Back in the USSR- - Okay, actually the USA, but when I woke this morning on the beautiful Saanich peninsula of British Columbia and thought about my trip back to America today, I felt I was on my way to a place with less freedom, less honesty, less hope. It’s been nice to get away from all the insanity that this once great nation has been up to in recent years.

When describing the feeling to my ex-patriot friend Louise, I said, “I feel like I’ve been in Camelot and am now going back to Liesalot.” 

We had a good laugh, and I had a little cry.  I feel better now, but I’ll be back.  My heart is in Canada.

In the large but single washroom in the Salt Spring Roasting Company, there is nearly always a line to get in. The management does not require a key, and those who live marginally and need to literally wash up use the washroom for that purpose. On a large, black chalkboard inside, indelibly in black marker on the wooden frame, a creative writer has scrawled “Love Won Another“. Nothing is ever written on the board itself; there is probably neither time nor chalk for that.

It’s one of those expressions that seems obvious, though it was new to me, and continues to feel new to me. I’m glad they broke the “rules” and went with permanent marker; I never tire of seeing it there!

I finally went to Burgoyne Bay today, after I’d visited Bob Akerman’s museum, filled with photos and artifacts – relics of his family history, which is pretty much the history of south Salt Spring Island. 93 years old, with a great sense of humor and a love for the past, Bob is a great guardian of local roots.

His grandparents originally owned a lot of land on Burgoyne Bay. Seems the government was responsible for its loss. I can’t imagine losing land that sweet. I was streaming with tears when I saw it, felt it.

Here’s how I fall in love with land: It either sings to me or it doesn’t. Just exactly like the chemistry between two people, it’s not necessarily a logical thing. And I loved Burgoyne Bay; it sang a majestic song that wouldn’t let my heart go.

Burgoyne Bay is now a Provincial Park, so Bob and his 11 children - and their 80 children - can go there anytime they want.

I can, too!

I went to a film made by Salt Spring filmmaker Peter Prince in collaboration with island archivists. Wonderful stuff like: Irish guy escaping from the potato famine arrives on Salt Spring Island, begins working some land, befriends the First Nations people in the area, marries into them. No discrimination against the Irishman, and none against their bi-cultural marriage.  Seen in a locally-famous 1800s photograph in front of a white church is a large group including a Hawaiian family. Blacks lived here peacefully, too. So the “Why not?” roots on the island are deep, historical.

These roots show to this day.

I suspect that American roots might be different, less inclusive. But perhaps discrimination only really came with the stable establishment of large settlements, when the group no longer needed to work together for survival.

I’ll be checking it out!

When a local friend here on the island said that he’d grown up wild in the bush, I thought perhaps he’d been born in Australia. But when later a totally unrelated person in the same Salt Spring coffee shop was talking about working “out in the bush”, and I realized how wrong my assumption had been! It had sounded so exotic, but all they meant was woods.

I was reminded of Kathy Richardson, the English exchange student who lived with us my senior year in high school. Together, we gradually filled a large glass jar with strips of paper on which we’d written language differences that had brought us both confusion and hilarity.

The first confusion happened before we’d grown comfortable with each other. It may have been her first day, when, during unpacking, she spilled a bit of something dust-like on the rug.

“Have you a hoover?” she asked in her musical Liverpudlian accent.

“A what?” I asked, mystified. I hadn’t noticed the spill.

Thinking I was deliberately messing with her, she quickly become frustrated and annoyed with me, raising her voice as if that would make me smarter – or less mean. I began to be concerned about this strange, angry girl with whom I’d have to share my room for an entire year!

We had never owned a Hoover. God knows what brand our vacuum was – Sears, perhaps - but Kathy had no way of knowing that Americans didn’t call them all “hoovers”, as they did in England.

We put all of these language discoveries in a large glass jar, and, at the end of the year, spent a good long time howling, again, with laughter. And crying. It had been a very good year.

As 2006 became 2007, I caught a CBC radio show from my home in Port Townsend, Washington. Listeners had been asked to vote for their favorite Canadian-written songs. The station played the resulting list of the top vote-getting songs while I was listened, fascinated, touched. The songs were so gentle, so nice!

I remember telling some friends about it, and thinking about it, fascinated by our neighbors to the north. Oddly, I had never been to that land, though I’d traveled to dozens of countries and had lived in four of them.

Now, on Salt Spring Island, I see the culture reflected in those lovely and humorous songs, both written and chosen by Canadians. I really like the songs, and I really like the culture reflected in them.

I like gentle. The adage “Nice guys finish last” now makes me think of Canadians and how they wait calmly for their turn. Now I join them calmly in line.

There’s nothing wrong with nice.