I've been visiting the US a lot these days: for work, for conferences, and simply to see friends. Commensurately, I've been also thinking more about what Canadian culture is, and what being Canadian means to me.
My gratitude towards my nation goes deep. Canada shaped me into person I am today, and I'd go far as to say that Canada raised me; not as much as my mother did, but perhaps more than any other entity. Growing up, our family was poor to the point where there were stretches of weeks where all we ate were frozen dumplings for lunch and cabbage and rice for dinner. But mom did her best to hide our lack from me, and Canada helped her greatly with the conspiracy. Canada gave us a rent-subsidized apartment and five hundred dollars a month to care for me until I turned eighteen. And that would be cause enough for gratitude, but Canada went further in its generosity.
Canada taught me how to swim, and how to skate. Here, municipally-run community centres with ice rinks, pools, and programming rooms are standard civic infrastructure, and our neighbourhoods are dotted with them.1 The municipality runs regular classes and programming in the community centres, generally priced at a few hundred dollars for ten-week classes, but low-income families could register their children for a song. Mom ponied up for skates and bathing suits, and I swam in the summers and skated in the winters my entire childhood.
And so when in my teens when my friends started to invite me over to their families' summer cottages, I could join them in jumping into lakes with glee. And so when an airbnb my university friends booked over the holidays one year turned out to be unexpectedly close to an outdoor rink, I was able to play in a terribly silly game of pick-up hockey. And so even though my body is clumsy and stupid by nature, there were kinds of physical activity that I had cultivated a decade of muscle memory in, and can make pleasing amounts of improvement on in adulthood.
Canada let me read to my heart's content. I'll never forget the wonder and gratitude I felt, the very first time my parents took me to a public Canadian library. Looking around at the shelves, knowing that somehow every book inside was free for me to read and to take home. We didn't have anything like that in China.
With my children's library card I could take out forty books at a time. Forty books! We would make the trip at least once a week, where I would return my previous pile and get a new one — as much as can fit in my backpack, and two of mom's grocery totes. And I spent entire summers among the stacks, because the library had air conditioning and our apartment did not. I gobbled up one book after another in my formative years, which I was only able to do with Canada's generosity.
Canada made the holidays magical for me. Mom could not afford much in the way of frivolous things, but I would have a giant bounty of new toys every Christmas anyways courtesy of a local charity. They gave them out in jumbo translucent garbage bags, pink for girls and blue for boys, big enough for me to fit in. I would get sketchbooks and markers and colour pencils, stuffed toys, play-doh, puzzle books, and countless other things. I liked the art supplies best, but I wasn't picky. (From the same charities we would also get two turkeys a year, one for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas, though mom never quite managed to figure out how one was supposed to cook them.)
At the end of every school year, Canada would slip a bunch of goodies into the same envelope that my report card came in — free tickets to the CNE and to the science centre2, and a booklet of deeply discounted tickets to other attractions near and far. And so my childhood was also filled with botanical gardens, and the giraffes at the zoo, and even the occasional Blue Jays game. And Canada ensured that memberships to the science centre were not too expensive, so mom was able to splurge on an annual family pass when it became clear how much I adored it, and we would go every rainy weekend until I knew all the exhibits by heart.3
Canada continues to provide for me in adulthood. I applied for EI when I graduated into the pandemic and appreciated the breathing room that gave me, I'm grateful for my Canadian passport every time I breeze into the US for a visit. I know my mother will be cared for in her golden years, and I won't ever have to worry about her medical bills. Being Canadian gives me slack, enough for me to do meaningful work without having to worry about being underpaid.
There are many things wrong with Canada. It has a go for bronze mentality, the smartest of us keep going to the US because there is not enough opportunity here, much of its public infrastructure is crumbling and the housing prices are frightful. The nation is very obviously sick.
But in the US, when I step outside the walled gardens of my community, I notice the brittleness underneath the shining streets, the way the wealth is not load-bearing. I notice the medical self-serve kiosks in grocery stores, the necessities behind locked shelves at CVS. Parents there are not given five hundred dollars a month to buy infant formula for their babies, even with a GDP per capita twice ours. To the extent that feeding our infants preclude Canada from investing more in The Next Big Technology, the regret I can muster up about it is half-hearted at best.
When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.
I see someone who is a little more mercenary about money, and somehow even more disembodied than I am. (Would she ever feel at home in her body enough to dance, just for the fun of it?) I see someone less optimistic about the capacity for large institutions and government to do good.
I'm glad that I grew up in Canada. And I want to stay here, and do my part in helping it recover from its sickness. And yes, some of this is because I feel some amount of obligation towards it. I feel deep gratitude towards every single Canadian who paid their taxes gladly to ensure that not only did I have enough to eat and a warm place to sleep, I would also have opportunities to be delighted by giraffes and taught how to swim. It wouldn't feel right to leave.
But if I just say that, I don't think you'd get the right impression. The truth is, I love my country so much. I want to stay because it is my home, and it is a home with good bones and a solid foundation. I want to stay because I think it is good to live in a place that loves its children that much, the way I felt loved by it. I want my taxes to go to a place where the social safety net is generous and the people are easygoing and public skating rinks are treated like a human right.
I want Canada to have a future, this wonderful nation that makes light of its harsh climate. If you are fortunate, you might not realize how much Canada cares for those who are not. And it feels like a terrible waste, to give up on it and count it out of the game. In any case, I love it too much to leave.
Growing up in various Toronto suburbs, I've never lived more than a thirty minute walk away from one.↩
RIP :(↩
I'm minimizing the amount of labour that my mom did throughout the piece, btw. Not every impoverished child got as much out of living in Canada as I did, because some of the programs required additional effort to apply for, and poor parents often do not have the time, effort, or knowledge to take advantage.↩