theontariad

[theontariad]

[theontariad]

The Glebe

We walked down the Glebe, the Kerrisdale of Ottawa. Everything was very white. 

Independently run shops had hideous logos made by retarded designers. People were very excited about the Sens. The street that we went along ran through the entire of Ottawa, and it would take us from his house to the downtown core in about 45 minutes. 

Everything was white. There were many places that claimed to sell sushi. But  “when in Rome…”, so we went to a typical place that sold beer and played hockey on the television.

The last time I saw Matt it was only for 50 minutes out of the three hours that he was in town. He grabbed him from the airport, took him to bubble tea, and then to church where his parents got him, and we quadrupled our conversation speed.

It was nice to catch up on things. About what was going on back home. What changes happened in which people. What would happen in our futures.

After dinner we headed back down the same street. There were many of the same sort of places. Bars. People laughing loudly. Eating the same things. 

When we went back to Matt’s, his roommates were the doing the exact same thing. I met them and shook hands with them. They were nice, but nothing special. Very “hey how’s it going I’m not bad thanks for asking”. It was a droning existence that went on for them. As if they buried themselves in the dirt while skies and seasons pass by. You wonder how can they go on a lifetime like this.

We got back into his room. He closed the door. 

“You see what I have to deal with?” he said. 

[theontariad]

Living with Ottawans

Matt’s roommates were all white. Their daily existence composed of X-Box, smoking pot, drinking beer, and sitting on their couches talking about their sports pools and stats. They never went out. The walls were lined with posters of bands like Flight of the Conchords and Radiohead. 

There was nothing wrong with them. They were nice. But there was nothing special about them either. They never made jokes, never expressed any kind of emotion, never had an sort of opinion about anything. 

I tried to imagine a lifetime of doing this. 

[theontariad]

Matt in Ottawa

Whenever my friends from the east mentioned sharing a house, I thought they talked of real houses. Like the house I live in. 

Matt was on Sunnyside Avenue. It was a lane of identical brick houses that stretched on for streets on end. All the garages were in the front with garbage cans by the road. It was very symmetrical. 

The house was nothing like my own. No insulation. Pipes that froze in the winter. Hundreds of these houses were managed by landlords who leeched their utility fees whenever they could.

When Matt opened the door to his room, I came face to face with his isolation. It was a small room. The length was the head of his bed and a tiny desk. A rectangle in the wall was his closet. There was no lock, so he had to install one himself. 

He lined the walls with overly-saturated 80s postcards of Vancouver. 

“I’m very excited to leave,” he said.

[theontariad]

Outside POW.

[theontariad]

Chris Arrives in Ottawa

Ottawa’s airport is coded POW. It’s very nice and modern, like YVR, but not quite as open, but a hell of a lot better than Calgary’s. 

I wandered around with my luggage and found a place to sit by the main entrance.

Matt appeared soon after and it was unbelievable to think that I was finally here, the place where he had been spending his post-secondary life, the land that I had been buzzing all my texts into. He agreed it was weird as well.

There was nothing outside. Patches of dry grass. Sad, barren trees. We took the bus out of there and there were flat malls on the highway that made up our scenic bus ride. 

I wondered how people lived like this, to have suburbs and generic, cookie-cutter malls in every neighbourhood. How could they be happy? 

[theontariad]

Arrivals and Departures

As I was in the air scrolling through films on the screen, Matt was getting ready to leave Ottawa. He had a work term with the federal government and had finished the day before I was about to arrive. It was a grueling four months of isolation and many times that term I would check my phone walking out of class to read texts from him talking about it being a shithole. 

But before that, we were about to explore the city.

[theontariad]

Gates

My dad drove me to YVR that morning and prayed with me in a corner before we said goodbye.

These were the domestic gates, the gates that I saw my friends pass by many, many times before when I had to say farewell, the gates that took them away from me. I walked through them myself and thought about them at 17 or 18, the threshold of adulthood, walking through. Some acts are symbolic, like baptism, and I guess for them walking into that terminal was one.

[theontariad]

[theontariad]

[theontariad]

A Million Roads

I left on a Saturday. I planned to see people. I would visit Ottawa, Waterloo, and Toronto.

My dad likes to pour over maps and video tapes and museum deals religiously for months prior to the trip.

Up to the moment my plane left the air, I did absolute zilch.

The day before, I went to Chapters. I went to the travel section. I flipped through some books and even held them seriously under my arm, but I put them back on the shelf and decided to fly into adventure with not one but a million roads in front of me. 

[theontariad]

Rio

I asked my dad what was his first trip.

“Rio with my friends,” he said. “We drove along the east coast of the United States. We hit DC, New York, and others. There was so much driving. We did not expect so much driving. If we had known, we probably would not have gone.”

Every journey has its surprises. People contacted me to the last minute. Ultimate clinics in North York. An elementary school friend working in a lab in the city. The universe seemed to converge on the two weeks I was there.

[theontariad]

Monomyth

Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It describes the monomyth, a theory he created on archetypes that reoccur in stories of all cultures. There are steps such as the call to adventure, the crossing of thresholds, and temptation. 

Of course, undergoing a journey like this, the things I see would not let me be the same again. The last step is returning home with gained knowledge and becoming an individual of both worlds. 

[theontariad]

A Sample

My trip was two weeks. It’s not four months. It’s not an eight-month work term or a full-year internship. 

But I hoped to have a taste of all that. To see where my friends live, where they go to school, buying in bulk, buying bathroom products, how they make their homes away from home, to meet the people who keep them going. 

A hell of a lot more meaningful than a tan.

[theontariad]

Metaphors

Ontario means a few things to me. Rick Mercer. The central hub of Canada. A shit-ton of suburbs, a clusterfuck of so-called “cities” separated by brain-melting Greyhound hours and depressing, barren trees. White, Canadian politicians. 

It also represents a choice. Most of my friends from Ontario aren’t from there. They chose to pack their bags and leave home and so Ontario meant goodbyes, plane letters, Skype calls, and multiple teary airport visits. I play Penelope every term. 

I’m very rooted at home. I can’t possibly imagine living somewhere else. I was born in Vancouver and raised in Vancouver. I never lived anywhere else. And so to me Ontario was the very opposite of that. It was independence, responsibility, isolation, growing up, and having no one to blame for choices but yourself. 

[theontariad]

More Than A Vacation

It’s not a tropical island or the birthplace of western civilization. You don’t sit on a beach with a cold drink in hand or look at famous pieces of art. In the tradition of New York as the Big Apple, my friend calls it the Big Shit. When I asked him which part of the city is his favourite, he replied, “I don’t know Chris, that’s like asking which piece of shit is the nicest?”

This was never a normal vacation. When I told people I was going away, they asked where, and when I said Toronto, they formed new wrinkles.

“Why not Hong Kong? You’ve never been to Hong Kong.”

Besides Vancouver, I probably know the most people in Ontario. Whenever anybody is anywhere the question of “you should come visit!” is always on their lips but never turns into a serious possibility. But I guess there were enough of my good friends there to pull me east, and so instead of romantic cities, warm sand, or shiny hotels, I chose a different adventure, of old shared houses, of small town diners and waxy pubs, of futons brought in from the street, of meeting the real people behind dropped names, and of friends alongside to talk on midnight streets and starry canals.

[theontariad]