A Love Letter to Community
I grew up in Kerrisdale. Its cobblestone sidewalks, quaint storefronts, and neighbourly waves give it a small-town feel, but really, it’s in the heart of Vancouver.
My earliest days were in a small house with an arched entrance way and welcoming front steps on Vine Street. I don’t remember it, but I love looking at pictures of that home, and I love the way Vine Street sounds when I say it. I do remember our next house. It was also small – two bedrooms and one bathroom, which for our family of six plus a dog and a cat meant a tight squeeze. I don’t remember it feeling small, though.
What I remember are the giant sunflowers that my brothers and I planted one summer, the sandbox my dad built us, and the kitchen where my mum cooked all our meals and one time forgot about a giant pot of split pea soup on the stove. The pot was ruined, the stove a mess and the house stank for days. I remember our neighbours: elderly women on either side and a family behind us. These are perhaps my earliest recollection of community. We played in the back alley with the neighbour kids and inspected the ornamental gnomes in Mrs. Armstrong’s quirky garden.
When I was in grade five, we moved again. This time, my parents bought a home, and before long, they were knee-deep in various DIY renovation projects. We weren’t right in Kerrisdale anymore, but we were still part of that community. My first job – a job I had for fifteen years – was in Kerrisdale at Moore’s Bakery. There, my sense of community grew. I got to know not just the regular customers, but also the neighbourhood business owners and employees. I watched families grow and became familiar with the elderly who came in with walkers or canes or helpers, and had been coming to Moore’s for years before me.
Kerrisdale was home, and when I go back, I still visit and have that same sense. Some of the buildings have changed, but the community feels the same. I recognize people, and they recognize me. Our mutual aging and the changes in our lives seem insignificant in the face of the community and connections that bring us together.
My brother, Hamish, and me with the giant sunflower.
When I moved north, I wasn’t sure what community would look like. I’d read that Beaver Creek only had ninety or so inhabitants. This was roughly the number of people in the apartment building C and I lived in at the time. I worried about leaving behind the community I knew – a community that had watched me grow and that in many ways, had shaped me.
On one of my first days in the north, there was a knock on the door. Standing on the doorstep in the early January darkness was a neighbour, smiling widely. She asked if I wanted to come over for tea. It was -40C out, and I wasn’t doing much of anything, so I slipped on my shoes and walked over. She had the kettle on and had just taken a batch of cookies out of the oven. I felt welcome in that moment, and the gesture gave me the courage to become involved in community life. In the weeks and months that followed, I learned many new things and participated in new activities thanks to the community. There was the canning workshop, my first time on a snow machine; there were volleyball games at the community club and skating at the rarely flooded outdoor rink. There were BBQs and I even recall a small parade during our first summer.
Things changed in 2020, when we, like everyone, were suddenly unable to congregate. However, the sense of community persisted. Small gestures, like a wave or a masked chat at the post office or a ‘distanced’ dog walk with a fellow Beaver Creeker or an offer to pick up groceries in Whitehorse provided the feeling of community in a time when community didn’t involve physical gatherings.
The return to normalcy has been slow. But last week, three days of events were organized around the theme of wellness and community. It was a big deal, with shared meals and heart-felt, powerful discussions. The final evening was a musical celebration that included the whole community. We sat on mismatched chairs retrieved from various rooms and unused spaces in a huge circle in the basement of Beaver Creek’s tiny school, Nelnah Bessie John. We tapped our toes to the beat of the music, we stood up and danced, we sang. It was joyous and beautiful and heartwarming.
Some of the many postcards I received from the North Phase community this Christmas. Thank you!
Moving north also taught me to see community as something greater than what is visible and accessible. At the behest of friends and family, I started North Phase when I moved to Beaver Creek. The idea was a visual journal to share my experiences. I shared openly and honestly about the beautiful place I’d moved to, about the community, about the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned. I shared the good days and also the difficult days. I expected the page to act as a bridge between the community I’d grown up in and the place where I now lived. The impact of North Phase was entirely unanticipated. An online community slowly developed. It surprised me and it shifted my understanding of community.
Does online activity take away from in-person connection? Maybe. Certainly, I’ve believed that in the past and sometimes I still do. Technology might be responsible for ills in the world, but I can also attest to its enormous reach in doing good.
I’ve called the community that’s formed out of my Instagram account the North Phase community. It is a privilege to type those words. This community has grown in size and cohesiveness over the years, and its strength and connection are evident in many ways online. Often, I see folks from the community engage with each other in a positive way in the comments section of my posts. They might share a similar perspective or experience or feeling. Witnessing communication and engagement move from a ‘me’ and ‘them’ dichotomy to a collective experience is remarkable.
Several times in the past year-and-a-half, I’ve initiated what I call a ‘postcard project’. In reality, post cards aren’t often involved and it’s not so much a project per se; however, I’ve not yet come up with a better name. This project began for several reasons. First, my love of sending and receiving ‘good’ mail (not bills, not the product of consumptive habits, not flyers); second, my deep gratitude for the North Phase community; and third, a desire to bridge the gap between the online world and the real world. So, with that in mind, several times a year, I’ve asked those who wish to receive a handwritten card to submit their addresses (I’ve had to cap it at 270 cards each time because there are limits to what my hand and wallet can do/afford). Since starting the project, more than a thousand cards have travelled to places all around the world, one card all the way to Antarctica! For me, it was about gratitude. What I did not expect was reciprocation. The cards, and family photos, and parcels that arrived at Beaver Creek’s tiny post office from all over!
And this week, the online North Phase community came together with the community in which I live. The community’s school has only five students and next month, the kids, their parents, and the two teachers are traveling to Ottawa on a trip funded by White River First Nation. The trip organizer is a wonderful young woman in our community, and she has planned an itinerary that’s so full of exciting activities that the students’ countdown to the trip has become a key focus every day. There had been some chatter about attending an NHL game, but it hadn’t come to fruition. On Monday, the students and staff got together with members of the community for some hockey fun on the Alaska Highway. I filmed it and shared it online along with a request for the Ottawa Senators to set the trip attendees up with tickets to a game. The video was shared and re-shared over and over and it wasn’t long before the Senators responded (and I can say it’s looking promising!). There have been countless offers to help – so many that I haven’t yet been able to respond to all the messages. I expected support from the online community, but I didn’t expect it to be delivered in spades. The response has made me emotional and so utterly grateful and it has shown me the strength of community, all community.
Community is an equally complicated and beautiful word. Communities can be fraught with challenges. But they can also inspire hope and love and compassion. Community isn’t always obvious, but when you look for it, when you recognize, and when you foster the connections, it is truly wonderful.
I suppose, in sum, this is a love letter to community, and, in particular to the communities that have been so pivotal in my life. Kerrisdale, for watching me grow. Beaver Creek, for teaching me. And North Phase, for showing me that community is more than meets the eye.