 Last
weekend I was watching a documentary on the Juan de Fuca Trail along
the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island, BC. I used to live out on the Island
so there was nothing much new to me in the program, until they
described the lives of some of the squatters who have made their lives
on the windswept coast, using the trail and its feeders as their
connection to civilization. One of the guys they spoke to had built his
ramshackle cottage entirely of windfall wood and driftwood. He had
walked away from a well-paying technology job. He grows some of his own
food, collects water in a rainbarrel, and makes crafts from driftwood
that he sells in the closest town, several hours' walk from where he
lives, in return for additional food and small supplies. Occasionally
he'll do odd jobs if he needs something more costly. If a heavy storm
destroys his house, he'll just build it again. He's thinking of putting
up a small windmill for night light, but doesn't miss his computer, the
Internet, or TV. He has a portable radio and reads whatever books he
can pick up in the town. Most of his time he spends walking the trail,
meditating, and writing. He seems very much at peace. His 'neighbours'
up the trail have several children who have grown up there, with no
modern conveniences, home schooled. Their eyes are full of wonder, not
the 'caught in the headlights' stressed-out look of so many civilized
children. They seem astonishingly gentle, living in such a 'savage'
place.
My great great great
great grandfather walked away from the US in 1807, under circumstances
that are not clear. Some reports say he was a Loyalist, and the lot of
Loyalists in the US had not been happy since 1775 -- anyone in the
service of the British at the time of the Declaration of Independence,
and anyone who failed to sign an oath of allegiance to the Republic and
a repudiation of British citizenship was automatically guilty of
treason, with loss of citizenship, seizure of all property, and
prohibition from holding office (and, in some states, execution,
lengthy imprisonment, or public tarring). Embittered British militias
continued to fight savage battles with the new American forces until
the armistice of 1814, and atrocities were committed by both sides.
Some Americans made no pretense of Loyalism at all, and came up to
Canada in the early 1800s simply because they were attracted by the
free land grants. My guess is that Joshua Pollard was neither a
Loyalist nor a Freeloader, but more likely one of the first of the
great tradition of American conscientious objectors unwilling to fight
in the about-to-be declared US-Canada war of 1812. He was, I would
guess, a draft dodger. To get his 200 acres of land he had to come to
Canada, file the petition, and wait for acreage to be surveyed and
allotted. He did so, and with his wife and the first eleven of their
eventual seventeen children (a normal family size in those days)
squatted with many others at what is now Front and Yonge Street in
Toronto, where they lived as rudimentary a life as one can imagine
through three winters. Then, with two neighbouring families, they
helped clear the new Middle Road to what is now the Toronto suburb of
Mississauga and on each of the three families' lots they cleared and
fenced the minimum 5 acres and built the 38 x 26 foot wood frame
minimum house needed to 'own up' to the land grant by June 1810. Life
in the wilderness, a dense forest of 30-foot high trees, all done with
hand tools in daylight hours. Joshua founded the first school in Peel
Region -- 'cost of tuition' was one cord of cut, stacked wood per
family per semester. Nineteen people living in a 1000 square foot
house, of which the 200 square foot front room served as the area's
first tavern and, one day a week, for the traveling preacher's service
and for services for the dead (Joshua also ran Peel's first cemetery).
The archival records say that, unlike the more devout neighbours, the
Pollards loved to dance.
My
neighbours have always had two dogs, mostly golden retrievers, about
six years apart in age, so that on the death of each dog, the younger
sibling soon becomes the big brother or sister for a new arrival. When
they first moved to our neighbourhood they installed an 'invisible
fence' and both dogs were taught, using the 'gentle' setting, to stay
within their three-acre lot without supervision. With the exception of
one 'slow-learning' Bernaise puppy, the dogs have never needed a second
lesson, and have never gone outside the fence -- even though it is only
turned 'on' for the first month or so after each new pup's arrival. The
rest of the time they could now wander off with impunity. In fact, the
older sibling 'shepherds' the new puppy away from the boundary, so it
is quite possible they could disconnect it permanently and the dogs
would teach each other where the boundaries are. Our neighbours are
wonderful, affectionate, dog-loving people, and the dogs adore them,
but the power of the 'invisible fence' that isn't really there at all
still astonishes me.
What does
it take to make someone so dissatisfied, so unable to bear the life
they lead, that they can walk away and start a new, better life, a
different way, elsewhere? And what does it take before we realize that
the prisons in which each of us live, societally and metaphorically,
are prisons without locks, just waiting for us to let ourselves out? |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
