Belonging

Can you belong to a city? Can a city belong to you?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to belong to a place.

I went on a job interview recently to a province I have never lived in before. The interview came up very very quickly after I applied for the job, and it surprised me. The job is very interesting, but I hadn’t really had the opportunity to research the city before going. While the city itself was pleasant and the people friendly (I wasn’t there long enough to get any more of an impression than that), what has struck me the most since the interview is that I haven’t ever really considered what it would mean to not be a resident of the City of Winnipeg.

How’s that, you ask? Haven’t you lived in a couple of other cities, much further away than the one mentioned above? Yes. I have. But I haven’t ever had to really cut ties with Winnipeg any other time I’ve been off on adventures. I went to France on an exchange program. I lived in Montreal while going to school. I had a summer job in Ottawa (twice). Through all of that, I’ve also been a resident of the province of Manitoba. I voted here. I used my Manitoba Health card. I had a Manitoba driver’s license and auto insurance (benefits and curses to that one, for sure!).

It’s not just the hassle of changing health cards and driver’s licenses that I’m talking about… It’s about the mindset. It’s about the deeply ingrained “Winnipeg-ness” that permeates anyone who grew up here. I’m sure there’s a similar feeling for other people who come from other places. I remember once, listening to the Vinyl Café, and hearing Stuart McLean explain it perfectly (he, of course, was talking about Montreal, but it’s the way I feel about Winnipeg) : “Montreal is my mother tongue.”

My life, up til now, has been more or less analogous to going to a French immersion school. I live in Winnipeg (English), but get to immerse myself in other places (French) on a regular basis, without ever having to really cut ties. Moving now, as a working adult, would be more like waking up in a world where everyone I know now speaks Italian, and having to adapt. You get some of the way things work, and can probably figure out what everyone is talking about (I do speak French, remember), but still spend a lot of the time confused until you figure things out. And eventually, you realize that you haven’t spoken English in quite a while.

I belong to Winnipeg, and Winnipeg, in its own way, belongs to me. Wherever life takes me, whichever place I end up in, and however amazing that place is, in its own way (and I’m sure that each and every place is amazing, once you live there), I suspect that moving might set me adrift for a while.

Turns out that I didn’t get the job, so I don’t have to think about it for now.

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