I was stuck in Canada (a.k.a. Canuckland) for a month, from mid-March to mid-April, on the whims of the Embassy of the United States (a.k.a Yankland), who needed that much time to unearth my life story and slog through the related paperwork. This month has hit me with very varied experiences and I think I was very glad to have had the opportunity for a one-month forced exile from the Greatest Country on Earth. I have no overarching narrative to present here. Instead, I shall lazily present a series of extremely short stories, as has been the norm for my recent travelogues, and invite the reader to make whatever conclusion they want. Here we go.
1. How to be stranded in Canada for a month
I applied for a J1 visa to the United States. I brought all the things that they said I must bring to the interview. Ms. Consular Officer Lady, who I am sure is a great person to her family and friends, asked me for my CV, which I did not have on my person. So she drew up a writ of refusal, asked me to send in my CV and research history, and told me to wait for "two to four weeks" and "you can go anywhere, just not the United States". And then the interview ended.
The plan had been to stay less than a week at the time. No one likes to see the word "refusal" in such a situation either. I remembered the weather became extra slushy those few days.
Thomas the Burundian was my host. He was a good guy and tried to reassure me that things were not so bad, after all. "We had a guy from India in here; he was in the same situation as you are now. They asked him to stay put for a few months, and in the end he went home to India to wait it out. (You know what, never mind.)"
2. Thomas of Burundi
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| Wurtemburg House |
Thomas the Burundian works at Amnesty International. Thomas the Burundian is an exquisite gentleman. Thomas the exquisite gentleman lives in an apartment in a grand old house at Rue Wurtemburg, and gets guests to stay in the extra rooms through Airbnb. Thomas greets his guests with a welcoming wave, wafting gratuitous amounts of civility. On the first night of my stay we shared the dinner table and talked about geopolitics. I found that we disagreed on some things. I decided not to bring up the hilarious story of Pierre Nkurunziza, who wanted to be President-for-life like Paul Kagame from the country next doors, but could not, and instead had people rising up against him in huge riots. So the story goes.
Less than a week into my stay, Jessie Liu of Nepean returned to Canada from a trip to sunny California and arrived at Wurtemburg by car. She yanked me right out from there and let me stay at her son's room for the remainder of the exile. For this, I owe her my eternal gratitude.
3. Auntie Liu of Nepean
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| Chinatown of Ottawa |
Auntie Liu is the daughter of a friend of my father from his days of mucking around in the United States in his youth. Auntie Liu works for the Canadian government, like most people in Nepean. She has formed many ideas about the governance of Canada and suchlike and have been more than enthusiastic to make sure I (and anyone else within earshot) knew about them. I found that we disagreed on some things, but never mind. It is a good thing to be listening to people who disagreed with you.
Auntie Liu introduced me to Costco and the Asian Supermarket T&T 大统华, also punnily known as 炸药店 (Explosives Store). She taught me how to cook steak, how to distrust Chinese restaurants with their scammy card reader machines, how to pick out fresh produce at Explosives Store, how to deal with the public transportation, how to pick a good high school for your kids in Ottawa, how to go to Chinatown, and many other potentially useful life skills.
I tried as much as I can to be good, clean up after myself, and do some cooking. The neighborhood of Centrepointe, where we were at, had a nice church in a half-hour's walking distance, making it handy for daily mass.
4. Parkhill University Residences
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| At the oratory |
Matthew of Surabaya attends the University of Ottawa (uOttawa), and had to find a place to stay. It was late, and school housing had run out. Searching for alternatives on the internet, he found Parkhill.
Parkhill University Residences sits at a quiet spot in back-alley downtown next to the Embassy of Mali. An oratory in the building and resident Frs. Paul Cormier and Joseph Escribano make daily mass extra handy here. Not all are practicing Catholics: Matthew, for his part, stayed for the cozy environment conducive for study rather than for the religious formation, and Minh is an outright communist who had found his way into Parkhill by sheer dumb luck.
Like the city itself, Parkhill has English and French speakers in equal measures, making conversations interesting.
Weekly meetings and prayers make for excellent bro-company with many illustrious gentlemen around town. Also on one occasion I was invited to become a museum exhibit for a full room of high school-age fellas who asked me questions like "Is Singapore part of China" just to see how I would react. But the happenings at Parkhill are too many to pen here.
5. The Church in Ottawa
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| St. Clement's - FSSP Latin Mass Parish |
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| St. John the Apostle - Parish near Auntie Liu's house |
St. John the Apostle serves the elderly of Centrepointe, offering mass on Tuesdays to Fridays at 9 o'clock in the morning. Father Lindsay takes a vacation on Mondays, so on Mondays I join for noonday mass at the Notre Dame Basilica at Downtown, near to the National Gallery. On Saturdays I join Latin mass at St. Clements, which sometimes is filled to the brim with French-speaking children. Later, I would discover that the same parish runs a nearby school.
