ACCOZZAGLIA

This was a day I kinda wondered about for quite a long time but wasn’t exactly rushing to experience: my first visit to the U.S. as a resident of Canada. Not permanent yet, mind, but it’s the goal on which my eyes stay trained.

On Tuesday, and I made up for what was postponed over the winter break to travel down into the Belly of the Beast United States to make shopping runs at Last Chance General Store Targay, Wegmans, and a look around elsewhere. For me, this was doubly notable in an inauspicious sense: I used to live in western New York state, and for me, it was literally the first time I’d seen this area of the world since 1997.

Some things change. Unsurprisingly, the rest does not.

It was strange to see Tim Hortons peppered everywhere, though practically speaking, not surprising. Of course, its branding is monolingual in America, so the “Toujours frais” was replaced by “Coffee and Doughnuts”.

Niagara Falls, NY, looked every bit as dreary as it always did, though now there’s a little colour to offset the landscape of brown, grey and blah. Too bad that colour came only from gaily-painted outlet malls and other big-box retail that mostly covered up the run-down shops that had kept what remains of that region from shutting off the lights before moving on. I seem to recall a statistic by the U.S. Census Bureau’s count in 2000 that Niagara Falls, NY, has the highest median age of an American city at 58 years old.

Further, its population has steadily dwindled as the few kids born there seem to find refuge elsewhere. When all one sees growing up are: these monstrous hills barricaded by metal fencing (with the signature odour of a landfill seeping through the sewer vents about four stories above road level); myriad storage tanks (including that one unmarked tank residing alone on a rise to the right of outbound I-190, its peeling white paint revealing grey concrete but still concealing the radioactive topsoil from Hiroshima that was studied by U.S. government scientists in the late 1940s and early 1950s); and the sense of irreversible damage to a land that was abused in particularly impressive ways by long-dead people, who quite honestly wouldn’t want to make a beeline for anywhere else?

My entry in the U.S. marked six months of being outside of it. When I used to visit Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Vancouver while living in American cities, one thing I could count on was that when I arrived in Canada, I would feel this palpable sense of pressure lift off me and evaporate, only to return the very moment I passed the “LAST EXIT IN CANADA” sign where the turnoff for Niagara Falls, ON, begins. And I hated that feeling. I have failed to adequately describe it, and before this visit, I’d never heard anyone describe the same sensation to me.

Just after we left Targay, spoke up after a period of silence, saying that whenever she finds herself in the U.S., she gets this uncomfortable, odd feeling that can only be described as a kind of pressure falling down on her, that it felt heavy and unpleasant.

I just looked at her, jaw agape, and responded, “OMG. It’s not just me then!” We shared opinions on the matter, which concluded with me noting to her that I felt this heaviness each and every day I spent in America after that first visit to Niagara Falls and Waterloo in April 1996. At the time, I sensed something really different, and it was nothing related to tangible stereotypes: Canadian “politeness”, having straws offered by the convenience store clerk for the beverage I just purchased, the metric system implementation, or any number of subtle, superficial nuances. Rather, I noticed something was completely absent, which made the logical landscape around me seem utterly unreal. The cars, houses, roads, birds, and language (by and large) were all the same. Those were familiar. But the absence of something else threw the entire equation out of balance.

I found that imbalance mesmerizing, because it was too great to pinpoint.

About a month later, I was driving to Toronto for the first time, and it was during that weekend that it dawned on me: there is a significant cultural schism which divides these two nation-states. While this shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, it was surprising to see how differently a similar problem — that of engineering and maintaining a nation-state on the same block of land — was resolved.

