Please Note: this article was originally published in print during the Biden administration. Since then things have changed.
Last week I began to feel it: the urge to step out into the street and knock people’s hats off. It may not be my cue to go see the watery part of the world, I don’t know much about that, but it is my cue to explore a little. I had three goals: no more than six hours of driving, no big (read: expensive) cities, and something different than my current context. Burlington Vermont checked nearly each of those boxes.
The box it didn’t quite check was being different from Brownlow. These cities are like twin brothers who went in entirely different directions in life. Rather than taking some easy time away I feel like I went on a fling with my boyfriend’s brother — and I’m not sure I’m sorry. I’ve seen how it could’ve been and I want it.
The nearest major city to Burlington is Montreal and it shows. The twins may have a lumber jack for a father but their mother is a French-Canadian artist. The name Vermont itself comes from the French: vert mont or green mountains, hence the green mountain state. And while it gets things done in a very American way (local, individual, rural) it thinks like a Canadian. Bernie Sanders isn’t a radical, Vermont’s just in the wrong country — maybe.
I have a thing for American college towns, Canada can’t seem to get them right. Sure we have some good ones but where’s our Burlington? Am I just comparing our college towns to the best or do we simply like our students quiet and centrally located? Even our best college towns are lacking that self-assured eccentricity that comes from intelligent people gathering in places where there’s enough enchanting space for everyone.
For example, my favourite coffee shop of all time is Cafe Mokka in Arcata, California, home to a University of California campus. It’s the sort of organic building you only get when hippies lovingly build it themselves in regions with lax building codes. Inside it sells artisanal coffee and baked goods while a model train chugs around the ceiling in a dignified and self-assured kind of way. Out back there is a yard with wood-fired hot tubs and Finnish saunas, and cafe tables arranged around a central pond. The best thing is that it’s not expensive: if I were a student in Arcata I’d be there weekly. Perhaps it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but this is where it found enough of an audience to be its best self. Where could a place like that exist in Canada?
Burlington’s foundation is very similar to Brownlow: both British colonial towns on similar waterfronts chosen for their proximity to standing lumber. Both grew to about the same population. Burlington has the distinct advantage of being the state capital and home to University of Vermont, a so-called ‘public-ivy,’ which seems appropriate. Both cities wear flannel shirts to dinner and like their outdoor activities but in Burlington it’s simply because they like it rather than some esoteric nod to tradition and frugality masking generational trauma. Here in Brownlow we can’t have the neighbours thinking we think we’re better than they are, after all.
The most compelling thing about Burlington is that the events page in the local alternative paper bursts at the seams. Even in the middle of a rainy week after exams yet before the leaves had sprouted I was spoilt for choice. There were at least twenty musical acts playing that night, weekly local bands sure but in Burlington that’s saying something. In addition to the music, local art was exhibited everywhere and there were more than a few open mic, comedy, or other creative performing arts events. None of it was particularly expensive and the place was full of small relatively affordable venues apparently making ends meet. The businesspeople of Burlington certainly aren’t afraid to ask for what they’re worth but there is always a way those more financially challenged can take part in the same fun.
The unlikely highlight of my trip was The Soda Plant. It’s strange for a shared office space to be a vacation highlight but it awoke a desire in me I hadn’t realized had been laying dormant for some time.
Venetian Ginger Ale and its sister products —temperance drinks that could be enjoyed with some Canadian Whisky likely smuggled from right here in Brownlow — was a family soda company popular in New England until it was bought-out in the eighties. Today the old bottling plant has been turned into a small-business incubator space that houses the coffee roaster I went to visit, a range of small businesses and art studios, and even a reboot of the old Venetian Soda company itself. The hallways are lined with big windows where you can watch artisans work on the product you very well might purchase and evidence of collaborations between businesses abound. In the hallway by the door was a little take-a-piece/leave-a-piece art library full of weird and wonderful odd little things, mostly drawings from the soda lounge.
The lounge itself was a fascinating space full of eclectic antiques and homemade audio equipment serving a modest but nicely appointed oft-used stage. It opened into Brio Coffeeworks which itself was located inside the roastery warehouse. So I enjoyed a fantastic cup of coffee from an antique velvet Queen Anne sofa while examining some bizarrely wonderful equipment as a crew in the background roasted coffee. Elsewhere architects designed buildings, picklers pickled, an artist or two painted, and vintage lamps were sold in a giant collection curated by a brass repairer. It was almost a neighbourhood unto itself with over twenty businesses, mostly creative, and the synergy was obvious.
