Homelands

Cornwall has to be the least exciting place in Canada. Or at least, Cornwall's not far from it. The Domtar paper mill layers half the town with a revolting sulphurous stench. Chronic unemployment is a long tradition and squalid poverty lurks everywhere. But I was born there, so it has a strange, almost mystical attraction for me.

It's hard to revisit my own myths. They're by nature slightly beyond the ken of my older self. The mind that recorded my childhood is not the mind I use to recall it. I feel like a stranger rummaging around in someone else's attic, looking at faded photographs that record events I've been told about but never actually experienced. But if I can't recapture my mythology, I can at least visit the lost homeland that gave it birth.

On a hot, sticky, glorious June weekend, my girlfriend and I had just ended a trip to Ottawa. As we were only an hour away, I suggested an overnight detour to Cornwall, where we could stay with some of my relatives. It was strange, having her with me, bringing someone so emotionally close on a tour of my mythical landscape.

Eastern Ontario must be one of the most quietly pleasant places in the world. The farms are run-down, the roads all have potholes and the middle-class bureaucratic opulence of Ottawa gives way to dilapidated homes and poverty-induced informality. It's somehow more honest, more real.

Before this trip, part of me had never left my "homeland". My memories of Cornwall are stored in a separate filing cabinet, and the point where Cornwall ceased to be my home and Toronto started is blurred by many returns. Lazy summers at my beloved grandmother's mobile home in Ingleside, the other-worldliness of Williamstown and its ancient iron bridge, the endless forests, fields and farms and the majesty of the mighty St. Lawrence flowing past as my parent's car zipped along the 401 back to Toronto-- all of them occupy the same space.

Little had changed. Dilapidated Alexandra Park lay undeveloped across from my parent's old house, where I spent summer afternoons on the swings. The weathered and decaying stone fountain in the park that was painted bright red; the bewildering and exciting railroad tracks where countless pennies and small stones met a crushing end; I felt like a tourist. I thought I would be disturbed by what had changed since I left. But I wasn't.

What disturbed me was the sameness of the place.

I touched the ancient concrete fountain. It felt just as it always had, the shape of it, eroded and cold, my hands finding the nooks in the stone expertly and with remembered ease. Of course, I had to bend down to drink the water. The old outdoor pool, with the tree inside the fence, was unchanged. The pool was the same weird bright blue, if a little faded by the elements. The concrete tubes in which we used to play at Sidney Street Public School were gone, but I could see the furrows where they'd been.

The abandoned lot next to our old house had given way to new residents, and the house itself was totally rebuilt. I knew it by its shape. The veranda still looks out onto a vast back yard. It's become a sterile lawn, but I can imagine my parents' immense garden readily enough. The hill where the unkillable horseradish plant lurked still pokes up, though the horseradish plant itself seems to have been evicted.

The corner store is now someone's home. I remember the candies and their bright packages, the ones no-one sells anymore, and the sound and moist smell of the cooler where the bottled drinks were kept. I remember the excitement at the sound of the creaking steps near the picture window.

The smells are engraved on my memory like nothing else. If I close my eyes, I can actually smell the dampness of the street after a particularly brutal storm, or that peculiarly unique scent of the charcoal by the railroad tracks. The images and sensations fit the template of my mental map perfectly. It was like a surreal trip through a private museum.

I could never, ever return to that life; I remember a time when I desperately wanted to, to go running back to my small, safe, familiar world. Toronto had been so big and overwhelmingly foreign. But looking at the far end of Alexandra Park, a place I never explored because of its sinister distance, I grew uncomfortable.

On cue a rickety chip-truck came rumbling down the road, ringing its irresistible bell. It stopped right in front of my old house. I couldn't believe it. There it was, after seventeen years; the frying oil and grungy exterior intact. I ran to it, bought a large fries (my mother never gave me enough money to buy LARGE fries; this was a long-awaited victory), and put salt and vinegar on it. Of course, I hate vinegar now. Then, as abruptly as it had come, the chip truck left.

The memory faded quickly. Before I could finish the box, all I had left were soggy, salty fried potatoes.

Patiently tolerating my nostalgia, my girlfriend squeezed my hand. I could sense the silent message; she had to be back in Toronto in six hours, and we were on a tight schedule. But I didn't want to stay anyway.

I was choking, gasping for space, cramped and confined. I explored my memoryscape and felt an overwhelming compulsion to escape. My cheeks were trembling. My voice was quavering. The memories weren't themselves painful; what hurt was the realization that I no longer needed them. I craved freedom, borderless horizons, not the womb-like reassurance of boundaries, no matter how sacred. The security of my eight-year old limits were oppressive.

I recall how difficult it was to close the car door, but also how relieved I felt when I did it. As we drove away I knew part of me was gone. There is an eight-year old boy, happy and comfortable and secure, playing in a park on a hot summer day on Eighth street. I finally let him go, back to his friends and his ghostly garden of half-memories I had tended so carefully for so long.

But on that perfect June day when I made my pilgrimage, Alexandra Park was abandoned. I didn't recognize anyone in the neighbourhood. Despite the intense heat, everything seemed frozen, congealed, at the same time somehow alien. I didn't want the emotional soup my memory was feeding me. My nostalgia evaporated in the summer heat, and I felt much older.

I'd seen the mighty St. Lawrence flowing past from the highway many times before, but this time it was different. It was liberating, a trail leading me to greater things, and no longer threatening. It was a pleasant drive, with no traffic until we reached the outskirts of Toronto. And the city waiting for us was as welcoming as any megalopolis of six million people can be when Monday fast approaches.

But it had been a long and tiring trip. It felt good to be home.