ah… back in edmonton.

on my first full day back, i went back to the neighbourhood where i lived between the ages of 10-18, capilano, to see how things had changed while i was gone. it was pretty dismaying. the mall where I used to go for our weekly shopping was virtually abandoned with only a handful of tenants and dozens of empty, locked shops. there were two liquor stores, a Wal-mart and a Winners. the old municipal library where i would go on weekends to read Superman and Charlie Brown anthologies was gone. also gone were the independent butchers and art shops that i remember visiting in my youth.

i went to a KFC to have a snack before heading back to the apartment, and i overheard the familiar sounds of Edmonton-conversations... fringey counter-culture punks repeating stories of being wrongfully assaulted by the cops and waiting for their out-of-court settlement paydays. what was new were the stories of roving gangs of Somalis and other groups who had all come here during the boom, and with the boom at low ebb, they've turned to rather disorganized crime. everyone had stories of their iPods stolen, being mugged for their wallets, jacking somebody's iPhone... curious that low-life's don't seem to feel inclined to tell stories of BlackBerry-related crimes.

what was most strange to me was how familiar all of this really was. i've had these people as friends at various points in my life... why wouldn't i? this was(is) what people in Edmonton were(are) like. here, no one cares or discriminates if you have an accent or not, if your educated or not, wealthy or poor, clean or dirty, sober or stoned, well-spoken or gutter-talking. and that's when it hit me. i had felt so sorry for myself to have to be surrounded by such wretched small-life people, but it dawned on me that i was the one who had become small. i had become small-minded about people and toronto helped me with that.

part of my problem is that i didn't realize how insulated i had become in my little toronto bubble, probably because i had done such a great job of surrounding myself with my very favourite things. i had always been harshly critical of select people in toronto for being closed-minded and judgmental (well, where hedonism wasn't involved), so it has been hard for me to face just how much of that had rubbed off onto me. here i am, strolling around a city where, in spite of growing up here, i am basically a stranger, but full of prejudice and disdain for people i've never even seen before. why? because edmontonians don't all wear fashion labels or stay in perfect physical condition, or use reusable shopping bags, or have not quit smoking yet. because they aren't torontonian? i'm not torontonian!!!

this has been a hard transition... much much harder that i had anticipated. it's also hard to see the value of something that you are doing where the immediate costs are so high, the rate of change is so high, and the benefit is something so intangible like future moments with your family. i've spent hours crying, laughing out loud, gritting my teeth, shouting at the road, panicking over my decision, and i am sure that a more mature and settled person would just go with the fact that they had moved and live with it. but i, being the emotional nuclear reaction that i am, am having a hard time just going with it. i'll figure it out. i usually do. but it will take time.

i'll post some stories about the drive across the country as soon as i can. it was an amazing trip.

- g