poked pins into.
We never moved away from Victoria, but we travelled quite a few summers to the States—California and Washington, D.C.—for my father’s research for the books he was writing. We went to New Jerseyfor Christmas one year and were spoiled rotten by my grandparents because we were suddenly distinct, different from our cousins. Or maybe it was just because we lived so far away and they missed us. We were spoiled with Haddenfield cream doughnuts, a delicacy that, in memory, still causes my mouth to water and makes me remember my grandparents. (A little aside: When visiting my grandparents on my own when I was in university, I froze a Haddenfield cream doughnut and mailed it to my brother, who was living in Vancouver. Just one little doughnut. He said it arrived all mushy, probably stale, but he ate it anyway. He knew the importance of the gesture. He knew that something small like that still carried so much weight.)
My parents became Canadian citizens in 1988 and 1989, and my brother and I followed some years later. My brother was actually registered for the draft in the U.S. from age eighteen to twenty-six. The Selective Service System had tracked him down, just in case. They thanked him when he turned twenty-six and let him go with a letter that said his “registration was an important part of America’s peacetime military preparedness [and] played a part in maintaining peace and protecting the citizens of our Nation and their freedom.”
I asked my father recently if he felt he was Canadian and he immediately answered yes. I wonder about this myself. What would I say if my daughters asked me if I felt Canadian?
As a writer in Canada, or anywhere else probably, your work gets labelled—mystery writer, science fiction writer, literary writer, gay writer, etc. And then there are the books that branch out and try on new labels—literary thriller, science fiction romance, etc. Living in Toronto now, I’m automatically a “Toronto writer.” I’ve even received reviews condemning me for where I live. Once you start selling to the United States and other countries, you are also a “Canadian writer,” even if you’re originally from India or Africa or Australia and are writing about that country. If you’ve immigrated to Canada, if you hold citizenship or landed immigrant status and live here, you are Canadian. I am a Canadian writer.
This is a strange way of belonging to a country. As an immigrant to this country I am alive to the differences that surround me, the differences that are a part of me. I don’t know anything about hockey, really, I can’t get my head around it. Nor do I understand curling. I played baseball as a kid and was pretty good at it.
There are ironies in the Canadian personalitywhich I find fascinating and my neighbours seem not even to notice. Cultured and polite Canadians, sophisticated Canadians, turn into maniacs during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Canadians who claim not to be patriotic will preach the merits of Canadian beer, heaping derision on the American product. But then, on Oscar night, Canadians will gather around television sets, desperate to know who has won this American gold statue. And in the arts it is a well-known fact that you haven’t really “made it” until you make it in the States. In fact, the Canadian personalities who go South end up being literally sucked, like a dip in quick-sand, into their new country. And then what happens? Years later, when we are reminded that this Super-Famous-So-and-So is Canadian it amazes us. “Really? No way!” Don’t think I haven’t noticed.
These perspectives can be seen as American. But am I really American either? When I go to the United States now, what I notice are the little things—the little things those kids at Oaklands Elementary School noticed in me. The food portions are always bigger in the States. Everything is bigger actually, television ads seem bigger and brighter. If I were really an American,
We never moved away from Victoria, but we travelled quite a few summers to the States—California and Washington, D.C.—for my father’s research for the books he was writing. We went to New Jerseyfor Christmas one year and were spoiled rotten by my grandparents because we were suddenly distinct, different from our cousins. Or maybe it was just because we lived so far away and they missed us. We were spoiled with Haddenfield cream doughnuts, a delicacy that, in memory, still causes my mouth to water and makes me remember my grandparents. (A little aside: When visiting my grandparents on my own when I was in university, I froze a Haddenfield cream doughnut and mailed it to my brother, who was living in Vancouver. Just one little doughnut. He said it arrived all mushy, probably stale, but he ate it anyway. He knew the importance of the gesture. He knew that something small like that still carried so much weight.)
My parents became Canadian citizens in 1988 and 1989, and my brother and I followed some years later. My brother was actually registered for the draft in the U.S. from age eighteen to twenty-six. The Selective Service System had tracked him down, just in case. They thanked him when he turned twenty-six and let him go with a letter that said his “registration was an important part of America’s peacetime military preparedness [and] played a part in maintaining peace and protecting the citizens of our Nation and their freedom.”
I asked my father recently if he felt he was Canadian and he immediately answered yes. I wonder about this myself. What would I say if my daughters asked me if I felt Canadian?
As a writer in Canada, or anywhere else probably, your work gets labelled—mystery writer, science fiction writer, literary writer, gay writer, etc. And then there are the books that branch out and try on new labels—literary thriller, science fiction romance, etc. Living in Toronto now, I’m automatically a “Toronto writer.” I’ve even received reviews condemning me for where I live. Once you start selling to the United States and other countries, you are also a “Canadian writer,” even if you’re originally from India or Africa or Australia and are writing about that country. If you’ve immigrated to Canada, if you hold citizenship or landed immigrant status and live here, you are Canadian. I am a Canadian writer.
This is a strange way of belonging to a country. As an immigrant to this country I am alive to the differences that surround me, the differences that are a part of me. I don’t know anything about hockey, really, I can’t get my head around it. Nor do I understand curling. I played baseball as a kid and was pretty good at it.
There are ironies in the Canadian personalitywhich I find fascinating and my neighbours seem not even to notice. Cultured and polite Canadians, sophisticated Canadians, turn into maniacs during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Canadians who claim not to be patriotic will preach the merits of Canadian beer, heaping derision on the American product. But then, on Oscar night, Canadians will gather around television sets, desperate to know who has won this American gold statue. And in the arts it is a well-known fact that you haven’t really “made it” until you make it in the States. In fact, the Canadian personalities who go South end up being literally sucked, like a dip in quick-sand, into their new country. And then what happens? Years later, when we are reminded that this Super-Famous-So-and-So is Canadian it amazes us. “Really? No way!” Don’t think I haven’t noticed.
These perspectives can be seen as American. But am I really American either? When I go to the United States now, what I notice are the little things—the little things those kids at Oaklands Elementary School noticed in me. The food portions are always bigger in the States. Everything is bigger actually, television ads seem bigger and brighter. If I were really an American,
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