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.