Coming Home for Good

This time last year, Newfoundland and Labrador had just announced that 2022 would be Come Home Year. After a dreary and joyless couple of years, the ambitious year-long celebration aspired to boost both the province’s morale and its economy. The government offered a welcome $4 million to the industries that were hardest hit by the pandemic, namely tourism, hospitality, arts, and culture. This investment would help these industries do what they do best: put on a really good time, one befitting of the place everyone sees through vivid, technicolor glasses.  

By some measure, the campaign has been a success. Between January and July, the province welcomed 174,100 non-resident visitors by air and car, which is a 292 per cent increase since 2021. And, the year isn’t over yet; there’s still time for more people to come home for the holidays. 

Of course, whatever bounty the Christmastide brings will most likely be gone by New Year’s day. And, it’ll be a long wait before summer arrives and spreads her hand. It’s ok though, we have always lived for the seasons here. Our challenge is figuring out how to live between them. While we rarely thrive, we do endure–thanks to our greatest resource. 

“Never count Newfoundland and Labrador as down or out,” Premier Andrew Furey assured us in his state of the province address this past October, “We have an abundance of positive energy.”   

At the end of the last Millenium, then Premier Brian Tobin alluded to that same optimism, telling CBC that while we continue to struggle with out-migration and unemployment, keeping up the renewed sense of confidence that has overtaken the province will help bring opportunities such as tourism. The following year, Newfoundland and Labrador hosted Come Home Year 2000.

Come Home Year, After Year, After Year…

The Come Home Year phenomenon is not exactly unique to us, but given our collective preoccupation with the “Newfoundland diaspora,” our embrace of this tradition makes a lot of sense. 

For over a century, the island in particular has been beset by generations of out-migration and wave after wave of departures. At this point, leaving is essentially a rite of passage, and nostalgic longing is a national pastime. Some never return. Many people do–though often only to visit. 

Outports have been hosting their own community-led homecoming celebrations for years. The province-wide initiatives have been fewer, but also more strategic. The last one in 2000 served to usher the province into a new century. The first event in 1966 meanwhile, relaunched the province into the Canadian imagination, this time as an attractive, respectable tourist destination. 

It was an unprecedented promotional endeavour, that first Come Home year. However, it was not entirely without precedent. Even as early as 1904, ex-Newfoundland residents were coming from all over the US, with the help of the Newfoundland government, to attend “Old Home Week” events. 

It was also a feat made possible by the completion of the Trans Canada Highway.  The new road network played an important part in selling Newfoundland and Labrador to Canadian tourists. One of the Newfoundland Tourist Development Office’s pamphlets even boasts an increase in motor vehicle registration as a point of pride, celebrating the recent vehicular windfall in “excess of 100,000.” More cars meant that the costly expansion had been worthwhile, and more visitors meant there might even be money to help pay for it.  

With the TCH, the province was able to open itself up and share its private parts with Canada, its newly-wedded nation. The Office published a special booklet listing the abundance of available accommodations, now spread out all across the province. There were brochures promoting St. John’s, the Avalon Peninsula, Central, Eastern, and Western Newfoundland–each positioned as unique locales to enjoy your “island holiday.”  

Canada’s Newest “Fun” Land

Come Home Year 1966 was meant to lure expatriate Newfoundlanders back to where “some things will never change.” But it was also meant to lure Canadians towards the newest province, in order to show them all the things that had changed. 

This “new” Newfoundland and Labrador was a place of progress and prosperity, a veritable utopia where, “The strength of the economy is reflected in the well-being of the people,” one pamphlet reads. “Enlightened social welfare legislation provides protection against the evils of sickness, unemployment, poverty and old age.”

Indeed, with its educational spending, outpost nursing stations, cottage hospitals, healthy recreation, and industrial development, Newfoundland and Labrador appeared to be a promising young province. But promising for who? And to what end?

Ultimately, what Come Year 1966 did was put the “fun” in Newfoundland–quite literally–and in doing so, it set up our reputation as Canada’s good-time province, which we have been fine-tuning ever since. 

This astute cultural marketing is still alive and well in 2022. The objective for this year’s campaign, as outlined by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, and Recreation, is also to encourage former residents to come back for a visit. It aims to attract more non-resident visitors, too. And, it’s meant to remind current residents about the benefits of living here—presumably so they too won’t leave. 

It’s possible that the campaign is also part of a longer game, one meant to passively tempt people to “come home” and relocate here permanently. The provincial government has, after all, been doubling down on its efforts to increase newcomers. It recently touted that 2022 was a record year for immigration. The Federal Government issued 1,593 spaces for the Provincial Government to nominate new Canadians for permanent residency, and the province wants even more. 

In addition, efforts are underway to draw health care professionals back to the province, supposedly “in keeping with the spirit and intent” of the Come Home 2022 campaign. But to the best of my knowledge, nowhere in the Come Home Year material does it explicitly say everybody “move home.” The implication seems to be: just come visit.

