🇩🇰 Originally published in Danish — automatically translated to English
The birds are big in Vancouver, and the trees are even bigger. The autumn colors overwhelm in their incredible beauty, and the maple syrup trees (as we jokingly call them now that we're in the country) glow with their characteristic leaves, both tiny and enormous. We have landed with Gordon Neufeld and his lovely family, where we work, study, sleep, talk, breathe. Two of us are on strict keto, so I cook all the time. Exams are coming up. You can feel it in the two older ones' lives. The autumn is beautiful. In thrift stores, you can find warm sweaters and good jeans, and on the streets, you find mosaic culture. The most beautiful example of multicultural coexistence I have ever seen.
After just one day in Canada, I was sold. The people here are respectful; they have integrity, and the cultures survive and coexist. In the streets, I see healthy, strong people who carry themselves with respect and meaning. In conversations, I look straight into the eyes of thoughtful and interesting people.
On the very first day, I was lucky enough to get a theatre ticket to a play called M is for Mom, the third part of a series of shows created by women who, over thirty years, have taken the temperature of the culture and their own experience of motherhood. With humor and wholeheartedness.
It was hilarious! It was about hating hating hating the pressure at Christmas. I laughed and felt mirrored and almost ordinary; I cried and felt human and utterly unique — just like everyone else. It was beautiful, funny, and absolutely wonderful.
In the play's introduction, the director said the things you are required by law to say about being on other people's land: people who have been here longer than anyone can remember, or perhaps even understand, and people who never handed this land over to those who came. It could seem put on, forced, but it wasn't; it was wholehearted and right.
Five points to Canada. No minus points yet.
The cars, by the way, became normal-sized as soon as we crossed the border, which was really funny, and the sun was shining. The trees were beautiful and glowing in their autumn colors. We were really tired after the long drive from Las Vegas and barrelled into my husband's boss's home with everything we are.
Since then, Canada has shown many a beautiful side. The image of this as a mosaic culture, not a melting pot, comes from Gordon—and I walk the streets and see many different cultures flowing freely among one another. Everyone moves with confidence; no one fears anyone else. I don't see any culture being made subservient. I heard fifteen languages in the streets on the first day. It just keeps getting better and better.
Besides, the city is beautiful. Sunsets from the Pacific flow in over the bay and across the rooftops, hummingbirds in the gardens, long stretches of parkland with community gardens and a cycling culture. Everywhere, these many cultures hold their ground against the slide into sameness.
Canadians are not one people, and what they mostly have in common is that they are not Americans. And they truly, actually, are not. Sorry, I'm just going to say it, because you're not supposed to body-shame, but Canadians are not overweight. You move around among people of normal body size. They look healthy, happy. Is it the neighborhood I'm in? I've walked from a residential area into Granville Island, not around the center, downtown.
The birds are big in Vancouver, and the trees are bigger. My thoughts drift to Huginn and Muninn, to Yggdrasil and the old times. We are who we are, and we learn as we live. All of us. Stories grow stronger when told and put into perspective. It has been magnificent to get to know my husband's mentor and colleague, Gordon Neufeld, and his family, and it has certainly given me a new perspective on what settlers, too, can build by crossing the border into Canada.
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