Read Online Passages: Welcome Home to Canada by Michael Ignatieff - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Ignatieff
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these things wouldn’t seem bigger; they would seem just right.
The point here is that I am a combination of both nationalities. But, even more importantly, I am also neither. I occupy a space outside both countries that lends me a perspective that I think has facilitated my career as a writer. I can be a stranger in my own country. I can watch both Canada and the United States with fascination and curiosity. I can step back and watch. Not quite fitting in gives me the advantage of being able to undertake a kind of scientific examination of culture and people in an artistic way. I have the lucky position of an observer; I don’t really have to work on it. And as a writer is naturally an observer, the path I’ve chosen to walk down is nicely maintained. Paved, even.
It’s a constant blending. Memory and identity. It’s interesting that my mother, my father, my brother and I all decided to remain dual citizens. My brother teaches now in Barbados and he tells his students that he’s 100 percent Canadian. And 100 percent American. But if he is totally both, then, if you really think about it, he is neither.
My brother reminds me of the one year we celebrated two Thanksgivings. He says we ate turkey leftovers, stuffing, turkey sandwiches, cranberry sauce, for months. I think we had something else for Christmas dinner, maybe a ham. And I remember thetime I was shopping with my mom in the grocery store in October and she looked up and noticed the Thanksgiving decorations hanging from the ceiling and rushed to buy a turkey. The two dates—October or November?—played havoc with our holidays for years. My brother also remembers being mixed up about the songs at school “My country ’tis of thee … God save the Queen.”
It all has to do, really, with when I came to Canada. I came when I was seven years old. One of my daughters is five now, and I ask myself, if in two years we moved away from Canada, would she know anything about Canadian politics or history, about the cultural mosaic or Canadian immigration policies? No. She would know what I knew: the small differences, the minute things that made me stand apart and still make me feel individual. Home for me is exactly the spot where my family is right now.
I think this Canadian/American thing, this blending, has made my family closer than we might have been had we stayed put in Virginia. My mother and father left their own families to move to Canada, and so our tight-knit family became everything we knew. Holiday dinners were only the four of us. We were different from those other families in Canada with their big get-togethers, and we slowly becamedifferent from those other families in the United States, different from the relatives we had left behind. So we had to stay together. We are some strange new breed—neither a part of where we came from nor a part of where we are now.
I’ve been playing dominoes here with my memory. I’ve knocked one over, and a whole row has gathered speed and fallen over all around me.
There’s a photo of me on the ferry, arms open wide. I’m wearing flowered pants, a long jacket. My brother is smiling. His face is happy and content. But where’s my face? My hair is in my face. Long hair blowing around my head, covering my eyes, my mouth. You have to look twice to see which direction I’m facing. You have to notice the little knee bumps and the way my hands turn. You have to look closely to see the bit of forehead peeking out of the wind-whipped hair. I’m sailing forward but looking back. Caught in a moment between two countries. Not knowing the differences that lie ahead but obviously enjoying that in-between stage that I seem to have stayed in my entire life.
Shyam
Selvadurai
CONVERSATIONS WITH MY MOTHER
I N 1975, MY PARENTS made a significant trip to America. My father was taking my mother so that she could decide if she would like to live there. He was a tennis coach and, for the past few years, had been teaching at a
The point here is that I am a combination of both nationalities. But, even more importantly, I am also neither. I occupy a space outside both countries that lends me a perspective that I think has facilitated my career as a writer. I can be a stranger in my own country. I can watch both Canada and the United States with fascination and curiosity. I can step back and watch. Not quite fitting in gives me the advantage of being able to undertake a kind of scientific examination of culture and people in an artistic way. I have the lucky position of an observer; I don’t really have to work on it. And as a writer is naturally an observer, the path I’ve chosen to walk down is nicely maintained. Paved, even.
It’s a constant blending. Memory and identity. It’s interesting that my mother, my father, my brother and I all decided to remain dual citizens. My brother teaches now in Barbados and he tells his students that he’s 100 percent Canadian. And 100 percent American. But if he is totally both, then, if you really think about it, he is neither.
My brother reminds me of the one year we celebrated two Thanksgivings. He says we ate turkey leftovers, stuffing, turkey sandwiches, cranberry sauce, for months. I think we had something else for Christmas dinner, maybe a ham. And I remember thetime I was shopping with my mom in the grocery store in October and she looked up and noticed the Thanksgiving decorations hanging from the ceiling and rushed to buy a turkey. The two dates—October or November?—played havoc with our holidays for years. My brother also remembers being mixed up about the songs at school “My country ’tis of thee … God save the Queen.”
It all has to do, really, with when I came to Canada. I came when I was seven years old. One of my daughters is five now, and I ask myself, if in two years we moved away from Canada, would she know anything about Canadian politics or history, about the cultural mosaic or Canadian immigration policies? No. She would know what I knew: the small differences, the minute things that made me stand apart and still make me feel individual. Home for me is exactly the spot where my family is right now.
I think this Canadian/American thing, this blending, has made my family closer than we might have been had we stayed put in Virginia. My mother and father left their own families to move to Canada, and so our tight-knit family became everything we knew. Holiday dinners were only the four of us. We were different from those other families in Canada with their big get-togethers, and we slowly becamedifferent from those other families in the United States, different from the relatives we had left behind. So we had to stay together. We are some strange new breed—neither a part of where we came from nor a part of where we are now.
I’ve been playing dominoes here with my memory. I’ve knocked one over, and a whole row has gathered speed and fallen over all around me.
There’s a photo of me on the ferry, arms open wide. I’m wearing flowered pants, a long jacket. My brother is smiling. His face is happy and content. But where’s my face? My hair is in my face. Long hair blowing around my head, covering my eyes, my mouth. You have to look twice to see which direction I’m facing. You have to notice the little knee bumps and the way my hands turn. You have to look closely to see the bit of forehead peeking out of the wind-whipped hair. I’m sailing forward but looking back. Caught in a moment between two countries. Not knowing the differences that lie ahead but obviously enjoying that in-between stage that I seem to have stayed in my entire life.
Shyam
Selvadurai
CONVERSATIONS WITH MY MOTHER
I N 1975, MY PARENTS made a significant trip to America. My father was taking my mother so that she could decide if she would like to live there. He was a tennis coach and, for the past few years, had been teaching at a
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