Recently I wrote a post about my perception of whether or not I am an expat.  I was very happy to read the comments that followed and also keenly aware that my views on patriotism don’t sit easily with many people.  Since writing that post - and reading the comments that it inspired - my thoughts have been returning to the subject of patriotism and the concept of home time and time again and I just can’t help putting them down on paper, so to speak.  (I’ll miss the pen, when it finally disappears…)

The picture almost says it all.  The only reason it falls short of being a complete representation of how I feel about the concept of home is that my wife is on the other side of the camera and not in the shot with Oscar and I.  These two people, my family, are all that I need to feel that sense of place and of belonging that many describe when talking about their home.  Of course there are other people in my life that should also be in that picture - my mother, who died in 2000; my parents-in-law, whom I love dearly; Oscar’s uncles and aunts and all of the many friends who enrich our lives with their love, humour and support.  These people form the larger community in which our little family exists; their influence is immense.

But, if this is true, why did our little family feel compelled to leave Canada and  part of that greater network of people behind?  If our family trio is all that it takes to feel ‘at home’, why fly off half-way across the globe and leave two sobbing grandparents lamenting our departure?  It’s a tough one to answer.

Bananas and Tomatoes

My earliest memories of England are from a trip my mother, sister and I made when I was four.  I think we were there for two weeks in total - I would say that I can recall about two minutes worth of scattered images an impressions.  That is my home country; that’s where I was born and where the large majority of my family tree has its roots.  I was two and a half years old when my parents took my sister and I to Canada to live.  I was a precocious talker with an almost Liverpudlian accent despite the fact that my parents were both from London and had adopted a rather posh manner of speech in spite of their working class backgrounds (there are recordings to prove this but please don’t ask me to try and find them).  At that point, I was English.  When did I become Canadian?

My mother was very fond of telling stories.  One of the most often repeated happened in our local grocery store when I was four.  As it so happened, two of the items being purchased were bananas and tomatoes.  By now, I had completely adopted a Canadian accent and pronounced these words bə-ˈna-nə and tə-ˈmā-tō: my mother’s British pronunciations were bə-ˈnä-nə and tə-ˈmä-tō.  My mother thought little of my innocent question “What are you buying mum?”  (I never did adopt the Canadian ‘mom’).  When she listed the two linguistically contentious items, I proceeded to prance about mimicking her pronunciation much to the amusement of the other shoppers and to the horror of my mother who couldn’t help but laugh despite her mortifying embarrassment.  Was I Canadian then?

Cultural Differences

Canada and Britain might not seem to be very different from many perspectives, but I was always keenly aware of the differences growing up.  Why, like most children in similar circumstances, did I change my accent before I even went to school?  Are we naturally compelled to fit in with our social surroundings?  It would seem so.  And if that’s the case, it’s no wonder that I never saw myself as 100% Canadian.  My school friends would call my house to hear my mother answer in her British accent and ask me quizzically if I was English.  It was like some secret thing about me - not a dirty secret, but secret nonetheless.

I had a second vocabulary at my disposal which was seldom heard: crisps for (potato) chips, chips for fries, petrol for gas, sweets for candy, biscuits for cookies, rubbish for garbage, lorry for truck - the list goes on.  With the one notable excepting of ‘mum’, I never used this second lexicon and even that term was reserved for private use; I referred to my mother as ‘mom’ with other kids.

But does any of this really matter?  Before I left Canada to see the world I had only been back to England for a total of about six weeks, spread over two family trips.  That hardly counts as formative when it comes to my national identity, does it?  Maybe not, but both my parents were Brits and their way of doing things was always slightly different - or sometimes very different - from the way my strictly Canadian friends’ families did things.  That may have been partly just because every family does things a little differently - not all Canadians are alike - but I was always aware of that cultural difference.  I didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving until age 30 when I was living with Katie in Penticton and went to her parents’ house.  (It all seemed so American to me, in a way.)

Other Immigrants

Canada continues to have the highest per capita immigration in the world.  The first ten years that I spent in Canada were in an area that housed a multitude of first generation immigrants like ourselves, from all over the world.  Many of these other immigrants were visual minorities and had learned English as a second language - they were easy to spot where I wasn’t.  Perhaps I kept my cultural background to myself because I could; because I thought that doing so made me fit in better.  I never thought of any of my fellow immigrant friends as ‘un-Canadian’ or thought less or more of them because of their backgrounds, but still I pretty much kept mine hidden.  Or at least I didn’t advertise it.

When we moved to a more affluent area when I was twelve, I realized that Canada wasn’t all as happily multi-cultural as my experiences and the federally funded films we saw at school had led me to believe.  There were members of visible minorities there too, but far, far fewer.  There were more people like me, however, with English or Scottish parents, though typically you never knew it until you visited them at home or ran into them with their families somewhere.  We all just sort of kept it quiet.

Borders and Barriers

The first stop on my tour of the globe was London.  I had the idea of connecting with my roots there and planned to stay for six months before heading further afield.  I did end up living in London for half a year, but there was no connection made.  It didn’t take me long to realize that London was not the place for me.  To be frank, I hated it.  I never felt ‘at home’ there, not for a second.  Ironically, I had a run-in with some louts one night at a bus stop who spat on me for no reason whatsoever (I guess they thought they could bully me since there were two of them and one of me) and when I very clearly expressed my readiness to defend my honour, as it were, they told me to go back where I came from.  I call the event ironic because I was only about ten kilometers from the hospital where I was born.  (Even at the time this amused me.)  Eventually they buggered off (it seems appropriate to use the British side of my vocabulary here) and no real harm was done.

When I moved to Madrid a few months later I immediately fell in love with the city and felt that I was meant to be there.  My Spanish was poor but it hardly mattered - I had found my home.  That’s when I truly realized just how little of my personal identity was based on the country in which I was born or in which I had spent so much of my life.  Their influence can’t be denied but neither can it be said to define me.

Too Much to Say

I hadn’t intended this to be a two-part post but it turns out that I have just too much to say.  If you’re still with me, thanks for reading!

More soon…