Home Sweet Home (Part 2)
Hornby Housing is in the midst of a strategic planning process and they will have more clarity about their needs and goals following their meeting this coming weekend.
In the meantime, what are some of the things we know about home?
When I was a young adult living in Montreal, with my father newly remarried in Vancouver and my mother having moved to California to embark upon a disastrous remarriage herself, I remember going through a time of feeling I had no home. Our family home had been sold with the divorce; neither of my parents’ new partners seemed inclined to invite a grown “step- daughter” to come and live with them. I was about to graduate from university, but had no employment prospects or even a sense of what I really wanted in terms of a career. I loved Montreal, but it was far too harsh a climate for me to consider living there permanently. I was floundering. One day an older woman gave me a temporary answer: “Home is where the heart is”. For me at the time, that seemed to mean: home is where my love interest is, so that took me to Philadelphia for 7 years, in a classic 60’s case of “If you don’t know what to do next, why not get married?” Bad idea. Ah well, as my grandmother wisely told me, we each have to learn our life lessons in our own way!
When I think of Trump’s odious assertion that he’s going to give the Palestinians a “better life” by “owning” their land and resettling them who knows where, it hearkens me back to the title of Mahmoud Darwish’s selected poems, “Unfortunately, It was Paradise”. For Palestinians, their hearts will always be in Palestine, whether that be Gaza, the West Bank, or their Palestine before the ruthless Israeli land grab of 1948. That is where their home is – the land, their culture, language and history. And as one Palestinian woman said recently: “They could give me a whole city and I would choose instead the rubble of my home”. Home is the land, the light, the olive trees, the soil. It is their house, and it is more than their house.
For many here on Hornby and Denman, home is sunset at Phipps Point, sunrise at Morning Beach, coffee at Abraxis, walking Helliwell. Home is the Recycling Depot, a hot lunch at Joe King Ball Park, Readers & Writers Festival, Herring Fest. Home is swimming at Chickadee Lake or having a surf off Little Trib. Home is getting the wood in and poring over seed catalogues for the next spring. It is gathering seaweed, harvesting blackberries, opening the library, and cleaning the Hall. Home is the whole island they live in and on. Home, be it a dwelling, a landscape, or a sense of community, is where we find sanctuary. May we all find and cherish our home.
And at the same time, let’s be mindful of the reality that people do need dwellings! Next week: More on Housing.
