In Exile (October 2022)

Did I mention that the winters are long and cold here? And dark ... sans sun that is, because the white snow is illuminated from distant suns a million times over. Around Christmas, the days are sunless for a full 24 hours—a situation that would enrich the purveyors of vitamin D in anxiety-ridden and cold-averse Toronto. But then in spring and fall, there are the Northern Lights painting the starry sky brilliant, nuanced hues of green and yellow. Once you've heard some of the ancients' stories, you can spend hours looking upwards, watching and listening to the legends of the Lights—primitive, I used to think but not say. It takes imagination and most from the South don't stay here long enough to develop the skills of silent inquiry we sharpen and hone day after day. On their infrequent visits—neighbours here are often hundreds of miles away—I'm reminded by some of my more plainspoken guests how long it took me to adapt.

It was more than twenty years ago when I first arrived ... in my new permanent home nearly 4,000 kilometres from 24 Sussex. Nobody expected that I'd last this long up here—"he's too fragile, too weak, too pampered, too privileged," they said. By now most have probably forgotten ... forgotten who I am (or was) and how and why I ended up here.

That would have bothered me in the early days. But life here changes you ... imperceptibly. Glacial time, out of sync with the world. Things that were important and urgent—and there was no end of those—no longer are. And the things that were of no consequence ... now have the greatest value. Warm clothes, a steady diet with meat and vegetables, running water, electricity—powered by the sun in the short summers and elsewhen by a generator. Ironically, it's this greenhouse gas indulgence of mine—minimal in comparison to the average North American's carbon footprint—that serviced the gleeful wit of my detractors—the cowboy oil barons and their media and economist hacks when it was reported by the CBC.

Back when, my entire life, day by day, week by week, was planned, choreographed and orchestrated. Looking back, I wonder that I even called it 'my' life. Today, in comparison, my life is of no moment to the world, but it is decidedly authentic and 'mine.' One of the elders said he'd tell me a joke after he'd got to know me better—said he had to wait for the other dimensions of my self to emerge. "Not for you ... not yet," he'd said.

The joke was one I'd heard before, but it never resonated like it does now, up here in the vast, cold, open space on the thin living skin of this planet surrounded by 'billions and billions' of worlds just across the way ... light-years off. The joke I knew as 'Wanna make God laugh?" The Inuit joke was better.

Political correctness is not a 'thing' up here. God still warrants a capital letter and the masculine pronoun is not controversial. It's as if everybody recognizes and appreciates the limits of human language even though at the top of the world every word is precious. Carefully chosen, few are spoken. They cannot capture the ineffable that surrounds and moves the soul up here.

To think back to when Pierre took me to the High Arctic and I first saw what, unbeknownst to me, would one day become my home. It must have seemed endlessly boring and foreign to a three-year-old used to the high intensity stimulation of the techno-modern urban life in the capital city. Nearly four score years later, it's only through imagination that I can relate to that 'me,' and it becomes increasingly difficult and unimportant to preserve that unbroken connection to 'me'—the 'me' from the past who so many people once loved and so many others came to hate with unparalleled intensity. The 'me' who once hoped to establish our family as a modern political dynasty rivaling—no, surpassing—the Kennedys to the south.

C'est la vie as they say in unilingual Alberta. Now I can echo their words but without the disdain and contempt they intend. Oui. C'est la vie, mes amis.