Going Home

I recently returned home to the Eastern Townships. Rolling hills, bucolic farms and MINUS THIRTY degree temperatures greeted me. Holy Mother of God! In just a few short months I’d forgotten how bloody freezing Canada gets. It was the kind of cold, where your nostrils freeze up, your eyes start to water, and then the tears on your eye lashes actually ice over, and you can’t see anything.

Still, I didn’t mind too much, because the sky was blue from horizon to horizon. You can dress to protect yourself against the cold, but there’s nothing you can do about Brussels’ ever-present, heavy grey skies.

I eventually adjusted to the chill, and started to do the typical Townships thing, which is step out my mother’s front door and bump into people I know: at the drug store, the post office, the book shop and the dry cleaners.

Coming from Brussels, meeting all these people who seemed glad to see me was a fantastic experience. Here I’m still struggling to make eye contact with my neighbours, let alone friends.

One day I left tiny little Knowlton and ventured out to the bigger town of Cowansville. Let me start by saying Cowansville has become the perfect example of what happens when the big box stores – Canadian Tire, Loblaws, Wal-Mart -- open up on the outskirts of town. Now the main street is gutted, with abandoned shops and sad looking discount stores where there was once a vibrant community. The Bank of Montreal clings to its spot on Rue Principale, however, and I bee-lined to it.

As a result of my recent Belgian banking experiences, I was girding myself for battle. While I generally find Belgians friendly, my local bank ladies seem to delight in complicating things, demanding forms signed in triplicate by my husband, my notary or my great-grandmother. So, it was fantastic to swan into the bank in Cowansville, bump into two people I knew and then spend a pleasant ten minutes chatting with the teller who cheerfully completed all of my complicated transactions. Score one for Canada!

Mum and I next hit Wal-Mart.

I know, I know, I just ranted about how Wal-Mart killed downtown… For the record, I spent years self-righteously boycotting Wal-Mart because I saw a thing on 60 Minutes about how they were cruel to the Amish. Then, in grad school my roommate dragged me into one in London Ontario…That’s when I saw a whole passel of Mennonites, complete with homespun clothing and bonnets, buying the place out. While logically there might not be much of a connection between Pennsylvanian Amish and Southern Ontario Mennonites, I still felt betrayed and promptly bough a cheap toaster oven to console myself with. Also, in my defence, I’ve spent three months fighting my way through tiny, narrow-aisled, slightly dirty Belgian shops, and I longed for a dose of big shopping carts, antiseptic displays and piles and piles of stuff. I’ll cheerfully admit my hypocrisy for the joy of “everyday low pricing.”

Once again, on my way into the store I ran into someone I knew – an old high school friend. We spent ten minutes catching up on the gossip: Who was pregnant! Who was divorced! Who had moved to China!

I walked into Wal-Mart with a smile. There I bumped into someone else, who greeted me with a friendly and enthusiastic “Bonjour!” This is the downside of living in a small town: I had no idea who this person was. I said “Bonjour” and made polite small talk as I frantically tried to remember: One of my mum’s friends? No. An old teacher? No. Our chit chat was getting strained and she seemed kind of desperate to get out of the conversation too. I was about to make up some lie and flee the store, too embarrassed by the whole awkward social interaction to actually get the discount shampoo I’d gone there for, when I was saved. Someone else walked into the store, and my friend turned to them. “Bonjour,” she said with friendliness and enthusiasm. That’s when I noticed the blue smock. My long lost “friend” was the Wall-Mart Greeter.

I’ve obviously been out of North America for too long.