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| Notre Dame - Cathedral |
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| Our Lady of the Annunciation - Anglican Ordinariate Parish |
The Ordinariate parish is run by Fr Doug. Fr Doug helped me through the liturgy because I was the only guy who showed up and had to do the responses without any prior experience. I learned that the Ordinariate Mass is almost identical to the Tridentine mass of the Latin tradition. I have a newfound respect for Ordinariate Catholics and their compatriots, the High Church Anglicans.
The Eastern Catholics are represented by the Syro-Malabars and Ukrainians, but the locations of their parishes are weird, and I never had an excuse to visit them. The Chinese parish is in Orléans, a Francophone neighborhood, which is also very odd.
6. The Church in Gatineau
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| Notre-Dame-de-l'Île - Parish of Hull District, Gatineau |
My experience of the Church in Gatineau has been disappointing. To be fair, I had been warned about the state of the church in Quebec, which seems to be in terminal decline since the 1960s. The website of the Cathedral did not show the correct mass timings. Notre-Dame-de-l'Île's actual mass timings also differed from what was shown on the sign up front. By and by I found a group of aunties in a meeting at the church's basement. "
Pas de messes ici! Shoo! Shoo!" they said to me. "
No mass here! Go away!"
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Vous devez changer votre site-web!
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C'est pas notre problème!
Five minutes before mass was due to start, the priest arrived in his car and assured me that the mass and Eucharistic Adoration was, contrary to the women of the basement, set to take place that evening. I was overjoyed. I called him
Monsieur because he did not have his collar on. He would disappear again shortly after the start of Adoration, leaving a layman to say the priest's lines and elevate the Host.
6a. Exchange with Suzanne from Quebec City on the Quiet Revolution
This came from the Catholic History Geeks Facebook group. I found it interesting and relevant, so I repost it here.
Me:
[...]It surprised me to see that the church in Ottawa is thriving but the parishes in Gatineau (which is supposedly Francophone and Catholic) feel gutted. I read that the parish of Notre-Dame-de-l'île in Hull was formed out of four former parishes when the churchgoing population fell from a quarter of a million to ten thousand. It is way harder to find daily masses there than right across the river. Friends from Québec, or who are familiar with Québec history, is this the result of the so-called "Quiet Revolution"? Have you lived through this period of Canadian history? What was it like?
Suzanne:
Hi there. I grew up in Quebec. People describe the "Quiet Revolution" as this hardcore anti-Catholic period. I don't remember it that way. It was more of a progressive indifference of the Church that today has developed into full-blown anti-religion. Quebeckers never had to fight for their faith. They were never constantly attacked by Evangelicals or other Protestants; so they were never forced to learn the why and wherefore of their faith in order to defend it. So Quebec's faith was a mile wide and an inch deep, depending a *lot* on sociological transmission to keep the faith going. This is why when there was an onslaught of secular thinking after the advent of T.V., Quebeckers' faith couldn't take it. The Church, faithful Catholics, have very little confidence in themselves or their faith. They basically retreat in the face of the onslaught. And that's why you have churches closing down and Quebec losing its Christian landscape.
7. The geography of La Capitale
The Capital of Canada sits on the south bank of the Ottawa river, which drains east into Saint Lawrence. The river forms part of the border between the provinces of Ontario (south) and Quebec (north). The big village of Gatineau sits on the north bank, within walking distance, and enjoys the perks of being close to the national capital without technically being part of it.
The neighbourhoods of Ottawa work roughly like this, from west to east: Kanata has the high-tech startups. Bayshore has gunfights with guns smuggled in from Yankland. Nepean has retirees and government workers. South Keys has the airport. Downtown, Vanier and surrounding areas have drug addicts and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is also a drug addict. In the furthest east, Orléans is the French-speaking district, as mentioned.
Downtown Ottawa is split in two by the Rideau Canal, which functions as a skating rink in the winter (i.e. most of the year). Parliament Hill and Ottawa's most iconic buildings sit at the left bank of the canal, within eyeshot of the Embassy of the United States on the right bank. Unlike many other cities, Downtown is densely built, human-sized, walkable, and well-connected by public transport. For this reason it swiftly became my favourite place on the continent.
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| This building is important for some reason |
8. Canadian Soft Power
Auntie Liu's sister has a husband, a genial fellow named Try. Try is Cambodian-Canadian, a Francophone, and lives in Gatineau. He visited us at Nepean one fine evening, bringing gifts from the wife's place in Nanjing. A thing of Try which made an impression on me was that he spoke in a mesmerizing drawl which I have come to associate with the country of Canada. It was late into my stay in the country, and it had grown on me as well.
