I watched a hockey game last night. No, not the English kind with curved sticks, grass and thick knees. The other kind, the Canadian kind with the scraping of skates on ice and the thump of bodies against the rink boards. Where an organ – an organ – gets the crowds going and the players drip sweat off their faces while the fans are bundled up, their breath visible in the cold of the arena.

Sometimes I feel a little schizophrenic, without meaning any disrespect to anyone reading this. I am so comfortable in an English setting, whether it be cycling over to the (free) National Gallery in London, placing a “flutter” at Ascot racecourse where I’m surrounded by men in top hats and glammed-up women in fascinators, or having a picnic with friends and their dogs on slightly-wet grass, an umbrella in one hand and tea that’s gone cold in the other. Discussing the weather is always on the agenda whether having lunch with your best friend or buying tomatoes at a market stall.

Yet the first twenty-five or so years of my life were spent here in Canada. I am Canadian in my soul. A conflicted one, to be sure. I don’t believe I could ever cope with a Montreal winter where the temperature can plummet to -25 for stretches of time, and the spring is almost non-existent compared to an endless, lovely English one (except this year. I think Oscar Wilde’s Selfish Giant is up to something.) 

Of course I’m a Canadian who has been influenced by time lived in France, Costa Rica and the UK; a Canadian who gave birth in Spanish, wrote a thesis in French and works with words in English. I’m not a normal Canadian, but in a country made up of people with global stories, this doesn’t make me unique. 

                                    

I returned to Canada last Wednesday to begin yet another experimental chapter. It’s a four-hour drive from Maine to Montreal, and I chose to spend the first ninety minutes of the drive without music, without radio, not even an audio book. I just looked in contented awe at the expanse of leafless trees, jagged peaks and snowmelt-fed rivers running next to the highway, their water surging over boulders and threatening the banks. 

Crossing the Samuel de Champlain bridge into Montreal proper, my phone ran out of juice. Of course it died in the middle of a three-lane bridge, my charger buried in my suitcase, a vague idea of where I was headed and no means to contact the friends who were storing my two suitcases and the large piano keyboard I’d borrowed back from my sister. That’s when I realised that my resilience, which had been flattened by the pandemic, was seeping back into me thanks to travel, unforeseen experiences and connections with interesting people. Here I was, in a conundrum, and I laughed.

My new apartment, which I did find without a hitch, is expansive and bright and … owned by a male millennial. An engineering one, to boot. The sheets are red, the duvet cover black. There is only short hanging space in the closet. There’s an iron but no ironing board. His food must arrive by delivery bike on the days he doesn’t dine out as there is no spatula, sieve, serrated knife or teaspoons. No large bowls for serving nor small ones for nuts and olives. Four plates, four bowls, a few mugs but no means to blend and, worse, no kettle to make tea. 

But there is a smart projector connected to a firestick, an uber-slick bathroom and an intrusive Alexa who with just a few words will turn lights on and off, select music and manage my viewing pleasure.

She now lives unplugged and wrapped in a towel at the back of one of the kitchen drawers. I don’t trust Jeff Bezos. 

To return to last night’s hockey game, which I watched on tv with some friends. This was first-round playoffs, a serious game, between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Toronto Maple Leafs. My home team, even if they haven’t won the Stanley Cup since the year my brother was born well over half a century ago. 

I watched hockey as a teenager, knew all the Leaf players’ names although never played it myself. Girls didn’t in the 1970s. Last night was an unexpected encounter with a game I knew well in the past. And in this day of overly-curated perfection, I enjoyed the toughness, the gritty emotions, even the gloves-off fights. (And since you asked, yes, the Leafs won.)

I feel aware of who I am and how I am, even if I don’t know where I will be in six months’ time. I try to bring that eyes-wide attitude to this year of existential ... discovery. I overthink things – not a surprising statement to those who know me – yet can gaze outwards and see how fortunate I am to have this time to explore myself, to search for challenging opportunities and I feel immense gratitude for my friends on almost all the continents (can I count that connection I felt with a gorgeous king penguin in Antarctica?)

Onward and upward, then. Outside, the sky is grey and the rain hasn’t stopped falling for at least twelve hours, inside the music plays and a book on the sofa calls me. A perfect Sunday.