I live on the Atlantic. I tell people I suffer bi-coastal personality disorder because my daydreams are drenched in Pacific mist and surf.
I am anchored to the East by family. My ancestors are buried here, on Nova Scotia soil.
This is where I began. Where I learned to walk, to talk, to dream. Where wanderlust started its whisper, low in my ear.
I spent my early twenties in Vancouver. That’s when the mists of the Pacific curled into every crevice of my being. And the old growth forests seeped in. I was unequivocally shown that life holds magic and mystery.
But Nova Scotia was over 6000 kilometers away.
So I came home.
All of that distance, so many years later and I still ache for Pacific mists and wispy cedar stands. Ethereal old growth forests intoxicate me. The misty mountain skyline plays tricks with the eyes and Pacific sands whisper a promise of something unbidden; something more …
* * *
March 10th, 2016.
We were sitting on the tarmac at 7:30 a.m. waiting for the plane to taxi. I was getting settled when Sarah texted: “Hey Marni! I am loving your BC pics on facebook … omg how do you ever manage to leave?”
It was true. I was a bit of a hot mess. For the first time in a long time I was leaving BC and I had no idea when I would return, and that was unsettling.
Sarah wrote back, “It just seems as if BC is your soul home.”
I was ready to go home to Nova Scotia. I just wasn’t ready to leave BC. This is always the way.
* * *
It’s no secret that for most of my adult life, I’ve had a romance with BC. Some people laugh when I tell them I have ‘bi-coastal personality disorder’. Some don’t. Let me just say that there are days when I’d probably be happiest if I could split myself down the middle and just ‘be’ on both coasts.
I started writing about BC because I hoped it would help me sort this out: What is it about the Canadian pacific coast? What is it about Tofino, beyond the obvious – that it’s gob-smackingly gorgeous– that makes me obsessively long for it when I’m not there? Why do wispy silhouettes of cedar trees take my breath away? Why can’t I get rid of that ridiculous grin when the plane touches down in Victoria? Why did I feel so content looking out over the Pacific when crossing the Georgia Straight on the ferry last summer?
The west has always felt bigger to me in a way that I don’t think Nova Scotia ever could. It just feels like more is possible out there somehow.
I’ve listened to Faultline Blues (https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/faultline-blues-single/id552219306) by Sam Roberts so many times (806 according to the latest iTunes count) I’m sure it’s become part of my DNA. There have been days that I’ve wanted to crawl inside of that song and stay there as long as it would have me. The song tells a story about a guy from the east who drops everything and heads west.
Sometimes, I sing along to the Planet Smashers’ Surfin’ in Tofino (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3hgDGzomUc) – they’re going to Tofino and they’re never comin’ back – because wish I could do the same.
But writing hasn’t helped. If anything, writing a character that longs for the west coast made my west coast obsession worse – go figure! It’s been more like I’ve been ‘method writing’ my characters (if that’s a ‘thing’) and so, there are times when I want to be out on the west coast so badly it fills me with the same dull ache Morgan has to work through.
“I’m sure everyone who comes here has fantasies about dropping everything and moving to Tofino,” I said to my cousin Liz. We were at a look off on the Pacific Coast trail in Ucluelet. I was mesmerized by the frothy surf smashing against the rugged BC coastline below while four eagles soared overhead.
“I love it here,” Liz said, “but I’ve never wanted to live here.”
“Really?” I busied myself, trying to wrap my head around how anyone would not want to live in Tofino – at least for a little while. I always think about it; going to Tofino … I almost passed up Greece this summer, because what if not going meant that I could get back out to Tofino one more time?
* * *
This has been a strange summer. Not only did I not travel in July or August, I didn’t write much either. And now it’s September and there are no plans to head west, and it’s weird, but I think I’m okay with that.
* * *
This ache for the Pacific ebbs and flows like the tides – sometimes it’s acute, sometimes a faint whisper – but it’s always there …
marni amirault 
Great piece, Marni.
I have a similar issue only in reverse.
I live in BC’s Peace River Valley and am from Nova Scotia. I left the East nearly fourteen years ago and never looked back, never returned, not even to visit. It’s only been in the last year or so that I have begun to feel actual homesickness. I Google images of Nova Scotia, watch people’s Go-Pro videos of driving through Halifax on YouTube and longingly search real-estate sites while daydreaming about resuming my former life as a Nova Scotian and showing my family all of my old haunts and places of memory (pretty pathetic, right?).
I daydream a lot, get lost in my memories of a home so long ago. I miss the fall, I miss the colonial British architecture that makes a person feel as if they are walking through a live-action Dickons novel. I miss it all. To smell cold, salt air, to walk the busy streets of Halifax’s downtown core, to enjoy the stiff beauty of the Public Gardens, sit in a decent pub and enjoy a proper pint and not have people tell me I say pint funny. To drive through Cape Breton Island and introduce my children to the army of cousins, great aunts and great uncles they have inherited and show them where our family comes from…These are my dreams now. Sadly, I fear that’s all these wants will ever be. Dreams. Foolish fancies from a dreamer’s mind, idealising a place I no longer know, forgetting the reasons I left to begin with.
I like BC. I love the Peace. The beauty here is breath-taking, overwhelming sometimes. Mountains, wild rivers, wildlife, skies like paintings and working as an Archaeologist in CRM puts me in the middle of it all nearly every day. I love this place, but I am not part of it. I never have been. This place has never fully accepted me, nor I it. It’s like going to a friends house for a holiday dinner and being immersed in their traditions and as much as you enjoy yourself and as friendly and hospitable are your hosts, you know that you are merely a guest there, that you don’t truly belong. That’s how Western Canada has been for me; a few chapters in the story of my life, but nothing drawing me to a conclusion, I hope. This is where I work and where I live, but I don’t beleive it will ever be home.
Home is where the ocean is on the proper side of the horizon.
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Thanks for this John … your words are beautiful and haunting. Last year, I discovered Google Maps’ street view and spent hours on it ‘driving’ into and around Tofino. Partly, I did it for the novel – I wanted to get the order of sites and buildings right- but it was also great because I felt like I’d almost had a little Tofino visit and that filled me up somehow. I’ve been in your shoes and know how horrible it is to ache for home. I hope that you are able to get home with your family at some point – at least for a visit, and a good long one, at that. ‘Place’ is a funny thing, isn’t it? Thank you again for taking the time to write … and for reading my piece.
The one thing I do know for sure is that this country is way too large.
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