The country has had me in its thrall for a long time, its influence on me disproportionate to its influence as a world power. I would happily watch a mediocre Canadian movie over a similar American film of higher acclaim. I had learned my first French words from Quebecker songs. I had eschewed authentic American country music, preferring its imitators on the Manitoban prairies. It was no different for this trip. I had my fill of Canadian movies and Canadian literature. The
film adaptation of Joseph Boyden's
Through Black Spruce aired at Bytowne Cinema during the time of my stay. I bought and am reading Boyden's earlier novel,
Three Day Road, which had catapulted him into fame. The Haida-language film
Edge of the Knife aired in Toronto in the last week of my stay, and I took this excuse to go on a road trip down south.
It helped very much that Ottawa bookkeepers sell very good books at very affordable rates at many places about town, spoiling me rotten.
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| From Patrick McGahern's bookstore, which is probably more expensive than most others |
9. The almost-road trip to the North
I was briefly tempted to make a trip to Iqaluit during this time. The airfare (~2500 CAD) felt prohibitive, and the temperatures in the Canadian Arctic in the month of March (minus a gasdfjillion degrees in any scale) seemed to be beyond the reach of my human experience. Strangely, the former did more to discourage me than the latter.
The temptations would continue, and, as someone who becomes irrationally excited at the sight of
Inuktitut syllabics, I accepted them as a test and opportunity for mortification in this blessed season of Lent.
Confiteor tibi, Domine. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
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| Don't look at it, Andy |
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| *throws away magazine* |
10. A quiet way of living
Despite all appearances and temptations, I was not keen for adventure. People who know me all know that I am a homebody who likes to play Civilization VI too much for my own good. I was anxious to get into the rhythm of work in Cleveland more than anything, to the beat of a quiet, uneventful mode of living. This was no time for adventure!
I complained to Mom, and she gave me a dress-down, saying something along the lines of: S
uck it up. There's nothing you can do about this mess. You are now on holiday, whether you wanted to or not. Go out and learn to have some fun.
That's fair. I went to the museums and grudgingly assumed the role of a tourist. They turned out to be great. The National Gallery is now a favourite place.
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| Yay, art! |
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| History! |
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| Tame cockroaches! |
But when I was not in the mood to spend on earthly pleasures, I found home in the public libraries, one branch in Downtown on the Rideau, and the other at the former Nepean City Hall. Here admission and wifi are free, and there was shelter and quiet. I could print my readings, write my papers, and get the research work going at snail's pace (I was told not to bring my laptop).
At the Downtown branch of Ottawa Public Libraries, I discovered that the homeless population shared my passion for books, internet access, and free shelter from the elements. This made for quite interesting company whenever I wound up studying here. The librarians of Downtown graciously adapt to serve their customer demographic, and treat everyone cordially and with respect. There is just one awkward detail: when you needed to use the bathroom, you have to ask the front desk for the keys.
11. Good people
There is a hidden Chinese restaurant on the south side of Rue Rideau, between Dalhousie and Walter. They occupy the husk of a former restaurant, giving themselves no distinguishing brand or name, and never bothering to lift a finger to change out the signage or the furnishings. However, I must point out that their noodles are very satisfying to horf. The restaurant has become very popular among the uOttawa students who manage to find them. I must also note that they are unique in the neighbourhood for rounding down (not up!) the price for cash payments to the nearest dollar, and for not accepting tips!
Byward Market has a Moroccan restaurant named Le Casablanca. I went there whenever I felt posh or wanted to have coffee that was not watered down. I built some rapport with the family running the place over time. Near the end of my stay, the building had a fire which gutted one of the other restaurants. No one was hurt, but it was probably really bad for business. I hope they are all doing better now.
I should remember that people are good and can be good all on their own, whether they are good to me or not.
The last random story I would like to write about is about an old man and his two young granddaughters, whom he brings to Centrepointe Avenue to be picked up by the school bus every weekday morning. I spotted them often on my way to church and drew a sketch of them, from memory, because I found the scene to be exceptionally adorable. I'll let the picture do the talking.
Are they twins? The girls were of similar heights. Their jackets and pants were colour-coded, but the hats are switched. Grandpa holds both their backpacks. I have no surefire way to know who owns which bag now. Where will they be when I come to Ottawa again? Maybe, the sisters will be all grown up when the time comes. Will they still think of themselves as the pink and green halves of a pair then? Maybe something else?
I've written enough; it's time to sleep.