Shared artist spaces, markets, and startup incubators make me surprisingly happy. I first experienced the concept over a decade ago at Tamarac Marketplace in West Virginia. This was a public project run by the West Virginia Parkways, Economic Development and Tourism Authority to build a cottage industry in a state ravaged by the environmental and social impact of coal mining. Rather than hunting down individual artisans, likely located at the end of some labyrinthine system of backroads, the state government created a one-stop-shop. Imagine an OnRoute turned shopping mall that sells only products made within the state with eight studios for artisans in residence. In 2008 Tamarac contributed $18.6 million to the state’s economy, supported 236 full-time equivalent jobs, and generated $750,000 in state and local taxes. The transit authority puts more money in than they get out but very few seem to mind the investment as it returns dividends elsewhere. It’s an idea I can get behind and an environment I’d love to be part of.
Naturally I’ve wondered what impact such a project might have in my home town of Brownlow, a community so often hurt by the fickle needs of businesses too big to care about it. Like West Virginia the GBA, or Greater Brownlow Area, could use a healthy cottage industry to balance out the ebbs and flows that come with a manufacturing based economy. It should be a place of innovation and creativity but it seems stuck on the way things have always been, a way that may have never worked but certainly doesn’t these days. Jules tells me that this is all Brownlow knows since it was built using Scots-Irish economic refugees, an unpopular group at the time, to occupy land the Americans or indigenous people might otherwise occupy and strip it of natural resources. Yet I fear we love what we know too much to support something like this.
Burlington is the kind of city that pedestrianized it’s main street so long ago it needs to be redone, yet the feeling of a well-worn and well-loved cooky idea just adds to the authenticity. Burlington isn’t trying to be cool, they are cool. Even if they had to fake to make it initially, that’s now fifty years ago and they have made it. Perhaps the difference is the university or being the state capitol, and they certainly are major differences. Yet it seems more vibrant than even larger cities north of the border so perhaps it’s American individuality and entrepreneurial spirit combined with isolation from the rest of the union. Whatever the reason, it’s the kind of city that almost immediately gives off the vibe of self-assured interest in whatever weird project you have going on that comes from everyone else having their own to get lost in. It’s the feeling of creative synergy versus insecure competition.
This article has gotten rather theoretical for a travel piece and so let me tell you about a few of my other favourite attractions. Dobra Tea Room is a wonderfully eccentric eastern-style hippie tea room that somehow pulls it off. You can enjoy an expansive and exotic tea menu either from comfortable bohemian cafe tables by big sunny windows or on meditation cushions and reed mats in the back while new-age music permeates the space. The Leahy Centre for Lake Champlain was chaotic and geared for children but Burlington is rightly proud of it. An aquarium for creatures native to the Champlain Basin, closely related to our Great Lakes region, was a rare treat when so many similar attractions are dedicated to the exotic. And of course the waterfront was delightful. It’s easy to forget that we have mountain ranges in the east and Lake Champlain is a sizeable lake full of eclectic islands connected to the Hudson River and St. Lawrence nestled between the peaks, a few of which were still snow-capped in late April. In addition to the Leahey Centre the waterfront is home to a coastguard base, pleasure boat slips, and the remnants of commercial water activities all connected by a path lined with rather nice porch-swings.
The coffee scene in Burlington might be the best I’ve ever experienced. I’ve reached the point where the coffee I make at home is usually better than even the expensive pour-overs from well-regarded cafes. I struggle to spend the $5-7USD that a pour-over in Burlington costs in other markets but here it was worth every penny because it exposed new horizons. At Onyx Tonics the owner trained under a three-time world barista champion in Britain and roasts his own beans — you may be noticing a trend in Burlington. He spent half of my visit diving deep into the local coffee business with a patron seated at the bar. The other half he spent talking television with a screenwriter, obviously a regular. It was here that I learned a flavour I have been avoiding, thinking it was the taste of the filter paper, can be developed into crisp delicious pear. The only disappointment was Kestrel, well-reviewed and clearly the big game in town, where the barista unceremoniously dumped all the water into grounds too fine to drain properly. This resulted in a ten-minute wait for a bitter over-extracted six-dollar coffee.
At the end of the day, though, Burlington is about the atmosphere more than the individual entities within. Remove any number of players and something similar will spring up: the environment encourages creativity and innovation. I noticed this as early as the highway approaching town where the drivers combined Montreal precision with a non-competitive laid back attitude. I even found the men more attractive since the sharp edges so many seem fond of honing these days had been lovingly and indulgently filed smooth. Nobody had anything to prove, they were just being themselves and letting things happen.
I was shaken out of the nearly dream-like state that all the locals seem to drift around in when I stopped at the Brownlow LCBO on the way home. As soon as I’d entered the store a muscled and tattooed security guard accosted me with a curt “may I help you, ma’am?” and proceeded to follow me through the store despite my polite declination. Admittedly I’d more or less rolled out of bed and into the driver’s seat that morning, as is one of the perks of #vanlife. And I know that Brownlow is dealing with a homelessness and opioid crisis it is singularly unequipped to deal with. Truth be told I can’t know what was going through that security guard’s mind, nor know how many of our fair city’s homeless can afford Lululemon athleisurewear. In any case, the message felt clear: welcome home.
-Rachael
