Giving Up On England
I have an essay out in Catapult today! What can I say; I saw they were requesting pitches for a column about renouncing things, and I knew what had to be done.
The piece is about trying to leave and being forestalled abruptly by a global public health crisis. It is also about moving away from a broken place to a place that is differently broken—and about why that difference matters, actually. It owes its life to the insight and generosity of its editor, Tajja Isen, and my fiancé Isaac Fellman.
Canada faces many of the problems I recognize from the UK. The new leader of the Conservative Party has been uncomfortably cozy with the protestors who invaded Ottawa. The housing crisis in Halifax, the city I chose, is on par with the housing crisis in Oxford, the city I left. I try to be alert to these things because I’ve never wanted to be the asshole who moves to an idea of a country, rather than the country itself. Canada, in particular, has long benefited from the shadow cast by its more obviously chaotic southern neighbor. The myth of Canadian “niceness” and the myth of “British values” do a great deal of the same work.