Megan’s My Vancouver – That Idea of Home

Prologue from Erica: Every summer we work with a couple of aspiring creatives to help them hone their crafts and introduce them to various tools of the trade. This summer, we are working with two wonderfully talented UBC Students ~ Megan Ho and Hannia Curi. As an introduction to Roamancing, I had them each do a post on ‘My Vancouver’. Here is Megan’s.

“What does Vancouver mean to you?”

Recently, I was asked this question and I didn’t know how to answer. For me, Vancouver has always been home. I’ve lived twenty-odd years in the city and so Vancouver has meant different things to me at different times. I spent my childhood with my nose in books, dreaming of the different countries and worlds I read about. Regular trips to Vancouver Island caused me to long for the smaller-town feel of Victoria; I often felt restricted in the “big city”. But as I grew older I came to love the city I called home. At seventeen, I learned that Vancouver was ranked the world’s most liveable city and realized I was lucky to live in an apparently world-renowned city. After graduating high school, I chose to attend UBC and stay in the city – after all, I loved Vancouver, so why should I leave? I had come to think of Vancouver as the best city, the perfect home, the place to which I would always return. I loved the tree-lined sidewalks, the nearby ocean, the diverse cuisine, and the mountains that perpetually indicated north. I even loved the rain. It was mine and it was home.

Vancouver’s Skyline from on top of the Law Courts

And then I went away for a year on exchange to Bristol, United Kingdom and everything changed. I never thought I could think of somewhere else as home, but I did. Suddenly, my world was cobble-stoned streets, centuries-old buildings, and the student dorms where I had been placed. When I longed for home, it was no longer the house I’d grown up in. It was my regulation dorm room and constantly messy kitchen. When I wanted to sleep in my own bed, it was the standard size single covered with cheap bed sheets that called.

Bristol, United Kingodm

When people in Bristol asked me about Vancouver, I tried my best to paint them a picture of my Vancouver. I told them about the neighbourhoods, the cherry blossoms, the sushi and butter chicken and poutine. I told them about Gastown and warm summer nights spent in deep conversation by an unlit Olympic torch. I told them about cycling along the Richmond Dyke, the nude beach on university campus, and the ubiquitous rainboots that covered the sidewalks in the winter.

Wreck Beach on UBC campus

But when I came home last September, I found none of that was my Vancouver anymore. While I had missed it all at first, I had learned to live without all of it in Bristol. Home was no longer a certain street of restaurants and shops or a tasty dish or the weather. No, home was – and always should have been – the simple feeling of not wanting to be anywhere else. It was belonging. And in those first few months back in Vancouver, all I wanted was to be back in Bristol where it felt like my “real life” was waiting for me. But as time went by, I learned that while I could never quite capture the way I felt when I lived in Bristol, I could still feel at home in Vancouver. Shortly after I returned to Vancouver, a friend took me sailing at Jericho Beach. As we glided over the water and the salt water sprayed at me, I felt a giddiness build inside me. I looked back at the shore and at the city and I felt a happiness for being exactly where I was. At home.

A rainy west coast day, the kind that makes me feel at home

There are still days when I wish I was back in the UK and days where I think it can’t get much better than exactly where I am. Vancouver is still home, but it’s home in a different way now and it’s one of many homes. It may no longer be the place I will always return to, but I know it’s the place that will always be there for me. And in that way, what could be a better home?