I’ve been thinking about the West Coast a lot lately. I’ve dreamed of putting my toes in the sand at Spanish Banks as I sit down, sip on a Granville Island Pale Ale, and watch the waves lap onto the shoreline. It’s usually sunset, and the crowds of people are slowly packing up to leave and head home and bbq late in the night or to eat their vegan and crept free food, and I listen as the kids laughter echo in the dusk and to parents as they call their kids to gather up.
It’s a good dream.
I’ve been thinking about what it would mean to move back. I’ve always felt that Vancouver and I – that Vancouver could be a home. It was one of the few cities that I could live in, being surrounded and so connected to nature. Mountains to the North, Forest to the West, ocean all around, and friends spread throughout. When I was stressed, I would go to Stanley Park and walk the trails. Sometimes the Ocean Wall thing, but more often not, I would go and get lost in the forest. I would find my trees, being surrounded by history, and I could breath. Let go. Relax.
I also remember that feeling having no culture while walking those city streets. Vancouver is a massive urban environment, so there was people of every nationality there. But it was lonely – sometimes I just ached to see another brown face. I lived there with my love at the time, and he and I would hold hands and walk the streets, sipping’ coffee and people watching. And every so often, we would see another face that looked like ours and there would be a small smile, a bro nod, and we would continue on. A cousin. An auntie. Someone who understood what it meant to see ourselves in others.
Connection.
I had such a strong physical connection to that city, and suck a lack of a familial one. I wanted a safe place that I could go to that had moose meat stew, fresh bannock and blueberries. It was unsettling to realize that even the Indigenous food there was so different – salmon, blackberries and seafood. Different food, different music, different language. I didn’t realize how much our land, our community, our language played a part in how I asserted myself in the world.
Dene. Metis. I came from this land. Of this land.
And when I left my land, I felt… lost. I anchored myself with new friendships and new stories emerging out of late night adventures and walks along Commercial Drive and giving myself up to the experience of what Vancouver could be for me. I dove in, and I became almost local. I tried sushi joints dives and off-the-grid coffee houses and shopped organic and then shopped night markets and then sipped Starbucks in silent rebellion and bought books used and secretly bought books at Indigo when I couldn’t wait for offbeat hours. It was a good time. A great time.
But still, lonely.
Moving back – I still think about it. I plan on it. I want my daughter to sit by my side, playing in the sand and walking along the streets with me. I want her to smell the ocean in the air, and feel the chill of a Vancouver mist, and to hear the stories of when her Dad and I were in love and making Vancouver ours. I want to entrench her in our stories, her story, so that maybe, through that tradition, Vancouver can become less lonely and more like home.
