Pizza and Crowds

I was walking along the muddy

road a few days ago and passed a man carrying a pizza box. I stared at it as we crossed paths, wanting to reach out and touch it; this thing that brought back dreamy memories of a place I used to live, with pizza places that you could order to take out. It smelt so good. The train had just pulled in and the man must have brought the treasure along with him from Cochrane to share with a fortunate few. I wondered if it was still warm. It didn’t matter. The box alone invoked such strange emotions in me of sights and smells commonplace in a previous life but in which this new one was alien. This wasn’t the only time it has happened. On Thanksgiving Day I was cutting a slice of Pumpkin pie: I sprinkled some nutmeg on top, since it was right there, when a whiff of that spicy aroma sucked me into a space tunnel and brought me to the Starbucks in Chapters at Christmas time. The barristers were concocting fancy Christmas lattes while I sat surrounded by people, sipping on my own nutmeg-sprinkled one. I watched a timelapse video of Toronto and had to tame strong pangs of desire to walk through large, arching passageways filled with people going to and fro. I always accepted that the senses were acute to things that are new and unfamiliar but I’m realizing that they are even more so to things that were once commonplace but aren’t anymore. My sister suggested that it could be like a sugar addiction – which I’m very familiar with – in that there is such sensory overload in the city that I’m going through withdrawal and scanning my surroundings eagerly trying to be satisfied by what was once normal. Perhaps in time the addiction will fade and I will become receptive to the sensory stimulants here that aren’t as loud as the city. Or perhaps there is just something Godly in the design of the city. We will reside in the City of God after all. The one that is to be 12,000 stadia long, wide, high and so on. Tim Keller describes the city’s original purpose to be a place of cultural development, justice and refuge – that does sound enticing. Perhaps both possibilities are true; only time will tell.

Strong evidence of the lack of demanding sensory stimulants here is the darkness of the nights. One can barely tell where the trees end and the sky begins. The space between two streetlights on either side of a burnt-out one is truly not for the feint of heart. But there you’ll find is the opportunity to witness softer, more majestic lights if you’re willing to take your eyes off the familiar one up ahead. The stars here are magnificent.

Rocks and Trees

I moved to Canada from South Africa when I was 13 and have for the most part enjoyed living here, although not very conscious of what makes up the fabric of Canada. About a year and a half ago I went and stayed in north western Ontario for a month and found that there is a more elemental – more ‘Canadian’ Canada to be lived that has become extinct in the southern stretch of Canada. I do love that ‘southern stretch’; it is a unique landing pad for people of different cultures to come be themselves together. It has been the landing pad that allowed me to grow up freely and most of all it was where I found the people that I hold dear to now and will cherish for many many years to come. In the north, though, it is not multicultural. It is Canadian. The Canada I discovered in the north caught my heart and now, after a string of different situations and conversations with people, I have ended up moving to a little town in northern Ontario called Moosonee. Before I moved here I was looking online for literature about Moosonee and northern Ontario in general but found naught, so I thought I would fill the void a bit with an exposé on life in The Canada that so few people know about and has been so little told about.

Moosonee is a town of about 3,000 people and is 850 km north of Toronto. It is not actually the latitude that makes it so different from other places in Canada but the isolation. It takes about a 10 hour drive from Toronto to a one-horse town called Cochrane, where the road ends (you can take the Northern Rail train too but it’s highway robbery – over $300 one way) You have to spend the night there and then catch a 5 hour train ride through the wilderness to Moosonee. The train only runs from Monday to Friday for three of the four seasons and gets into Cochrane late at night, so to get to Toronto one has to take the train out ($50), then a bus to Timmins, where the closest ‘major’ airport is ($20), spend a night in a hotel (± $120), take a taxi to the airport ($25) and then fly into Toronto (± $120). So long $10 Megabus tickets☹.

Moosonee is the gateway for a lot of the fly-in communities such as Attawapiskat, Fort Albany, Kashechewan etc. as in the winter they maintain winter roads (ice that they plow the snow off of) that they use to come get their supplies. The population is 85% Cree, a First Nation of Canada, and on Moose Factory (in Moose River) there is a First Nations reserve.

Moose River is really beautiful and the hiking trails and surrounding woods (and by surrounding I mean three meters from my house) and bush are rugged and enchanting – I can’t get enough of them. The town itself has no paved roads so is pretty dusty and muddy. The neighborhood I live in used to be the old army base so the houses aren’t anything pretty on the outside, but you walk in and they do this Mary Poppins bag trick, doubling in size - they’re very lovely inside and very homey.

As for the Canadian lifestyle, I’m excited to get into it! Canoeing, fishing, hunting, skidooing, ATVing, cross-country skiing, etc. I’m excited at the prospect of discovering a whole new side of this country. I will try my best to post my findings up here for anyone who is interested!