EXCERPT: “Not having anyone to compare myself to, and with no professional or ancestral lineage to live up to, I felt like America, this start-from-scratch experiment where anything was possible.(1)
I wasn’t the only Gen X Canadian obsessed with America. In the 1980s and nineties, it was the place to be. Canada was still struggling with its confidence and still reacting to youthful buoyancy with a blank stare. That’s when I decided I needed to be where my drive and creativity would be embraced. That meant crossing the border. For a decade, I went back and forth between Canada and the U.S., studying at art schools, working in museums (like the Smithsonian and the Art Institute of Chicago), and absorbing the best America had to offer.
But I always returned. Not because Amercians aren’t ingenious and inspiring. They are. But, to me, personal development, career growth, and ambition were not a ruthless battle that ends with one person left standing in a smoking field of bodies. This is how I view(ed) America’s take on striving and success.
For whatever reason, I was determined to prioritize the gentle side of my personality and incorporate those qualities into my work. Maybe it’s the Canadian in me or just the Alison in me. Had I stayed in the U.S., that softness would have been wiped out by America’s lack of a social safety net.
I also came to understand that I preferred living in a nation that could laugh at itself — power never takes the mickey out of itself — and acknowledge the need to address and redress the disconnect between its ideals and its reality. Canada is a tiny nation of sharp armchair observers and I told-you-so-ers. While we’re one step ahead of the U.S. in acknowleging our actual history, we’re still figuring out what to do about it. We’re exceptionally good at stalling, but the truth is out there and so is the pressure to do the right thing.
For now, Canada is a destination where weirdos and non-conformists continue to be left in peace and covered for their hospital visits. If that was big back then, it’s huge now.”
#NewProject
- When I learned American history in the late 1970s, the tabula rasa theory was still in vogue. America was a blank slate there for the taking and the making. This colonial attitude ran roughshod over the universal rights, cultural contributions and point of view of the founding First Nations. So indoctrinated was I in colonial history that when my family pleaded with me to stop using the dining room table for my nightly homework and school projects, I justified the takeover with two words: “Manifest Destiny.” I was proud of my energetic grasp of history and thought they should be too. Geez.
