Last fall reading week, I was lucky enough to accompany a good friend back to her home in Toronto. 

Canada is a large country. 9,984,670 square kilometres large. It has coasts on three different oceans. There are high peaks, sloping valleys and flat, golden plains. It is home to 10 provinces and three territories, 343 electoral ridings, 15 terrestrial eco-zones, 80,000 species of plants and animals and over 41.5 million Canadians. 25.2 million of these Canadians live in Ontario and Quebec alone.

Atlantic Canadians have historically left the region to seek work in major cities like Toronto and Montreal. But not me: at 19 years old, the furthest west I had gone was New Brunswick. The largest Canada ever got for me was Halifax. In high school, I submitted no applications to mainland universities — they were too far away for my liking. 

Canada, as a whole country, was a bit of a mirage. I considered myself a Newfoundlander first, Canadian second. It felt like an us vs. them situation. The mainland called the shots, decided the elections and got all of the attention. Quebec left us bloody-and-blue after the Churchill Falls controversy and Ottawa prematurely ‘ended’ our 30-year cod moratorium with little to no provincial consultation. We were the last to join confederation, have one of the lowest Rural Access Index scores in the country and are a funny novelty to our mainland counterparts. Have you ever heard the one about the Albertan, Ontarian and Newfoundlander stranded on a desert island?

I understand that my contempt comes from a place of jealousy, not hatred. Toronto, in the cultural consciousness, is everything Canada has to offer. It’s easy to be jealous of a city that has it all (Medieval Times, three references in Tragically Hip songs and a mall with a train station inside of it) when you come from somewhere with very little. The biggest city I live near — 45-minutes near — has a population of about 15,000. From kindergarten to grade nine, I attended a public, all-grade school, with a median grade size of 10. Mainlander tourists overrun the Bay of Islands every summer, as if it’s their own private Idaho. Little do they know, some people actually live and work and die here all-year-round. To them, Atlantic Canada is something to play in and enjoy. For us, it’s everything. 

But getting off the train at Union Station, the roles had reversed. I was the bumbling, oblivious baywop who was nervous of streetcars and walking too slowly. The abundance was dizzying: people, cars, buses, shops, restaurants, theatres and liquor stores. There was so much of everything, everywhere. I’ve always felt I had a small staring problem — blame it on an innate, rural nosiness — but in Toronto, so many people filled the streets at all hours of the day that I couldn’t really see anyone at all. The environment moved and shifted and changed colour from one street to the next. 

We found ourselves around the Rogers Centre on the way to Ripley’s Aquarium (I was a tourist afterall). It was about a week after the Blue Jays had lost the World Series, so the whole place was appropriately drenched in melancholy. A lone hotdog seller stood silently at his post. For once in this city, there was hardly a soul around. Baseball is just as popular in Newfoundland as anywhere else in Canada, but it lacks the same fever. It doesn’t surround you so completely.

I looked up at a statue on the outside of the skydome entitled “The Audience.” It was constructed in 1989, by artist Michael Snow, for about $2.5 million. The giant bronze figures, twisted and contorted with glee, anger and spectacle, all returned my gaze. I felt like I had been found out. “What are you doing here?” it seemed to ask. Shadows clung to their metallic faces, their mouths screwed up with ‘the love of the game.’ One pointed a giant, striking finger directly at me. I stared back in response.

There’s a 1970 Canadian film called Goin’ Down the Road, in which two down-on-their-luck baywops drive their beat-up Chevy Impala to the golden land of Toronto. In search of wealth and opportunity, the two men try to shack up with Mainlander relatives — who, upon seeing the ne’erdo-wells, promptly ignore their calls and knocks. A few weeks of fast-and-loose living then follow: they find crappy factory jobs, start renting furniture on credit and even land wives. When they wind up unemployed, drowning in debt and living in a shoebox apartment with their women, the baymen split town. Further west, there will be opportunity. Greener pastures. A different life.

I sometimes worry if this is what I’m destined for as an Atlantic Canadian. High-tailing away from my home in pursuit of something greater, just to be rejected by a wider Canada in which I don’t fit in. Just goin’ down the road. Maybe Toronto is the beating heart of Canada, but everyone’s Canada looks a little bit different. It’s not a complete picture, but a composite image. There are green pastures all around us: in the Maritimes, the West Coast, the North, the Great Lakes. Canada is a large country. Larger than any one of us.