Alberta keeps calling, wanting something serious, but Newfoundland and Labrador wants to keep it casual. I suspect it does want more–it’s just afraid of what might happen if it asks for it.   

So on the face of it, Come Home Year 2022 seems like just another variation on that original Joey Smallwood scheme: spend money, consume the culture, have an enjoyable sensory experience, and go on with ya–but be sure to come back again!

There’s nothing unusual about this transaction; it’s just capitalism after all. What does strike me, however, is the way “home” is treated like some enduring place that can somehow keep on existing, offering familiar feelings and enjoyable sensations forever, without any mention of how it will actually continue to do so.  

Hooked on a Feeling

 “It’s been a minute since we’ve had a time,” one of the slogans from the 2022 promotional site reads, “but we still know how it’s done.” It’s true, we really do. 

I am no stranger to the pleasurable feelings that the province has to offer. I know full well the joys of visiting Newfoundland (I’ve never been to Labrador). I was born and raised in St. John’s, but I left the island in 2005. After that, every year that followed was essentially a “come home year” for me, until I moved back at the tail end of 2020. 

In those 15 years, I returned over and over again, at least once—but often twice—a year. My ability to travel back and forth was almost exclusively made possible by my mother’s Aeroplan points (thanks Mom!). I could never have afforded these trips otherwise. Not everyone has the ability to go back to their home. This was a gift for which I am eternally grateful. 

And yet, I also wonder about the cost of such a gift. I am curious about the toll of visiting in perpetuity, the consequences of chasing that short-term gratification just to relieve that nostalgic itch. When I look back on it now, I wasn’t visiting Newfoundland for over a decade; I was haunting it.  

FOMO

Though I came to love the cities I lived in—first, Montreal, then Toronto—I missed Newfoundland terribly. I returned dutifully as often as I could. I spent all my holidays going back to the island. Of the 15 years I spent away, I only ever missed one summer visit, and one Christmas. 

Sometimes, I almost wished I was one of those rare islanders who never wanted to go back. That way, I could make my home wherever I found myself, be free from this incessant eastward pull, and heck, maybe even visit other places. 

But that wasn’t me. I had deep fears of missing out. I needed to regularly re-establish a sense of connection, to see my family, my friends, secure my memories, smell the salt air, feel the rock beneath my feet. I wanted the reassurance of object permanence. Yes, Newfoundland is still here, just where I left it. 

I loved all those visits home. They never failed to reignite for me intense feelings of appreciation for the place, the landscape, the history, the culture, the people. They renewed my lofty aspirations to live there again—one day, in the far-off future. At the end of my trip, I’d go back to the mainland feeling restored, having gotten my little fix of those precious, fleeting home feelings to tie me over until my next visit. 

But I enjoyed my life away too. I liked the tangent world I had created for myself. It was a home that I didn’t inherit, one I wasn’t born into. It was a home I had to intentionally make from scratch, all by myself, for myself. I didn’t want to leave it behind. And yet, I also suspected one day I would have to. I wasn’t confident I could sustain this life of living between two worlds. 

The prospect of returning to Newfoundland was a fantastical possibility, but it never evolved into a specific plan. Anytime it threatened to become a reality, I’d procrastinate. I’ll move back once I finish school, I’d promise myself. Then when the time came, I’d panic and defer. Not yet, just one more year. It was like hitting the snooze button: a little bit longer, please. On some level though, I knew it couldn’t always be night. 

I suppose I was afraid of losing the life I’d built up for myself, of losing the person I had become on the mainland. Only in leaving a post-moratorium-Newfoundland was I able to imagine a possible future for myself. I was worried that upon my return that possibility would vanish again, and so would I, along with the beautiful world I had made and shared with all my mainland friends. 

Newfoundland hovered like an inevitable reality check I wasn’t ready to face. And then–-   

Enter the Pandemic

The pandemic arrived and forced my hand. It made financial sense to move home, but it started to make emotional sense too. I spent most of 2020 alone and unemployed in my tiny dark studio basement apartment in Toronto. No longer shielded by distractions, or excited by infinite possibilities yet to be realized, I felt an existential pull to go back. 

All that time alone had made me feel insubstantial, like a ghost. I didn’t want to haunt the world anymore, I decided. I wanted to live in it. I wanted to feel real. And to do that, I knew I had to address the past on the island to which it was anchored. I had to go back to where I started, and take care of everything I’d left behind.

So, I shed almost all my belongings. I bequeathed most of my things to friends, and offered the rest to strangers. I said goodbye to Toronto, to the city that made me, though I hardly recognized it when I left. In the middle of lockdown, I snuck out while it was sleeping. 

When I arrived in St. John’s, I moved in with my parents and back into my old childhood bedroom, now vacant again for the first time since I left it in 2005. In those early days, it felt like I was waking up from a dream.       

The Magic of Visiting

It’s hardly a revelation that living here is very different from visiting. Everyone knows it, but no one wants to say it out loud and break the spell.

