| by: | Linda |
| date: | 16 September 2009, 2:54 PM |
| preliminary remark: | I started writing email updates about my Trans-Canada journey in Sault St Mary, ON. This is my second update written in Thunder Bay, ON. |
Dear all,
I am about to leave Thunder Bay.
— I might have approached the limit of my physical strength so that I feel more easily tired after I cycled through the most difficult part of this cross-country journey: Northern Ontario, between Marathon and Nipigon. (They used to say Nipigon is the midpoint of Trans-Canada highway.)
— In Sault Ste Marie I purchased my 3rd journal. As I advance in my journey I find it more and more difficult to keep track of every happenings, in part because the sun sinks earlier, in part because I am perhaps too fortunate to meet many people who gave me an abundance of new insights and my mind is not in a splendid condition to sort my earlier confusing and at times disturbing thoughts out.
— I met a fisheries biologist, an ex-soldier, two church ministers, a lady who was born in Nunavut, a couple whose children (in their 30s) still visit them everyday, a man who has cycled across the world with poor vision. (There was a retired teacher who suggested that I should take on the boat once I reach the west coast and keep biking around the world, but this idea, however attractive it is, is too fanciful in that I don’t have passport and must come back to complete my undergraduate studies.)
— The question typical of Newfoundland—Where is your HOME?—was addressed to me once again. I attempted at describing to the lady who was born in Nunavut how special it is for me that one evening in Cape Breton, an old couple approached me and later said: ‘come home with us’ rather than ‘come to our place’. The lady admitted fully that this way of treating visitors as family members is very common in Newfoundland, Northern Quebec (somewhere close to Laborador), and some parts of Nova Scotia.
For a traveller who just arrives at a place unknown to her, being accepted (as a part of the family) and being welcome (as a honoured guest) are two distinct feelings though the distinction is perhaps too subtle for local people to notice it. Every often I would encounter some people who claim it is in virtue of a mysterious motherly/fatherly instinct that they don’t want to see me sleeping outside in the coldness. It triggers an odd emotional response in me in that I who never feel to have a mother nor father suddenly am being cared by so many mothers and fathers. People are spoiling me. Ha!
— I begin to believe that the small amount of people who like to address such metaphysical questions as ‘what is goodness?’ ‘what does religious truth mean in the Christian sense?’ is due to the difficulty of giving a full account of the subject under examination. The Anglican minister whom I had troubled might have suffered enough from the intellectual puzzles that she later asked if there was any question on my list that was easier to answer. And guess what, she was so happy when I asked: ‘May I have a cup of coffee?’
— I met a lady who takes particular interest in examining her family history as her father was adopted. She had spent a considerable amount of time in searching where her biological grand-mother was buried and shed tears when she found a remaining relative in England. Her endeavour seems to me incomprehensible for I used to think the biological bond we share with a group of people reveals no more than some behaviour patterns that may be attributed to genetic factors.
— The question ‘Do you not feel lonely?’ is perhaps the most frequently asked one along with where I am from and to where I am going. It is strange that a huge amount of people should think I should get bored while on a bike I have passed many delightful moments of meditation. In Newfoundland I used to think about personal merit and deservedness; in the Maritimes the notion of family and home; in Quebec personal values; in Ontario sin, guilt, forgiveness. When I am too exhausted to think, I observe the sky and the passing cloud. I never get tired of looking at the sky.
— I met the 2 young ambitious boys cycling from Toronto, one 22 another 19 years old (the 3rd gave up at Sault Ste Marie), who are supposed to be ahead of me now. I shouldn’t really criticise their swimming in the lake and being super slow in progress, because I did the same after leaving Sault: jumping into Lake Superior—the water was very cold—to see the sedimentary rock underneath, collecting agates on the beach, and sitting on the tranquil remote place, writing diaries. It was a whole new world of wonder and astonishing beauty under water, hardly seen from the land. The atmosphere of the day was so calm that I almost felt a kind of divine peace in the present moment.
— The boys ask everyone they have encountered to pronounce ‘NO REGRET’ in front of their camera. I have always found it puzzling that many a man should wish to feel no regret nor remorse for their little existence round in a dream… wouldn’t it be too perfect to be true if life and regret didn’t go hand in hand in this world of swift changes? I before the age of 19 have experienced perhaps what shall remain till the rest of my life my greatest regret… In their presence, their youthful vigour let me feel old though we are almost of the same age.
— There is a fair amount of francophones in Northern Ontario. In White River a man from the north of Quebec congratulated me on speaking ‘better’ French than he did. Luckily he didn’t feel intimidated by my standard French, which I learned in high school. I have always found it absurd that one particular form of a given language, linguistically neutral, should be regarded socially more prestigious than another. At some point of my life I felt the need to keep silence for fear of raising the false impression that I came from an educated background.
Heading towards the next big stop: Winnipeg.
Linda
LINDA’S ARTWORLD 