Horizons

by Keri Ara Thommasen (Canada)

I didn't expect to find Canada

This is sort of a backwards travel story. We lived in Bella Coola. There, in the middle of the Great Bear Rainforest, it rains for nearly eight months of the year. We looked to the airplane for salvation: lifting us above the fog to a place where the sun still shone, unaffected by the storms below. The First Nations people survived the dark, barren winter by consuming large amounts of fermented ooligan (fish) grease, which is rich in both Vitamins A and D. I remember a friend bringing a jar of her family's store to school one day – it looked like liquid sunshine, glowing amber in the light from the window. Comparatively recent immigrants to the continent, my family wasn't used to that sort of thing; it was the folly of the unfamiliar. To me, it smelled bad, so why would I put it in my mouth? In the absence of 'grease,' we drank fortified milk. When our brain serotonin levels and Vitamin D stores languished we would flail, fighting the tides of depression that ebbed and flowed like the waters of the salt chuck that stretched for miles behind the hospital parking lot. We hoped our minds would make it to the fifteenth of February when the sun would break over the horizon between the mountains and our piddly sunshine ration of fifteen minutes per day would begin again. On special days when it wasn't clouded over, we would actually get to feel some of this pure, unadulterated gold on our skin. Even if it wasn't sunny in Vancouver, it was still lighter and brighter than Bella Coola; getting out gave us a sort of psychic 'room to breathe,' even if it was just for a few days. I looked forward to the large, open skies, as well as widening my fashion horizons. We usually stayed at the Barclay Hotel and pounded the pavement in a roughly ten-block radius. That area between Robson and Granville used to be the hip, young district. It had everything. I remember the ambience of that era: all the cool kids with their round sunglasses, tan skin, multiple piercings, baggy jeans and Doc Martens would sit motionless, sprawled over the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery. I was in awe. My mother would pull me past the seller carts, displaying hemp necklaces, ABC chokers, silver hoop earrings, body jewelry, funky purses, and hippie hats on the way to The Bay where huge Calvin Klein ads were displayed across multiple windows. One afternoon we stopped for tea at Murchies. I recall sitting at a table, and sipping steaming peach-flavoured liquid that restored my soul and gave me strength to go on. After we wore out our feet on the pavement we would go out for dinner, often at The Bread Garden. (It has gone out of business since Dr. Atkins began the low-carb trend.) In the evening we strolled down Granville toward the theatre, watching the buskers, dazzled by city lights. On one trip, there was a man playing the guitar by a storefront and I had beckoned my mother to stop and listen. We had been standing there all of sixty seconds when our next door neighbor from Bella Coola appeared. “I haven't seen you in a month!” she said, hugging my mother. They chatted for close to fifteen minutes before she managed to break away. It seconds, she had vanished again, lost in the sea of people. As my mother turned to leave I tugged on her arm and asked if we weren't going to give the man some money. “That was the last thing I was going to do after being so rude and talking through his entire set,” she said, handing me a five-dollar bill. “But here, you do it.”