will no longer be mine. Not just the apartment, but the city. I won't be able to say "I live in Toronto". I won't be riding my bike to work every day past the Gladstone Hotel and the quirky - if somewhat pretentiously hipster - shops, bars and restaurants of West Queen West. I won't be going to work for a community-based non-profit at the Artscape Wychwood Barns, with a wonderful crew of young people who care to work alongside.

I love Toronto! I love working where there is such a warm feeling of community, with kids running around the park, with a garden outside and with art happening all around me. I love running along the boardwalk and Lake Ontario in the early morning, and doing yoga in the tiny sanctuary space near my house. I love going shopping for beautiful vintage pieces and buying sweet dresses from the independent designers themselves. I love long hot baths in our clawfoot tub. I love this apartment, with its antique stove and chandeliers, stained glass windows, and my tiny but cosy top floor room with its slanted ceilings. I love that our house is old and vine-covered and in the middle of a quiet tree-lined street, hemmed in by the most pulsing of city arteries - King, Queen and Dufferin.


I'll miss my roommates, who keep me sane and make me laugh and let me cry and cry and cry (because I do that, you know). I'll miss my dear friends, who I've hand-picked to trust and love because they are all so genuine, so interesting, so un-judging and just such lovely people. I'll miss the dinner parties, the dancing, the live music, the late night street meat, poutine and shawarma. I'll miss the plays.

I'll miss my place in this place. Maybe that more than anything. I feel that I belong here now, which I didn't always think I would. I feel connected to a community of people that care, and who want to make a difference. Who inspire me every day even though the future does not look good for our world right now.

I have been lucky to work with so many organizations who do such good work and who have such passionate people at the helm. Organizations like Not Far From the Tree, the STOP Community Food Bank, Bells on Bloor, Pleaides Theatre, PEN Canada, Clay and Paper Theatre, Schools Without Borders. I'll miss this feeling of connection, and belonging.

I remember just before moving to Toronto that I had this idealistic vision of what it would be like to live here. I would live in an old apartment with eclectic charm, I would go home at night and put on some jazz, I would grow herbs on my windowsill, have tulips on the table, and cook delicious meals with my roommates. I would know interesting people, and we would have deep and important conversations.

It seems silly looking back on that, it was naive of me I know. But in another way I think that even then I did know what I wanted, what would really make me happy, which I don't think is that common. Happiness is so slippery, so hard to define. I didn't want a lot. I just wanted a place where I belonged, where I felt at home. A place I could make my own, build a life for myself on my terms and around my personal values. And I think I've done that.

The thing is, I don't know if it's one of those things in life you can just check off and say - done. Or if it should be something that once you have it, you should hang on to it?