My Town

My town is funny.

Long a refuge for disenchanted city folks and people who run at a slightly different speed, my little town is unique in that in many ways it’s a rural small town, where everyone knows each other and who they’re sleeping with, and yet it’s a half-hour out of the city, so the lifestyle is sustainable in that you can hold down a decent job while living ‘away from it all’. It’s a haven for industries such as yoga and pottery studios, organic mushroom farming, watercolour painting, shiatsu massage and dog-sledding. It has for several decades been happy home to a large gay and lesbian population. There’s ‘Hippie’s Custom Tattoos’ right beside the pizza place, which serves the best pizza on earth, and features one called the ‘Magic Mushroom.’ It's a great place to visit if you need your chakras realigned. Why, just this morning I got a copy of the daily email newsletter with the following public service announcement:

Kripalu yoga is cancelled this Tuesday, June 2nd due to the demystification of channelling happening in the space.

There are literally about 15 yoga classes happening in my village at any given time.

All of this lives side-by-side and in relative harmony with the local population of hunters and fisherman, wood-cutters and dudes with ATVs and snowmobiles. Many of them are one and the same (i.e. fishermen who do pottery or yoga). Our local bar (one of two rockin’ local bars) is owned by a music impresario, who has brought in acts such as the Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, Final Fantasy, Danny Michel, and Buck 65. The music they feature has a contemporary-folk and world beat focus and is normally of really high quality, and bands reportedly love playing the venue, whose stage sits right in front of a picture window looking out over the dark river and the mountains. On the off nights, I’m pretty sure the bar still has a ‘Dart Night’ and the old local dudes hold up the bar while drinking their quarts of beer with tiny little glasses. There is a pool table and usually a hockey game on the t.v., and the owner’s dog walks around freely among the crowd. In the winter it’s not uncommon to see the parking lot filled with ski-doos, and in the fall, sometimes the trucks in the lot have deer strapped to their roofs. The other local bar is owned by a local band, and is always hopping. Last saturday there was a horse tied up to the patio, and last night someone pulled up in a backhoe. You can bring in a picture of your dog and they will put it on the dog-wall with everyone else's dogs.

When we bought our new car, the wonderful Pontiac Vibe (the ‘Viberator’) I called up Richard at the local dealership and pretty much said “hey Richard we need a car, do you have any cheap Vibes?” When I couldn’t make up my mind about it, they just held it for me until I was ready to commit. When I call they jokingly answer the phone with “whaddya want?” or some other old-man phone-answering joke because they can see my name come up on the screen. There’s some yuks about my dad to get out of the way before we can do business, and they are always very accommodating with regards to my schedule, or loaner cars.

There are some notable gaps in the economy of our town, which some brave individual should fill some day (not me). I believe an art supply shop, maybe one that sells fabric and yarn as well, and could bring in specialty items like clay for the potters, would do really well. We don’t have a gas station – are we the only town on earth without a gas station? The only take-out around is pizza; I’m not complaining, because our local pizza is earth-shatteringly good, but sometimes I have a hankering for Chinese. A tackle shop and/or marina could do well, since our town is on a river and is surrounded by cottage country; some genius could combine this with the gas station and start raking in the cash. Unfortunately, it’s tough to make a go of it and I’ve seen a lot of businesses start up and then fail almost immediately. They’re doomed before they open their doors. The place nearly shuts down in winter, so if it’s a tourist-driven business, they have to know what they’re getting into before committing.

The government of Québec insists that signage in our town be posted in French only, or French-first-and-bigger, but nobody who actually lives there cares much. Those things matter more in other towns. When those laws came out, local retailers started posting their specials in Ukranian, Thai, Swedish, just to piss off the man. Visitors are usually tourists from all over, and they don’t much care either I don't think, though I’m sure the cottagers visiting from Ontario and from the states would prefer that their cashiers at the grocery store speak at least a bit of English. It’s just economics. We’re a border town and the lines get fuzzy. In our town, English folks speak a bit of French and French folks speak a bit of English and generally everything is copasetic until an election comes along and some politician 'from away' jams a stick in our spokes.

Anyway, that is my ode to my town. I have lived there since I was two years old, interrupted by only one short sojourn in the city when I first moved in with hubby, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else on the planet. Someone asked me the other day “what’s it like actually being from here?” and I couldn’t answer the question. It’s paradise, obviously, and it’s funny, and sad when negative changes or conflicts happen, and interesting to meet the people who come through, stay awhile, then move on. It’s the only place I know.