Visiting home has a magic feel to it, it’s bright and shiny. There’s an easy joy that comes from the surface recognition of the familiar things, the landmarks, the people, the accents, the food, the music, the memories. 

I was usually on vacation when I came home too, so those stays held a sense of sacredness. The months and weeks of anticipatory excitement leading up to the trip, then the visit itself, followed by the countdown to leaving. 

“When did you get home?” “How long are you here for?” “When do you leave?” people ritually asked, without fail, trying to get an accurate sense of the extent of my impermanence. 

With visits, time is limited and precious. Everything can be planned, everyone is ready to show up for you and conjure up good times past. It helps that you all keep it short and sweet so you don’t risk getting mired in the place and its untold vexations. The unpleasant memories, the troubled histories, the old dynamics, and the challenges of daily life: abysmal produce, gloomy weather, unreliable public transit, lengthy wait lists for health care services, and low vacancy rates. 

When you visit, you don’t ever have to let time get long enough to see it turn into space, into a real place that requires the responsibility of your full presence.

The Reality of Living Here

Returning for me wasn’t like starting over; it was like finally tackling unfinished business so I could catch up to everyone.

My mainland life felt like a dream I’d had, because no one really knew anything about it but me. While I had been far away and dreaming, everyone in Newfoundland had changed, grown older, become other versions of themselves, and moved on. The landscape had changed too in ways I hadn’t noticed before. 

There, in my childhood bedroom, I was living amongst all the artifacts of what felt to me like a very recent past, remembered in graphic detail. In reality, it was a distant past, long forgotten by those around me. I hadn’t actually archived a lot of those memories and the objects that carried them, not in the way I would have had I stayed.  

It was like I had left everything out, right where it was at the moment of my departure. I suspect that’s what I had been avoiding all this time: doing the uncomfortable work of addressing the past so I could finally make way for the future–a future here in this place. 

A Neverending Goodbye Party 

I recognize and appreciate the beauty of Come Home Year 2022, how stirring it is to see the expats return, and all the curious tourists arriving, hoping to experience this mythical place they’ve seen and heard so much about. I am impressed too by the way it inspired so many people to make it into something of their very own. Visitors really do re-invigorate and re-enliven this place for “a time.” It’s exciting, wonderful, and meaningful–but it’s also bittersweet.

Because, inevitably, they all leave again, just like I left all those years before, destined to be constantly coming home, destined to always be leaving again. A couple of years into my visits, my mother finally decided to stop going to the airport to see me off. “It’s too sad,” she’d said.

It’s true. No one really talks about it, but surely it must take its toll on those who stay, the misery of having to watch everyone walk away from you. I can only imagine how I’d explain this endless procession towards the exit of my house. I’d think: “there is something wrong with me.”

Newfoundland is a never-ending goodbye party. Even if it’s followed by a welcome back party, it’s weighted by the knowledge that the thrill is only temporary. It’s a constant cycle of happy returns followed by devastating departures. Presences and absences. Here, not here. Like the tides, high and low, this is a land characterized by a significant amount of leavings, longings, visits, and revisits, sabbaticals, and sojourns.

Of course, the province is also characterized by its constants. There are plenty of folks who have stayed the course, who never left. There are many people who have relocated here too, who have chosen to reside in this place and watch that revolving door. Now I am trying to count myself among them: I am a “come from away.”   

The Burdens of (Be)longing 

Newfoundland is my home, but I don’t quite belong here. Not yet.

In all those years of visiting, I hadn’t actually been here. While those experiences meant a lot to me, I was only here in the most superficial of ways. These were merely visitations, apparitions. 

I was in, what pop psychologists call, “a situationship” with Newfoundland. That is, a non-committal, ambiguous, and undefined relationship characterized by mutual feelings of shifting intensity with no real sense of a future. In such situations, one party often settles for the arrangement, while the other secretly pines for something more.   

Belonging, I’m realizing, is not just a feeling you have or don’t have. Much like love, it’s also a practice: a practice of actively relating to a place. Being proud is great and all. Feelings of connection and affection are swell, but if they don’t get shared and expressed into action, what’s the point? No one else senses them, and only you know they exist. 

Belonging requires an intentional commitment, an investment of attention, energy, and practice. It requires noticing where you are, learning about it, imagining the possibilities, and then doing something about them—in big ways or small. 

That’s the cost of belonging, that’s the price of coming home.   

Suffice to say, I’ve come (back) from away, and I’ve decided to come home for good, that is, to do good. I’m working on belonging to Newfoundland, to be worthy of it, to do right by it. I don’t really know if it can do right by me, but I do know I won’t find out unless I make the first move. 

Despite what Come home Year implies, home isn’t just a place you visit. It’s a place you make. It can only endure if it is maintained by a love that is translated into sustained effort, participation, and care. 

The call to ”Come Home” to stay is a powerful one. I answered it. Sometimes I worry it was a siren call, and it’s leading me to my doom. Other times, I’m hopeful. Still, I’d feel better if more people would join me—not simply for the good time we’re going to have, but for the good life we might build.