The Modern Nomad

Over the past few months I’ve visited Occupy LSX, in London, with its neat rows of tents hugging the perimeter of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and marvelled at how much of a village it had become. That village was evicted in February, long after many other cities pushed out protesters. This late eviction seems remarkable to me, and perhaps says something about London.

A core group of supporters still gather each Saturday on the steps of St. Paul’s for meetings. A few weeks ago they shared the space with a large wedding party, the groom with his top-hat and the bride impeccably groomed. They still speak about economics and social justice and the police. The rhetoric of the movement, much of it clear-minded and informed, is very prominent. But despite the broad focus (or, some say, lack of) few people observing Occupy seem to be speaking about home: questioning what it means in a city where few of the so-called 99 percent can afford to buy one, where it is a landlords’ market, where people in their 30s with full-time jobs live with two, three, four housemates. I write this having spent an intense four weeks searching for housing in every corner of the city; the frustration, anxiety and fear that I will not find something suitable is still fresh.

Home, mobility, and the fluidity and impermanence of community is one of the central themes of Occupy. Or, I think, it should be.

[Mobile Home: Illustration by Sean-Edward, via This is Colossal]

Last year, The Atlantic , which has become a forum for ideas about urbanism, cities and notions of home with its Atlantic Cities site, published a story called “The Psychology of Home: Why Where You Live Means So Much.” The author, Julie Beck, wrote that Westerners (or North Americans, if you prefer) are deeply attached to homes but do not necessarily see their homes as manifestations of their inner selves.

Home ownership is about more than mere shelter, as the subprime mortgage crisis affirms. It is also closely related to mobility: “The endless options can leave us constantly wondering if there isn’t some place with better schools, a better neighborhood, more green space, and on and on,” Beck wrote. “We may leave a pretty good thing behind, hoping that the next place will be even more desirable. In some ways, this mobility has become part of the natural course of a life.”

We are shopping for the Good Life and its various components: spouse, children, real estate, a lawn of one’s own. Real estate, like work, plays an enormous part in what course our lives take. Parents choose neighbourhoods for their access to good schools; people choose cities for a job as much as for its quality of life. How else can you explain the phenomenon that is Fort McMurray, in northern Alberta? (For a great introduction to Fort McMurray, see Dan Rubinstein’s feature for Alberta Views magazine.)

“But in spite of everything,” Beck wrote in the Atlantic, “in spite of the mobility, the individualism, and the economy—on some level we do recognize the importance of place. The first thing we ask someone when we meet them, after their name, is where they are from, or the much more interestingly-phrased “where’s home for you?” We ask, not just to place a pushpin for them in our mental map of acquaintances, but because we recognize that the answer tells us something important about them. My answer for ‘where are you from?’ is usually Michigan, but ‘where’s home for you?’ is a little harder.” I don’t quite buy Beck’s own answer, that home is where she happens to be, but I can’t quite answer her question, either. My grandparents lived in the same home for decades, and most of their children lived near by. My family is more scattered, my own flight path more diverse.

“Where are you from?” is code for “who are you?” For modern nomads, those us who pick up sticks and move across provinces, state-lines, country borders and continents, that question is probing but practically impossible to answer. It’s a question you might ask of the people taking part in Occupy. It’s a question I constantly ask myself. I have not yet come upon an answer.

Veined with the thin red lines of highways, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the map of Newfoundland I hold in front of me has another notable feature: its jagged perimeter is marked by a rash of dots. Each denotes one of the hundreds of communities that were abandoned or relocated between the 1950s and 1970s, communities that have been disappeared by political will or isolation or by trying make a living in a remote outport where nature can sometimes work against you.

[Photo via Fogo Islands Arts Corporation]

The map has a ghostly effect. Each dot represents an absence, a suggestion of people whose lives took much different trajectories than they intended. These modern exiles migrated to St. John’s or Corner Brook, or to the mainland. Some never returned; many carried with them a kind of grief for where they came from. Their towns disintegrated, were swallowed by the very landscape that surrounded them. In many places, the decaying foundations and broken down walls of a settlement is all that remains—the scaffolding of recent history. These populations came to be known by a cold, bureaucratic handle: Relocation Communities. In many cases, their stories were lost.

There is one part of the province that does not have a dot beside it: Fogo Island. And it is there that a different narrative—about the attempt to reshape history and secure a future for at least one community—takes place.

Fogo Island is a mere 25 kilometres long and 14 kilometres wide. To get there you fly to Gander, make your way north on Route 335 to the town of Farewell. From there you pick up a ferry toward the Change Islands and, finally, reach your destination.

Fogo fought relocation during the 1950s and 1960s and became a case study for resilience when a documentary filmmaker interviewed locals for a National Film Board film. But over the years cod stocks dwindled and residents have struggled to make a living. Today many continue to scrape by. It is the quintessential Newfoundland outport village.

Yet what makes the community different is how a group of industrious residents are trying to reshape its past and secure its future by revitalizing the island. They are headed by Zita Cobb, a wealthy, charismatic Fogo Islander. Cobb made millions in the energy industry and has returned to lead several ambitious, long-term projects. She’s created an arts organization and a high-profile artists’ colony (designed by Newfoundland-born, Norway-based architect Todd Saunders), is building a 29-room inn with a library, gallery and cinema to shows National Film Board films, and has established a micro-financing program for local residents to start small businesses. Cobb has said that the money from these ventures will be reinvested into the community. [You can see some of the studios that Saunders described in this story from Azure.]

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I’ve seen similar community organizing in other parts of Canada. Young patriotic Edmontonians are forming community organizations to plan their neighbourhoods. This in a city with its own board game called Leaving Edmonton, which was inspired by the exodus of its talent (Adam Waldron-Blain, the artist who created the game, has since left Edmonton for Glasgow). Regular citizens in oil-rich Calgary—a city known for attracting transient groups of people who want to tap into its prosperity—have formed Civic Camp YYC to shape its urban future. In Portland, Oregon, I hung out with grassroots organizers of City Repair who held “intersection repairs” to beautify their neighhourhoods (while making them safer). [You can read more about what’s happening in Calgary and Portland in my story, “The DIY City,” for enRoute.]

With Fogo Island, the question for skeptics might be whether a place can truly preserve its sense of self. Will it simply live on tourism and the vapours of history? Fogo Islanders would say no. Will it be a replication of the idea of “Newfoundland,” rather than a stronger, though perhaps nebulous, real Newfoundland? Or, instead, will it create that nebulous thing—the sustainable community—in a province with a history of displacement and poverty?

The dialectic between Relocation Communities and Fogo Islanders represents a broader story. We live in an age of mobility, yet where we are from is built into our DNA. Each of us is born with, as the poet Karen Solie puts it, “a primary place.”

It may explain why, when the tiny community of Beach, Newfoundland, recently faced evacuation after its roads were flooded, one resident told a reporter: “I am not going to leave and that’s it. I was born here and I’ll drown here.”