Lessons In Belonging

Next year I will have officially lived in the 1000 Islands region of Ontario for fifteen years. If you’re wondering why this is important, it’s because it will mean that I’ll have lived here longer than anywhere else. Ever.

Which means I’ll have lived here longer than I’ve lived in Vancouver.

I’m a Vancouverite, you see. It’s how I identify. I’ve drunk the Kool-aid, or in this case the organic Kombucha, and bought into the ideology of west coast cool. So the thought that next year I’ll have lived elsewhere for longer feels like a loss, like I’ve made some fundamental miscalculation.

Confession: I’ve never liked this region of Ontario. Please don’t tell anyone. I feel as if I’m in the minority.

I know the easy answer is to move back west. However, a divorce, custody arrangements, and a new partner in life are a few real reasons why I continue to call this area home. But I do dream about moving back, and I wonder, would I still feel that sense of belonging? Or would I call myself something different? And I worry, because I am so full of paradoxes would I just yearn for something else?

A few years ago I took a road trip down the west coast starting in Vancouver to California. I’m not going off-topic here, I promise. This road trip is noteworthy.

It was a nomadic drive, following road signs that promised something interesting, following people's recommendations, and following our own internal compass. Anyways, after a few days heading south, we reached San Francisco. From there we turned inland, past Yosemite, and begin the long trip back to Ontario. While driving through eastern California, we stumbled upon lamp lit billboards in the middle of nowhere, empty hills curving under nighttime rivers of darkness, abandoned mines with abandoned dreams, and old ghost towns hovering somewhere outside of time. I obsessively photographed everything and these images haunted me down highways and across time. Months later I found myself at my desk recreating these images with my graphic art.

On one strange day I was interrupted by a bizarre winter storm. I stood at the edge of the St. Lawrence River watching lightning strike above old, forgotten warehouses and neglected factories while thick flakes of snow turned my world white. It was because of how strange, how unlikely, the storm was that my thoughts shifted from their usual pattern. I wondered would my small town eventually become a ghost town too?

When I got back to my desk, instead of palm trees stationed beside gas stations, I started drawing these beautiful old buildings of brick and limestone and wood. And I guess some of the bubblegum coloured skies and muted desert landscapes of California were embedded in my subconscious, because they translated across into my art.

Some of the buildings I drew continue to quietly decay, year by year. Some are gone forever. And others have been taken up again, renovated and repurposed.

It takes hours for me to do each drawing. There is an intimacy that happens when I am alone giving shape and structure and depth to these images. I see details that go unnoticed by everyone else. My mind wanders and wonders what events happened within the walls and what emotions are encased within the structure.

I’ve now done over forty of these pieces and I’m not done yet. I’ll take different routes home from work, notice a roofline while shopping and go investigate. My son and I take Sunday drives purposely trying to get lost just to see what we can find. And slowly I’ve come to know the region, know where an old mill is becoming one with the river, where a church is now a family home, where the old railway finally disappears.

Perhaps this isn't my home, but when people see my art, stories get shared about the places, the buildings. And when they do, I feel a belonging and a connection as their memories write themselves into my own history here in this place. And maybe one day, in another fifteen years, I'll still be here and it will finally be home.