Blue

As some of you know very well, I've been quite homesick during the past couple of days. Adjusting to life in this tiny village, having housemates, being back in the classroom, even navigating life without having a car, has been overwhelming. Especially without my usual support network and Mr. General Delivery. Despite the loneliness I've been feeling, or maybe even because of it, I have never so quickly come to love a place as I have Haida Gwaii.

I've felt drawn to the north, to the rural parts of Canada, to the Arctic, for a long time. Hearing about my grandparents on both sides of my family, and their experiences in the colder, emptier and often more brutal parts of Canada, has pulled at my imagination and had major influences on how I see my future unfolding. When I study a map of Canada, a trait I inherited from Babz much to the vexation of Boo and Mum, I gravitate to Baffin Island. I think this fascination comes from needing something to focus my sense of Canadianism on, like having my grandparents live in all the places they lived gives me more street cred as a Canadian.

We've been talking a lot about culture and place and identity in class over the past couple of days, heard from some of the Haida leaders (several of whom were involved in the logging protests here in the mid-80s) and watched two incredible TED Talks that I highly recommend. Wade Davis, a National Geographic researcher, talks about the 'ethnosphere,' the idea of a biosphere-esque summation of the total of human culture and imagination.

http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html

John Howard Kunstler talks about my favourite topic, urban and suburban city design and the effect of built environment and has an amazing rant against the hideousness of much of American (and Canada). I swear some of his photos could be spots in BC towns.

http://blog.ted.com/2007/04/20/james_howard_ku_1/

Have a watch, I promise you won't regret it.

Queen Charlotte, Charlotte City, the Village of Queen Charlotte, whatever you want to call it, is a pretty neat place. It's quiet and slow and coastal in the fullest sense of all those words. It's an extremely blue town. The water is blue, the clouds are blue, the giant snow covered mountains to the west are blue. Almost every home here is heated by wood-burning stove and the blue smoke drifts out of every chimney, down the hill (the town is about 10 blocks long and 3 blocks deep along the water on a bit of a hill) and settles in the inlet between us and Moresby Island. The architecture here is creative in a fantastic Salt Spring-esque example of rural design. When you're home needs a new room, you gather up some supplies and build another room. Having the same siding on all parts of your house, having a level roof or a square house footprint, having anything resembling a Vancouver home iiiiiisn't really a priority here. But it comes out looking really lovely rather than like the shmozzel it sounds like. The constant building and changing, and the ubiquitous piles of firewood, are often covered in blue tarps that match the blue recycle bins and blue-green trees. It's deeply restful. I think it actually makes the adjustment harder as I'm forced to settle down and let things wash over me.

In short, I'm pretty much having my mind blown up here.