antics in canada: squads, colonialism and rug pushers

Wreck Beach on Thursday night

Tuesday was ‘Imagine Day’ starting at 8.30am…I’m in a ‘squad’ (it felt hilarious running around saying ‘where’s my squad’) which is called Dunbar Street for some reason. About half the people were British, which is a fairly solid representation of our presence here on exchange. Lads abound, and rest assured they’re protecting the reputation of the English abroad.

After some awkward get-to-know-you activities (I went red and chose ‘bookworm’ as the adjective to describe myself before I remembered that’s not an adjective) our squad leader gave us a campus tour. He walked at the back of the group most of the time so we didn’t really know where we were going, and didn’t take us to very many places. In the library we were standing around for about 15 minutes without anything going on, and nobody knew why were hovering like eejits. Several times he admitted he wasn’t sure what he was talking about and asked us if we knew the answers.

Then we had to sit through talks which lasted about 3 hours informing us of things we could easily find out online. It was really good that they had a decent section on mental wellbeing though. Then there was free lunch which wasn’t too shabby, then back in for more coma-inducing talks.

Afterwards Ellen and I checked out the club fair. I signed up for many things as per (we’ll see which ones I actually stick with.) The women’s club looks good – they have a safe space in the AMS Nest (Alma Mater Society – like a Student Union building) where you can go for tea and a chat, but they also organise things like self-defense classes and protests. It was ironic that they were two desks down from the pro-lifers with their plastic models of foetuses in wombs.

The Democrats were also there collecting signatures against Bill C-51, which is an ‘anti-terror’ bill recently passed which infringes massively on individual freedoms. There’s a significant body of resistance to Harper’s right-wing government, which makes me happy. I’m hoping to get more involved in and aware of Canadian politics whilst here.

I also want to join the Agape club who go downtown and provide company and food etc. for homeless people. Downtown Eastside has been dubbed ‘Canada’s poorest postal code’, with huge levels of homelessness, drug abuse, and horribly high levels of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. So, they need all the practical, material help that can be offered.

On the other hand I’m going to join the tea society!

Lessons started on Tuesday with Spanish 101 at 9am. I remembered how much I dislike learning languages in a classroom and felt a bit deflated afterwards. It’s all good though because I’ve decided to take Gender and Indigeneity in Canada instead – may as well take interesting topics which are unique to this place.

My next class was Indigenous Literature and I love it. It’s hard-going but our professor is fantastic. I didn’t realise UBC – and all of Vancouver – is built on unceded Musqueam territory. The huge international airport where you’re greeted by a totem pole was plonked right next to the reserve, which is a ridiculously small area of land. UBC campus used to be a huge dense forest, and many of the beaches here used to provide a large part of the diet – shellfish – for the Musqueam people before they were cleared and topped with sand to make them picturesque. The trampling of Indigenous peoples’ rights is ongoing here and the more I learn the more my skin crawls. The Indian Act still exists – an Act on which South African Apartheid was partly modelled. As my teacher said, ‘postcolonialism is not what we are studying here, because this is still very much a colonial society.’ I can tell that my classes are going to be hard-hitting, but I really feel that it’s worth going through the anger so I can learn more about the experiences of people who do not have my social privilege.

After this was my Modernism class. Our professor is great – very enthusiastic. He’s an energetic skinny guy of about 60 who always wears very neat double-breasted suits and writes on the blackboard in a way I can only describe as Mr. Bean-ish. He told us he has hypergraphia to such an extent that he’s known by the Vancouver Police Department, after writing at a traffic light for so long that a tonne of traffic was backed up behind him after the light went green. He encourages us all to write as much and as often as we can, and to not even worry about how good a first draft is – the skill is in the editing, he says. I think that Modernism is also going to be challenging, but not in an emotionally raw way like my other modules – it’s a fourth year literature class so there’ll be lots of high-powered analysis going on, which I’m rather happy to get my teeth stuck into.

My last class on a Wednesday is Intersectional Approaches to Thinking Gender. It’s a three hour class which runs until 9pm which is tricky. I’m excited about it though – our teacher said she wants us to get involved not only through academia but through activism, because academia alone does little to change immediate material circumstances. She encouraged us to follow the news and said we’re at a very interesting, crucial time in history, a time at which the world could move in any of a multitude of directions. She’s going to keep us posted on active ways to live our politics.

