I don’t remember the day I was born, but I’m told it was January 27, 1968. I’m also told I was meant to be a boy, and that my name was Tony before I entered the world at 11:38am. It seemed particularly important that I get this first test right, since I later came to understand that my older sister had already disappointed by turning out a girl. But I blew it too, showing up a girl on a Saturday in the bleak mid-winter.
I spent my first year on my grandparents’ dairy farm in the Ontario countryside. And I felt something was not right. Like, maybe the stork that delivered me was a kangaroo. I was missing a sense of belonging.
My sister and I were in Grandma’s care, an addition to her grown brood of 10. I remember being contained in a playpen in the kitchen. I was curious, watching everything from behind the wooden bars. I wanted to be into everything too, but I was trapped.
So I watched. I observed. And my observations taught me to avoid my big sis. Merely 15 months older than me, she was barely a toddler herself. Her feelings about my arrival were strong, and the wooden legs of the wobbly high chair under me were not. She toppled me over, conquering the interloper, and taking us both down. Mom remembers the crash behind her, and the sight of her baby and toddler lying on the floor, one trapped under the high chair, the other trapped in it, both bleeding from the head. Ironically, or fittingly, we have matching scars on our eyebrows. I asked about my scar one day, and that’s how I first uncovered the story. Scars are keys. Sometimes a door opens and you find much more than you expected.
My early days behind bars and my ability to survive free-falling have amplified a few aspects of my nature: my wanderlust, my determination, my powers of observation and my…what’s the opposite word for control freak? Life happens. And we learn to handle it. And we find our own way. I also suspect my early experiences explain my distaste for the term CFA in the Maritimes. Come From Away is nearly the same as Doesn’t Belong Here. It’s probably best that I wasn’t aware of this C-term on my first visit to Halifax in 1998, when I first felt I could love this place for a lifetime.
I arrived in the Maritimes 15 years ago. At the time, I could have relocated anywhere in Canada or continued to work overseas. I chose Halifax. I loved Halifax. At times, it has felt like a dysfunctional relationship though, as if I’m still waiting for Halifax to love me back, just as I am, with all my annoying CFA questions: Is this a place where I can thrive personally and professionally? Why is the service industry so nonchalant? Can the economy in the Maritimes support a truer valuation of creativity and the arts? What is it going to take for more men to listen to more women on important civic and political matters? Why did we have the highest unemployment rate in the country last year? We didn’t create it overnight, I know, but aren’t we stuck there in our mindset? Nova Scotia, do you express yourself freely on matters that are important to you? What is the real cost of mounting a soapbox? Is free speech really free?
The internet is certainly a global soapbox. If we look at the most popular post about Nova Scotia in the online Urban Dictionary, it both cheers and jeers: “Nova Scotia rocks. The rest of Canada can kiss our asses.” And a post further down criticizes: “Nova Scotians love children and pets, but have no time for adults, particularly those who ‘come from away.’ If you weren’t born or raised in the province, there’s no place for you.” This doesn’t indicate everyone’s opinion, of course, but several hundred people voted for these posts.
As much as this is an essay about my unrequited love of the east coast, and my desire to build a life here, and belong, it is about living with a certain intention—allowing my heart to lead me to different places, personally and professionally, literally and figuratively, just as it lead me here. But sometimes the doors don’t open. Sometimes you find much less than you expected. And so you keep knocking… a
Tina Capalbo, MA, is a communications coordinator, writer, educator, arts lover and job seeker, currently coordinating marketing and sponsorship for the Nova Scotia Career Development Association annual conference. On Twitter, she’s @tinacapalbo.
Send your essay ideas for consideration to voice@thecoast.ca
This article appears in May 23-29, 2013.
You talked about yourself the whole time. How Ontarian. When you stop gazing at yourself in the mirror and pay some attention to the rest of us you may find a place to fit in on the East Coast.
No Arlen, what she says has some validity. It’s like any place that is traditionally an exporter then than an importer of people—there is a mistrust of people from elsewhere. This is certainly less pronounced in Halifax than elsewhere, and as more immigrants arrive in the region and stay (which is happening) we can probably expect this to lessen further.
