Blog Post
Mary Sanderson • Nov 26, 2019
Bridging Solitudes
In Toronto, we all complain about the traffic. But early this summer things came to a head for me. On a Sunday morning in mid-June I was going to a service at Victoria University. There was a marathon that day so I left in good time. I had to cross Yonge Street. The website about the marathon said that the monitors would be allowing vehicles to cross intermittently between runners. I tried to cross at Wellesley, College, Dundas, Queen, even the Lakeshore, but after waiting for many minutes at each intersection, and the line of waiting cars had not changed, I gave up.
After two and a half hours I drove home—frustrated, angry and disappointed. It was then I made the decision to leave Toronto. This was not a snap decision. For many weeks I had been frustrated with Toronto traffic.
I had visited the prairies many times so it was not difficult to decide where to go. I arrived at the trailer where I was staying in the Cypress Hills of southwest Saskatchewan during the first week of August. The town I had chosen to live in has a population of about 2,000--one co-op grocery store, a small library, several churches—including The Cowboy Church, a post office and three banks —a main street where there was always a place to park—without paying. I loved it.
I was invited to a nearby First Nations pow wow my first Saturday; later in the week I went to a local Horse Show. I drove to Fort Walsh and heard the painful history of The Cypress Hills massacre. I visited friends on a beautiful ranch— one of my favourite places in the world. I spent a day watching the magnificent bison in Grasslands park.
But it is the air and the quiet I appreciate most. It is warm with no humidity and no haze—the distant horizon is a clean line as if drawn by a sharpened pencil. The sounds are unlike any I hear in the city—a rooster down the road crowing early in the morning, the mourning doves competing with each other for attention, a couple of young donkeys braying in the distance and the howl of a lone coyote in the night. But the sound I cherish most is the whistle of the CP freight trains as they pass through town – many times during the day and night. If you happen to be stopped at one of the crossings you might wait up to three minutes for a long train to pass. No one minds. This kind of stop has some meaning.
In my early morning walks, I am greeted by two horses over the fence in the pasture behind the trailer —one black and one white. They nuzzle my hands and welcome me even when I don’t have any carrots for them. A little farther along I come to a field of goats – with their long, floppy ears, some of them kneeling on their front legs to get closer to the grass. My day starts relaxed and happy about where I am.
The most memorable moments come when I take a folding chair and sit at the edge of a field of recently mown hay drinking in the view, as far as I can see—beyond the horizon to infinity. Above the large bales of golden hay, the big flat-bottomed clouds are always moving across the blue expanse. The only sound is the wind in the uncut grasses at the edge of the field. It feeds my soul.
For the last week of August, I moved to an even smaller community (population 503). I had the opportunity to live in the Wallace Stegner house in Eastend, Saskatchewan. It is dedicated to the North American novelist, Wallace Stegner, who lived in Eastend for six years as a young boy in the early part of the last century. The house is filled with Stegner’s books and those of his contemporaries as well as more modern writers. I was not lacking for intellectual stimulation or culture.
During the third week, one of my friends who knew why I had left home, asked what I missed most about Toronto. There was a long pause. I certainly missed my family and friends, but I was in touch with them by e-mail and phone. I racked my brains—surely there was something I missed. Finally, I mumbled something about missing the variety of choices in the grocery store.
I was shocked—was there nothing more substantial that I missed from the life I had left behind?
It took me a while to understand what was missing. When I walked down the streets of either community, I heard nothing but English. In fact, I realized, I had heard no other language since I left Toronto. There were Indigenous people in town—from the nearby Nikaneet First Nation, so there were some faces I met that were not white. But in Toronto I could not walk down the street without being reminded how wide and diverse the world was and that we were not the centre of the universe. I could sometimes be the only Caucasian on a subway car. Walking on any downtown street or along the board walk near my home, I would inevitably hear several different languages—and I rejoiced in it.
I realized I missed communicating with people new to Canada--the Syrian student who was staying in my basement while she completes a scholarship; the 28-year-old Senegalese gay refugee our congregation is sponsoring. I wondered about my young, Afghan friend whom I had been encouraging to try the LSAT exam.
We talk a lot about the diversity of Toronto, but it was not until I was away that I realized the richness of the diversity—it broadens my perspective and provides different reference points than my own provincial ones. I know now that I will return to Toronto, but I will take with me the peace and solid stability of this land with all its beauty.