That night I felt the need to blow off steam and luckily there were plans to head to the pub. There’s an Irish pub on campus which is really nice. It’s got a bit of a cosy feel and all the English is subtitled in Irish. It’s strange getting table service for ordering drinks though, I think I prefer lounging at the bar as it’s more sociable – though you can obviously do that too. They also serve a schooner here which is smaller than a pint (although I think pint glasses are still available). 

Lo and behold we met a load more English people. I irritated someone when I told them I had no interest in going to a party dressed as a Mexican.

Thursday night we went to Wreck Beach, which is just off campus. We arrived just as the sun had gone down, and all around the bay were mountains which were silhouetted against this fierce orange afterglow thrown upwards by the sun. It was stunning. We climbed the billion steps back up through the forest onto campus, to be greeted by a police officer asking if we’d seen anyone passed out. We said no, he asked more people, and then more police cars and a couple of fire engines pulled up.

We went across the road and ogled for a little bit. A guy in a fedora who seemed to be on shrooms was standing near us with his partner and kid. He filmed the fire engines and was like ‘Here I am with a group of the finest women in Vancouver’ then turned to us and said ‘All that beauty, what ya gonna do?’ After this he handed me a business card and said ‘You ever need a rug, give me a call’ (the card advertised a public relations business). He stood in front of us and said ‘give me your colours, I need your room colours, I’m thinking teal and blue…’ Then the three of them went off in a taxi. I was told later this is standard behaviour in Vancouver.

In the meantime the firefighters were all congregating around the top of the steps as people came up off the beach. Two ambulances pulled up and as we started to think something really horrible might have happened, the results of which we didn’t want to see, we left - and haven’t heard anything since about what happened down there.

Gastown

Friday night we explored Gastown, which is a swanky neighbourhood not unlike Shoreditch. We got an amazing curry there (I swear the curries here are better than in England) then went for a drink at Bambudda, which does Chinese food and amazing cocktails. I had the Corpse Raiser #2 which was delicious and tequila-y. After this we went along to a club which was fun but a bit dead. It was in Downtown Eastside and we saw full-on the shocking levels of homelessness in this city. I hope Agape starts up soon, if not I’m going to volunteer for a local organisation instead.

Football friends

Saturday we went to the homecoming football game. I had absolutely no idea what was going on in terms of the actual game but the hotdogs were tasty and there was a brass band and the atmosphere was fun.

Saturday Night Lights!

On Sunday we went to Richmond Night Market, which is apparently one of the largest Chinese markets in North America. It’s mainly Asian food stalls but they had a few anomalies like a deep-fried Mars Bar van. I always find those kind of places a bit discombobulating with all the fluorescent lights and strange karaoke tunes and loud adverts booming out on loop. We stuffed ourselves pretty well. I had some kind of Indian-Chinese fusion salmon wrap and salt & pepper calamari and we shared some delicious Japanese crispy buns on sticks. Then I bought ten pairs of socks. The madness of life. 

Salmon thing

 Watch this space for more political angst and a trip to Banff...

Richmond Night Market

antics in canada: spillages, suspect hotels and fratboys

After sad goodbyes at Norwich airport my journey was relatively uneventful apart from knocking water onto my crotch, then more water onto my neck pillow, on top of which the woman next to me spilt beer.

Between numerous food-servings and hot wipe deliveries I watched movies, got a bit claustrophobic and panicky for a bit (deep breathing is yer only man), and swung between sadness, excitement and fear. I thought a lot about how strange time is as well, but I won’t pontificate about that.

Vancouver airport is big, quite nice…very recently built. There are totem poles and indigenous sculptures to let you know how “inclusive” Canada is (my first few Indigenous Lit classes have confirmed my suspicion that this is something of a grand claim). After a big sweaty passport queue I got into a bigger sweatier visa queue.

When my taxi pulled up to the ‘family hotel’ I’d booked online my heart sank a bit. It was basically just a house with no sign and the door wide open. I asked the driver to wait and walked in to find a surprised-looking guy in the kitchen. I asked him was I in a hotel and he yelled someone’s name and walked off. A guy who I assume was the owner arrived and helped me with my bags.

As I paid the taxi driver he kept repeating ‘stay safe’, which was none too comforting. The owner showed me my room and after making sure there was a lock on the door I paid with a weird flimsy card-reader attached to his iPhone. Being exhausted and anxiety-prone I figured I’d be put in a pie. No WiFi access was the last straw and I cried for a while, which is silly in hindsight, but at the time I felt bombarded with things to cry about.

