For most of my life, I have not lived in a tourist destination. I lived in a city that was so devoid of tourism that one couple made the news for claiming that they had a good time there. Winnipeg is often the who even goes there location in movies and TV, like The Office’s “Business Trip” episode. Not even Michael is impressed with the amenities.
To go from Winnipeg to Victoria, a city that is visited by people from around the world (on purpose rather than on a layover) has really put things into perspective. I’ve realized, for example, that a city that doesn’t get a lot of attention from the world becomes very self-interested. The things that go on are for the people who live there, and no one else.
It’s like the difference between going to a nice restaurant and going to your aunt’s for dinner. The first is an experience — everything looks nice, and likewise, you should probably wear something besides sweats. But at your aunt’s, everything is familiar, and comfortable. You see the same people that you always do and have many of the same conversations. You might be a little bored, but you’re content in knowing the lay of the land.
Victoria is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, let alone lived. It’s getting close to three years since I came here, and I’m still amazed by it every day. It’s the end of November, and there’s no frost on the ground. There are even flowers on some of the hedges. There are yoga studios and coffee shops and dogs in raincoats and all the things you’d expect to find on the west coast.
In the summer, it’s a main stop for cruise ships that are travelling between Alaska and other parts of the US. Some days, there are as many as three massive ships docked by the breakwater, three floating cities that seem to hold more people than could ever fit into the city’s little downtown. And if you were to go downtown, you would certainly feel it: taxis lined up outside the Empress, families on benches with ice-cream cones dripping down their hands, buskers and pedicabs and bustling outdoor patios serving up lacklustre fish and chips.
Depending on your mood, walking through the city between April and October can be either exciting or frustrating. Some days it’s nice to remember that you live somewhere so lovely that other people are paying good money to see it. You think, I live here! I get to be here every day. Isn’t that great? But if you have an appointment or just grumpy in general, the tourists become obstacles. Please move. I live here! I’m here every day and you’re in my way.
On most days, I will gladly take the trade-off that comes with living in a city like Victoria. And on the others, I will just avoid downtown.
The other day a friend and I got a coffee and walked by the harbour. It was a Wednesday morning, and the city was almost eerily quiet. It was hard to imagine the streets so full of people just a few months ago, the warm sun beating down on everyone as they sweated and read menus at restaurant entrances. It felt like we had the place to ourselves, and I was grateful to have made it through another summer. We saw a seal and a heron, right in the harbour, while we drank holiday lattes.
There’s something magic about off-season. You can feel it on a Wednesday morning, and as winter creeps in, you can feel it walking by the ocean anytime past 5 p.m. In those moments, a place that seems to cater to everyone suddenly feels like something private. Sometimes it hits me how often I lived in that kind of privacy in Winnipeg, how it was a place that represented the steady rhythm of daily life without asking for anything more.
Then again, when you live somewhere for 20-plus years, privacy is hard to find in other ways.
Here, I have anonymity. Bars aren’t full of everyone I went to university with, and although there’s usually at least one awkward encounter at a music festival, they don’t make up so much of the day that I stress about them. Being no one special is its own kind of privacy, its own opportunity to be someone new.
I firmly believe that it’s something everyone should experience: leaving your aunt’s house and going out to eat. Winnipeg will always be there, and that’s enough of a reason not to feel called back to it. When I left, I always said to everyone that I might come back. Maybe one day I’d want to buy a house, or I’d miss Baraka so badly that I’d have no other choice.
But I think that’s just a trick that we sometimes tell ourselves about leaving. Maybe this isn’t forever.
It makes it easier somehow, even if we know how untrue it really is. I’ve said the same thing with every goodbye in my life, every broken relationship. Maybe this isn’t forever. But really it’s just a stepping stone to something different, and even as you take it, you know you won’t be retracing your steps.
People say you don’t really know a place until you leave it, and I agree. I didn’t know what home felt like until I left and made my home elsewhere. But I also realized that where is just one part of it. The other part is how it feels to wander through that place when no one else is out on the streets. How much a place can feel like your own in the off-season. Most importantly, it’s the version of yourself you’re asked to be when you’re there.
A few years ago, I got the opportunity to interview one of my favourite professors from university, the late Howard Curle. He taught intro to film, which was an absolute staple for every first-year student. We would all huddle in the dark and watch Once, feeling nostalgic for something we’d never even experienced. His passion for movies rubbed off on all of us; I think each of his students considered a career in film, no matter how little we’d cared about the subject before.
In our meeting, he told me about his time in New York as a student. He’d gone there to immerse himself in the world of film, and he’d fallen immediately in love. I think about what he said often:
“Something about the city makes you work hard.”
Places can bring things out in us that would have lain dormant otherwise. There’s no way to unlock those things without leaving your hometown.