It's worth emphasizing that these posts are works in progress, writing that I hope will one day constitute part of a book. But here and now they are attempts for me to understand where, and how, I am.
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While I’m in Dawson my partner Shannon is back at home drawing, crocheting, re-watching Lost, spending time with her friends. She is home.
The other night we were talking across these few time zones about the blog so far and what I am calling The Island of Toronto (not to be confused with The Toronto Islands). For myself this island starts as just that, the accumulated physical elements of the land, but land whose make-up has little connection to my previous homes. The smells, the terrain of Toronto – with occasional exceptions – are foreign… but then again the present is always foreign. When my family moved to Trail in 1979 both the land and the people were unrelentingly foreign but now that polluted town on The Columbia is part of my known terrain.
For Shannon though, this island of mine is emotional; a construction built from my lived past, starting with the pain and raw beauty of being a kid in The West Kootenays. It was only when I realized I had turned Toronto into an island that I began to address the many decisions, large and small, that over the years have moved me away from community.
I am here in Dawson, a town of around 2000 souls, in equal parts considering and ignoring the specifics of small town socialization that compelled me to come here in the first place.
I come here from Toronto, a city I love and am happy to be away from. My island of Toronto temporarily resides in the Yukon River. If I look out my window, past these ramshackle houses and down to the riverbank, I can see it looming and slowly, hopefully eroding from the sheer force of the water passing around it.
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