In the end I rationalised the situation and decided the owner was sound, just a lad turning his house into a hotel (he was pretty much constantly doing DIY). Having gone to bed at 7pm I woke at 6am and snaffled a load of Hobnobs. Then I hovered around the WiFi box in the kitchen to try and book a taxi. A nice couple from Calgary helped me.

A glimpse of mountains from the taxi

Having moved in I bumped into my friend Ellen (who is also at UEA and by coincidence was on the same flight) who was planning to go to IKEA. We found a couple of English guys who wanted to go as well and we all shared a taxi. I mentioned how I ‘don’t particularly like IKEA’ and the guy with a backwards Obey cap remarked ‘I thought all girls liked IKEA, you know, domestic stuff.’ Since I was wedged next to him in a taxi I said nothing and stared at some mountains.

IKEA was IKEA – a one-way purgatorial experience. At the end I walked away from the self-service having forgotten to pay so an assistant hauled me back to do so. Back on campus we were curious about the toga party but were almost ill with jetlag so we decided not to and practically went straight to bed.

The next day Ellen and I headed to the supermarket and bought so much that we weren’t able to get to the bus stop. We had to call a taxi in the end even though the sign said ‘no student drop-off or pickups - WESBROOK VILLAGE RESIDENTS ONLY’ – which is a bit bizarre seeing as Wesbrook Village is on campus.

(Just a quick note about size – everything here is HUGE. Campus is like a town in itself. Each road takes about half an hour to trek across. You can get like a pint’s worth of ketchup for $3.)  

Blurry beer pong

That evening we headed to a party – ‘we’ being three of my flatmates, Ellen and I. My flatmates are really great. There’s six of us and we’re all from different places – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, Turkey and the UK. I hang out a lot with Amelie the Aussie and Tamsin the New Zealander. At the party we played beer pong, danced, ignored sleazy advances, and went to bed in the wee hours (but I still woke up super early because of jetlag).

The view from our kitchen

On Monday I went for a walk around campus with Amelie and Tamsin. This place is so beautiful. All around there are lakes, the sea, distant mountains, gardens and some really great architecture. Also there are black squirrels which is REALLY exciting to me. After this we went back to the flat and started planning a Canada bucket list.

The view from the rose garden on campus

That evening our RAs hosted a BBQ for all of Walter Gage residence (which comprises several 17-floor tower blocks). We met a lovely girl called Cavanagh, who’s Indian and grew up in Ireland before her family moving to the US early on. The queue was about an hour long and we discussed things like crosscultural identity and Ireland and the importance of travel and the idea of education as a right not a privilege. She was quite curious as to why I’d chosen an American Studies degree since I’m clearly not a big fan of America as a country and I said ‘how are you supposed to make the world a better place if you don’t understand how the world has been made a worse place?’ It’s interesting how conversations with strangers will help you realise and solidify things about yourself, because I honestly hadn’t come to that many solid conclusions about why I’m studying about America.

That night we went to a frat party which was fun, hilarious and disturbing in equal measure. I think it was fun because we were in a good group which stuck together whereas usually groups split up because everyone’s there to cop off with a randomer. The frat houses are on their own little area of campus (next to the police station which is very sensible). They’re big, proper houses with big enough rooms and a basement to form a mini-club with a bar and such. We were let in ahead of loads of people because we were a group of women, one of whom flirted with guy on door.

Frat friends

For my part you know you’re older than everyone else when you bring Pocket Tissues because you’re sure the boys won’t have bought enough toilet roll for their guests.

I said ‘fuck off mate’ a lot. I’m also 90% certain a load of white people were line-dancing to King Kunta but my perceptions may or may not have been somewhat skewed by alcohol. They were definitely stamping in unison. The whole shebang included a lot of white people dancing stiffly to rap and hiphop, myself included.

I talked to a guy who went to Harrow for a while, mainly because I really wanted a smoke off him. Then there was some guy telling us something about a sloth that got brought onto the frat area and people were poking it or something and we asked where’s the fun in that and soon he went away. Then we headed back to Gage, got yelled at some more by bros, and tried to decide if this guy sporting a topknot was from Hackney or Brisbane.

Thus concludes my first weekend in Canada.