(This is Part Two of my story of moving to Vancouver, from Kingston, for at least the next few months. For Part One, read previous blog.)

I’d foreseen having an emotional letdown on arrival, but not how devastating or long-lasting it would be. For the first couple of weeks I remained more or less depressed. A few days after my arrival, I performed a symbolic ritual that I’d looked forward to: I walked around Stanley Park, smoking a little cannabis, like in the old days. But I kept thinking, “Yeah, so this is the famous park, this is the famous weed, so what?” 

Back in Kingston, whenever I’d seen Vancouver on TV, I’d sighed a little. But now the actual Vancouver scenery looked like a TV screen in Kingston. On previous visits to Vancouver, I’d reminded myself that I was just as much here as I would be if I were living here. Now that I was living here, I felt just as much not here as if I were visiting. In Kingston I’d been in exile from Vancouver; suddenly I felt homesick for Kingston. I began wondering what’s wrong with me. Could I never be happy? 

At least visiting the family has worked as I’d hoped: it’s been a great pleasure to hang out with the kids, without needing to cram lots of information, conversation and feelings into a brief stay. There’s a nice everyday quality to these visits. And when I’ve gone into one of my emotional tailspins while hanging out with my daughters, they’ve been very patient and supportive. 

But I didn’t see my old friends very much at first. I felt uncharacteristically shy, withdrawn and socially anxious. That has improved. I’m having a weekly lunch with a group of longtime pals, and coffee and visits with others. And going to the theatre has also helped. Things picked up when I realized I just needed to get out more.

I also had work awaiting me here: adjudicating one high-school drama festival and teaching a playwriting workshop at another. At both festivals I ran into old friends, met some new friends, and sold some copies of my book. And the teenagers were terrific, and I felt grounded, useful and at home. 

The problem is this here newfangled city. Of course, what I really want to do is to go back to the Vancouver of 1972, and to be 24 again: the mustachioed hippie on this website’s “About” page. But I’m not going back there, and neither is Vancouver. PAL, where I’m living, is in a beautiful setting, but to get just about anywhere else in town, one must go through the downtown core. And in the downtown core I become an elderly, open-mouthed, small-town yokel. 

The downtown core is the belly of the corporate beast. It’s the gilded cage. It’s one of those futuristic sci-fi movies shot on location in present-day cities – like Elysium (2013), set in the 22nd century, when the wealthy live on a green, flowery, opulently designed space station which forms a ring around our planet, which is a dusty, muddy, overpopulated slum whose remaining resources the enslaved poor must gather and send up to Elysium. The scenes on the Earth’s grubby surface were shot in a Mexico City slum. The scenes on beautiful Elysium were shot in, yes, Vancouver. 

The downtown core (the real one, in 2024) is all glass, steel, plastic and electronics. We humans, moving in swarms through the environment, are extensions of the technology, components in the circuitry. The internet owns the businesses; the businesses own us; and, of course, everything’s insanely expensive. The buses are covered in photos of beautiful, smiling people selling real estate; the subway stations are full of ads for colleges that will make you rich. The models in advertising photos are multiracial, youthful, hip, and dressed and groomed with meticulous informality. They either laugh with excruciating joy, or don’t need even to smile to indicate that they’re still better off than you, baby. And whether they’re in convulsions of bliss or staring you down, the subtext is clear: you must become like them, and the only way to do that is by giving them your money. 

None of this – the expensiveness or the imagery – is news to Vancouverites, who seem to take it all for granted and accept it, resignedly, as the new normal. And it’s not like I haven’t seen this coming either: on our frequent previous visits, we’ve seen the changes happening. Nevertheless, to spend a month getting a really good look, especially after soft-sell, old-fashioned Kingston, is a true hit of what Alvin Toffler called “future shock.” 

And yet, there are still familiar buildings; some entire neighbourhoods, like dear old Commercial Drive, seem largely unchanged; and the parks, beaches and mountains endure. There are also new surprises, like the murals and outdoor sculptures, that feel right to me, although (or because?) so many of the sculptures seem like giant children’s toys. I especially like the droll creepiness of Yue Minjun’s statues at English Bay, of a dozen huge, identical men laughing hysterically. A signboard nearby reads, “the artist has given several hints that his own smiling face in these sculptures may not be what it seems… Is this laughter joyful or cynical?” That feels very Vancouver, somehow. 

So for the last week or so, I’ve been overcoming my fear that this has been a terrible, expensive mistake and I don’t know what I’m doing here. Expensive, yes, but it’s not a mistake: it’s a fascinating learning experience. And I do know what I’m doing here: whatever I happen to be doing, but it happens to be here. Lin and the dog will have joined me here by the time this blog goes online. And we’re going to stay a while and see how it goes. 

(P.S.: Since posting this month’s blog, I’ve worried that it may sound insufficiently appreciative of PAL, the Performing Arts Lodge. It’s a beautiful building, in a spectacular setting, based on a magnificent concept: providing affordable homes for people who have contributed to society through the arts. Our little apartment is listed as “near-market suite,” costing a little less than a regular apartment of this size in this neighbourhood. The rental revenue from these apartments helps subsidize other apartments for lower-income residents. I got on the elevator the other day, and another guy got on with me, we introduced ourselves, I asked him how he was doing, and he said, “So grateful to be here!” Nobody has asked me to add this paragraph.)