Oddities and Observations in My Home and Native Land

June 10, 2008

People around me are speaking English. Feist is playing in the coffee shop. People buy coffee (real coffee!) in travel mugs and drink it on their way to work. They smile as they walk. They say sorry when you bump into them. I am reading the Globe and Mail. Controversy of Hockey Night in Canada’s theme song is the biggest story of the day. Cars stop to let pedestrians pass—an old man pulling out of his driveway smiles and nods as he waits for me to go by.

Another man, restocking shelves, asks me without prompting if I need help, then tells me the exact placing on the shelf of a specific aisle where I can find peanut butter. I go there and find at least a dozen varieties, at normal prices. Other grocery store luxuries include: soy milk, humus, pita bread, thai sauce, donuts, fresh coffee beans, maple syrup, etc. (all in one place!). I take money out of an ATM with ease, and no conversion fees (though I find myself now converting the other way, multiplying by 23 into roubles or 7 into yuan, or 1150 into Mongolian turigs). Wilfrid Laurier, Queen Elizabeth and a pair of polar bears are back in my wallet. I pay for something that costs $20.69 with $40 and the cashier doesn’t blink, counting out my change with a smile on his face (the grocery store across the street even has an automatic change dispenser).

Black people, brown people, white people, Asian people, different people walk the streets. They all have passports like me, with blue covers and a bilingual message from the Queen. That is, if they carry passports—it is not a requirement here. I am no longer a minority, a representative by default of my native land. Though strangely I still feel like a foreigner. People seem so friendly that I find myself searching for ulterior motives, I am confused and skeptical of their politeness. I wonder if this is how new immigrants feel, overwhelmed by the cleanliness, orderliness, politeness of things. I seem to have developed an irrational case of paranoia (or at least here it seems irrational, where elsewhere it was necessary). I wonder if this is indeed where I am from, the land of my origin. It is new and strange and unpredictable. Though perhaps it is just my body, wandering the streets at 6am, thinking it is 11pm at night. Perhaps when I remember how to sleep at normal hours, I will remember how to live in this country again, to communicate in English, to not labour over counting out exact change. To trust strangers. To eat peanut butter and drink coffee and get riled up about hockey theme songs. To not be surprised when people who aren’t white speak flawless English (or French), because they’ve lived in this country longer than I have. To pay $2.50 for public transit without outrage and cross the street without fearing for my life. To be Canadian, to be at home.