But I used to live in Calgary, and even there, old-timers who remembered the days before the city was a magnet for newcomers waxed nostalgic about the old days, before all these new folks arrived. It’s just a mentality that takes a while to go away, and frankly, Arlen, your post embodies it.
(PS: She was not really writing about herself, but what her experiences say about this region.)
Anyway, I’m optimistic that things are changing, slowly. Despite global economic challenges and our demographic problems, the province is finally getting aggressive on immigration, and there seems to be some optimism in the city, economically and otherwise. If this trend continues, talk of Come From Aways will fade…
I believe there definitely is a CFA problem in Nova Scotia but we also have a if it is from here it can’t be good enough problem . I was reminded of that lovely phenomenon as I read Tim Bousquet’s request for help in reading the IBM contract with the province.
The SAP product the province has been using for the past few years has received mixed reviews throughout the world. In fact several users have thrown it out because it did not deliver an affordable effective solution including some of the users the government used as reasons to purchase SAP. At the time of this decision there were several software firms in Nova Scotia selling accounting software throughout Canada with great reviews. The attitude from the government seemed to be there was no way that we could produce something to do the job. I used to work in the computer industry and came to know the principals of some of the local firms well, though I never worked directly for them. I benefited from their quality work because what they did made it easier for me to sell my hardware.
I love this place but we need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot.
I vote for a “CFA Dinner” where those of us who have transplanted to this really wonderful city can meet others like ourselves and maybe help support that sense of community. Been here for several years now and am still struggling in that regard. Don’t get me wrong, folks are very friendly …but it’s difficult to break into social circles. Plus it would be fun to hear about others’ adventures and experiences in the Maritimes. 🙂
As a “CFA” myself (have you actually ever heard anyone say “come-from-away” in anything but an ironic sense?) I find articles like this weird.
People who move from one place to another, especially as adults and especially moving to smaller centres, often have a hard time finding their social groove. This is normal, everywhere. I don’t understand why it seems to get treated as a “Maritimes” problem.
Have you ever been in Ontario and told anyone you’re from Nova Scotia? Some people will quite openly sneer or mock you. Do you think someone moving from, say, Edmonton, to your rural Ontario farm town will instantly be an integral part of the community?
One of the reason that people in smaller centres are guarded about people from larger centres is that the people moving in seem to want to make these kinds of pronouncements about the puzzling quaintness of their new communities. (Read some of Jan Wong’s horribly condescending comments about life in Fredericton over at the Herald…)
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Everything is so competitive in Nova Scotia. So when people “come from away” and take our jobs, yeah, we’re not gonna like you.
P.S. Saying “how Ontarian” is just as ignorant and shallow as saying “how Nova Scotian.” Not helping.
@againandagain
Uh, in Halifax at least, there are plenty of jobs to go around—the unemployment rate is lower than Toronto, in fact, and the median income slightly higher.
Besides, more people means more economic activity, which, in the medium-term, translates to more jobs. Some newcomers even CREATE jobs. It’s not a zero-sum game.
If you want to know why people don’t like you, Tina, I offer one sentence from your piece:
“Why is the service industry so nonchalant?”
Pffftttttttttttttttttttttt. How smug and Ontario is that?
If you are think that, people know.
“Why is the service industry so nonchalant?”
That pretty much explains why people don’t like you, Tina Capalbo, MA.
People aren’t stupid. If this is how you think, they know it.
Dear Ingrid, I realize there is limited information in this short and selective essay from which to draw conclusions, but my service training was primarily through both an American company and a Japanese company, and it was based out of Detroit Michigan and Tokyo Japan, respectively, not an Ontario perspective so much.
Cheers, Tina
Oh, for Lord’s sake Ingrid: Ontario is a perfectly nice province full of perfectly nice people. I’ve lived in Ontario and Nova Scotia (and Alberta and British Columbia and Quebec) and while I prefer Nova Scotia for a whole host of reasons, it’s ridiculous to think that simply living in a certain political jurisdiction (i.e., one province instead of another) will make a person a certain way. Having lived in five of the most populous provinces in the country, guess what: People are basically the same everywhere. And all Canadians are equally liable to indulge in silly cliches about the rest of the country, from centre-of-the-universe ideas about friendly Maritimers kicking back on EI, to Western Canadian disdain for the Big Smoke, to the attitude you’re expressing.