This month has taught me to be grateful that I live in a country that includes Toronto with its rich variety of backgrounds and culture and the Cypress Hills with their magnificent sunsets and wide-open spaces that let my imagination flow. I need them both.
After two and a half hours I drove home—frustrated, angry and disappointed. It was then I made the decision to leave Toronto. This was not a snap decision. For many weeks I had been frustrated with Toronto traffic.
I had visited the prairies many times so it was not difficult to decide where to go. I arrived at the trailer where I was staying in the Cypress Hills of southwest Saskatchewan during the first week of August. The town I had chosen to live in has a population of about 2,000--one co-op grocery store, a small library, several churches—including The Cowboy Church, a post office and three banks —a main street where there was always a place to park—without paying. I loved it.
I was invited to a nearby First Nations pow wow my first Saturday; later in the week I went to a local Horse Show. I drove to Fort Walsh and heard the painful history of The Cypress Hills massacre. I visited friends on a beautiful ranch— one of my favourite places in the world. I spent a day watching the magnificent bison in Grasslands park.
But it is the air and the quiet I appreciate most. It is warm with no humidity and no haze—the distant horizon is a clean line as if drawn by a sharpened pencil. The sounds are unlike any I hear in the city—a rooster down the road crowing early in the morning, the mourning doves competing with each other for attention, a couple of young donkeys braying in the distance and the howl of a lone coyote in the night. But the sound I cherish most is the whistle of the CP freight trains as they pass through town – many times during the day and night. If you happen to be stopped at one of the crossings you might wait up to three minutes for a long train to pass. No one minds. This kind of stop has some meaning.
In my early morning walks, I am greeted by two horses over the fence in the pasture behind the trailer —one black and one white. They nuzzle my hands and welcome me even when I don’t have any carrots for them. A little farther along I come to a field of goats – with their long, floppy ears, some of them kneeling on their front legs to get closer to the grass. My day starts relaxed and happy about where I am.
The most memorable moments come when I take a folding chair and sit at the edge of a field of recently mown hay drinking in the view, as far as I can see—beyond the horizon to infinity. Above the large bales of golden hay, the big flat-bottomed clouds are always moving across the blue expanse. The only sound is the wind in the uncut grasses at the edge of the field. It feeds my soul.
For the last week of August, I moved to an even smaller community (population 503). I had the opportunity to live in the Wallace Stegner house in Eastend, Saskatchewan. It is dedicated to the North American novelist, Wallace Stegner, who lived in Eastend for six years as a young boy in the early part of the last century. The house is filled with Stegner’s books and those of his contemporaries as well as more modern writers. I was not lacking for intellectual stimulation or culture.
During the third week, one of my friends who knew why I had left home, asked what I missed most about Toronto. There was a long pause. I certainly missed my family and friends, but I was in touch with them by e-mail and phone. I racked my brains—surely there was something I missed. Finally, I mumbled something about missing the variety of choices in the grocery store.
I was shocked—was there nothing more substantial that I missed from the life I had left behind?
It took me a while to understand what was missing. When I walked down the streets of either community, I heard nothing but English. In fact, I realized, I had heard no other language since I left Toronto. There were Indigenous people in town—from the nearby Nikaneet First Nation, so there were some faces I met that were not white. But in Toronto I could not walk down the street without being reminded how wide and diverse the world was and that we were not the centre of the universe. I could sometimes be the only Caucasian on a subway car. Walking on any downtown street or along the board walk near my home, I would inevitably hear several different languages—and I rejoiced in it.
I realized I missed communicating with people new to Canada--the Syrian student who was staying in my basement while she completes a scholarship; the 28-year-old Senegalese gay refugee our congregation is sponsoring. I wondered about my young, Afghan friend whom I had been encouraging to try the LSAT exam.
We talk a lot about the diversity of Toronto, but it was not until I was away that I realized the richness of the diversity—it broadens my perspective and provides different reference points than my own provincial ones. I know now that I will return to Toronto, but I will take with me the peace and solid stability of this land with all its beauty.
This month has taught me to be grateful that I live in a country that includes Toronto with its rich variety of backgrounds and culture and the Cypress Hills with their magnificent sunsets and wide-open spaces that let my imagination flow. I need them both.
Pilgrim Praxis
The genocide in apartheid and settler colonial Palestine urgently calls for urgent discernment and action. Could the ongoing rounds of blood letting and destruction finally end to begin a journey toward truth, and justice-based peace? I hope so for the sake of all who dwell in this (un)Holy Land.