Americans proud of their country may assert that their approach was the best anywhere in the world; Canadians proud of Canada (well actually, not so much pride, but a sense of quiet comfort) would look at themselves, look at America, and say that they aren’t like their southern neighbour. It returns to the tediously unanswered question of what makes Canadians Canadian. No one has been credited with a definitive answer, though I once half-joked in my Can Studies class that “what makes Canadians Canadian is that they are able to ask one another the question, ‘What makes Canadians Canadian?’” That got a peppering of laughter. :)

For me, on May 25th, 1996, while walking College, Bay and Queen streets, I identified that ominous presence for the first time. I put my finger on it. I named it. I was able to do so because it wasn’t there. It was entirely absent, and for me, it felt safer, lighter, quieter, less paranoid, less under feeling besieged from within. And remembering my Niagara/Waterloo visits, I was able to retroactively identify it there, too (even though, let’s face it, Niagara Falls and Kitchener-Waterloo in late April +3°C drizzle are both dreary as fuck). After I had to leave, following an eye-opening weekend (which gave birth to one of my top three life goals: making Toronto my permanent home), I remember the U.S. border guard tersely letting me have the privilege of re-entering America.

So I said to : “Keep in mind that for every single day I was in this country [n.b., the U.S., given that we were still in Cheektowaga], I felt this pressure. On some days, I could push most of it to the background, bu it was still back there like a little tiny knot, reminding me that it was always there. Even when going to Thailand, Japan, Iceland, and the U.K., the pressure would leave me, but in Canada, there was also a sense of grounding. I look forward to seeing the ‘Q.E.W. TORONTO AHEAD’ sign in a few minutes. It really couldn’t happen a moment sooner.”

We returned home with nary a concern by the CBSA guard. She unfolded my entry permit, ask how much we had spent, and then waved us on. We simultaneously felt that lifting (based on how her grasp of my hand changed), and just to be sure, I asked her, “Are you feeling a sense of relief?”

“Oh totally. I like this feeling the best, though my mum says we have to wait to feel this way until after we pay the toll right ahead.” This got me to laugh, since the wave-in alone is quite enough for me, each and every time.

Earlier, at Restoration Hardware (or maybe it was Pottery Barn — the me-too branding all looks the same to me), we were in front of the blenders, and I noted how much I dream of a glass blender, especially a classic looking green-glassed one. A forty-something female employee was stocking the wall to our left. I said to , “Yeah, I have a blender, but it’s plastic and ancient — like I think it was built before . . . electricity.”

The woman burst out laughing. She said something funny about electricity (which was quite forgettable, but I recall laughing genuinely). Then I followed with, “Speaking of electricity, last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart aired a clip of the attorney general [whose name i'd forgotten at that moment!!!!!111one11oneoneoneeleven], where he was testifying before a congressional committee that he approved of the tradition of electronic surveillance for protection of the nation, just as Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington approved of electronic surveillance.”

I thought that the absurdity of the quote, stripped of any political leaning one may have, was obvious to pretty much anyone who has a sense of humour. This woman certainly appeared to have a sense of humour, based on her earlier cackle. I was apparently overestimating the matter. She iced over and shrugged me off rather hurriedly, returning to her activity and leaving me hanging in laugher that trailed off following her reaction. As we walked away from her, I asked , “Did you notice that? I think talking about that kind of thing in jest around here is not a good idea. Be it the fact that we’re in America or because this is pretty Republican part of NY, and not in the famed New England sense. I can’t say what just happened here, but it wasn’t what I was thinking would happen.”

This is continuing to itch at my brain. It’s almost as if I’m reading from a bleak sci-fi ethics novel written in the 1940s or 1950s, say from Phillip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury or George Orwell. But I’m not. It actually happened, no matter how surreal it seemed. I may have to mull over this incident for a bit.

Nevertheless, this Reading Week getaway reaffirmed the obvious: my home base, so long as I have any say, will not find itself in the U.S. ever again. Toronto is my home.

On the lighter side, I procured grocery items I’ve not seen in years: Kuner’s black beans and refried black beans (arguably my favourite canned beans from anywhere in the world, not seen since I lived in Minnesota); canned tuna in olive oil (something that was a bitch to find in Seattle, and 40¢ more expensive there, too); Arriba Fire-Roasted Hot Salsa; Zatarains red beans and rice; and at least admired other products I couldn’t exactly bring with me, like Edy’s Dreamery line (assumed phased out when I lived in Seattle) and Near East couscous in every imaginable variety (I passed on that, but still). It was like seeing my ghost of culinary past.