dispatch from canada
31 July 2025
A week before our trip to Canada, Tom and I watched a Canadian indie film from the late 80s called I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, about a quirky “girl Friday” who ends up temping for the Curator of a private upmarket art gallery in downtown Toronto. In one of the film’s pivotal scenes, the Curator dismisses a work of art as “trite made flesh.” Understandably, this phrase has now become a staple in our day-to-day conversations. We used to love accusing everything of being derivative — well, “trite made flesh” conveys that and so much more.
It has now been a week since we landed (there was a grueling 5 hour delay on our way here; I didn't sleep for almost 24 hours on our departure day) and I am still suffering ever-so-slightly from jet lag. I typically wake up at around 6:30 in the morning each day and either read the library book I brought with me (A Room With a View) or reluctantly scroll through Substack. The view in A Room With a View is of “the cypresses of San Miniato, and the foothills of the Apennines… beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.”
The view from the guest bedroom of my parents’ new home is a dusty construction site in a new suburban development.
Having lived in a walkable and well-connected town in the UK for 3.5 years now, I find North American suburbs to be completely stifling. The only consolation to living somewhere almost completely devoid of capital-C Culture seems to be all the space you get. I love our little terraced house that we rent back in England, but I have long yearned for a bigger garden — a plot of land I can turn into my dream cottage garden complete with a wildlife meadow and nature pond.
Yesterday, however, Tom and I decided to apply our garden design skills to the test and read through the landscaping requirements for my parents’ newbuild as per the Home Owners’ Association. This was when I realized that the oppressive conformity of the suburbs knows no end. You may have more space, but it has to look exactly the same as everyone else’s.
Honestly, I found the whole thing to be totally absurd. According to the guidelines, each front garden in the neighbourhood must have “a minimum of 1 tree and 6 shrubs.” But you can’t just have any old tree, the HOA prefers “smaller varieties,” such as weeping spruce or mugo pine, and there is a minimum height/width requirement, with deciduous trees being measured differently from coniferous trees. I won’t even get into the particulars for the shrubs, shrub beds, and turf; I was beyond disbelief.
In other news, it has been lovely hanging out with my family and my Canadian friends, though there is always something so melancholic about going back home. And time flies by so quickly that I always feel guilty for not spending enough of it with my family when I’m with my friends, and then vice versa when I’m with my family. I will try not to linger on that too much, though. More to come next week RE: wedding festivities!