Jules Octavian is hopelessly in love with you, Eastern Ontario. And when I say Jules Octavian is in love with you, what I really mean is that you should be very flattered. Jules is no ordinary gentleman. He is a gentleman and that is unique enough. He’s not just painfully stylish, he’s wise and patient too. He knows his love is unrequited but also that it’s because you don’t believe in yourself. Maybe, one day, you will.
Where Jules sees a woman whose thighs command a room, you see someone forty pounds overweight. Where you feel tall and indelicate he sees power and strength. Where you feel sheltered and disconnected he sees a master woodswoman he desperately wants to learn from. You’re probably intimidated by the circles he runs in but in the same way that he wants you to take him for moonlight swims in remote rivers and foraging for wild mushrooms, he wants to share his world with you. You won’t think you’ll have anything to wear because clothes don’t fit you right but Jules knows it’s the clothes, not you. He knows where to take you shopping and can’t wait to help you feel like the goddess you already are. But he’s not going to say anything. He knows that you are painfully self-conscious. He knows that an approving glance from him probably feels like judgement or condescension to you. He also knows that you cannot accept anyone else’s love until you first love yourself.
When Jules gave me the assignment to write about whatever is going on within your bounds he said I should write love letters to you. He said that I should hold up a mirror to show you how beautiful you are. But if I’m being honest, I wasn’t quite sure how to do that. I grew up here but I left more or less as soon as I could. It’s not that I didn’t like you, I just didn’t exactly love you. Perhaps I just didn’t understand you. We can think we are whoever we want to be but the world can only know us through our actions. I like some of your actions, I dislike others, mostly I’ve been indifferent. It’s not that this is a bad place to be – it’s just that there are other places. I’ve been to those places and they are pretty good. Now I’m back and seeing you through adult eyes as Jules Octavian whispers history in my ear. I see it. I see you.
The thing about you is that your history reads like an abusive relationship. It began mostly underwater until the glaciers gave way and lake levels dropped. Sometimes it feels like you’re still drying out from those days and I love that about you. The indigenous people who lived on what were once islands moved downhill and made extensive use of your protected shorelines and rivers. Most of you remained rugged and uninhabited because they would not presume to own you and much of you was too wild for habitation anyway. Your early life made you beautiful, mysterious, and interesting.
It was the Europeans who tried to own you. At first they remained in small communities along the shore but it didn’t take long for them to see value in you. This is not to say that they loved you — no, no. They wanted to sell you. They divided you into farms and gave the handful of good ones to people sufficiently important to the crown for a gift — but not sufficiently important for that gift to be located in England. The rest went to the poor. When citizens of Britain demanded social programs they were instead given whole nearly-free farms in Eastern Ontario — too far away to say it was, in fact, too good to be true. Perhaps it was fear of American expansion that drove them but I think it was because they found free land with which to pay people they didn’t care about. Land that was stolen from indigenous people, given to other indigenous people, then mostly stolen from them too. Remember, however, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You may not have been valuable to the crown — but just because someone with power over you doesn’t see value doesn’t make it true.
Jules’ favourite poem calls you “the land of our defeat,” but that’s not fair. You were set up to fail. You were this beautiful, wild, and rocky landscape that would not be tamed but Europeans spent a couple of centuries trying and failing anyway. The real tragedy is that by the turn of the century the relationship was more or less over yet you have spent the interim trying to show the person who left that you are worthy. Since then you have only expressed your identity in relationship to others. You’re not Toronto or Quebec, you watch more American news than your own but you’re not them either, you remain a royalist for some reason, your towns are almost all named after the old country, the biggest community movers are institutions headquartered in the cities you deride, and “tradition” is usually an impressionistic justification for generational trauma. Tell me who you are without referencing anyone else – I bet you can’t.
Falling in love with yourself after someone has seriously hurt you is not easy. It hurts to realize that the person your life has been about for so long is bad for you. It’s easy to feel stupid that you invested so much time in the relationship, not that you had a choice. It’s easy to miss the good times and forget the bad. I suspect you feel like you’re too old to change but I have news for you: that’s depression, not age. You act like life is over and your path is set in stone but you measure time geologically. The last two centuries have been about Europe but all the rest is about you. Don’t be a thirty-year-old waiting for retirement. Maybe you have some grey hair and your tits hang a little lower but that just makes you look distinguished. Hardship managed in a healthy way deepens people. You are not less than you were before – you are more in spite of it. You just need to see it. I was taught that loving yourself makes you a narcissist and so I know it feels wrong to really admire yourself. I have since learned that only narcissists and their prey believe this. How can you respect someone who loves you if you don’t see that you, yourself, are loveable?
So let’s look at you. Maybe it’s painful. I’ve noticed you have a suspicious lack of mirrors. But even if you are ugly, your body has every right to exist and to be seen in the privacy of your own home. But there’s no such thing as ugly people, only people who don’t know themselves and are trying to be someone else. Maybe you’re not as hot as Florida, as cultured as France, or as passionate as Brazil. You’re not as well-endowed as the rockies or as popular as the East Coast. But why do you have to be? Why can’t we celebrate you for you? I’m not going to lie, this look isn’t as good as it could be but I don’t think I’m actually looking at you. I think I’m looking at other people’s hand-me-downs. I see layers of things that are too big, too small, or out of fashion that other people will no longer wear but think is fine for you. Take it off. You don’t need their charity. Take it all off. You can wear whatever you want – but wear it for you instead of others. Stand completely unencumbered in front of that mirror and recognize your assets and imperfections so that you can build on them instead of hiding them. Recognize you for you and that you can be whoever you want to be.
What did you look like before the Europeans came? Before they cut down your forests like cutting your hair? Before they built cities, some less successful than others, like tattoos across your body? Before they dressed you in European clothing and customs? Bound you in roads and infrastructure like ill-fitting gifted lingerie? I imagine you were beautiful: wild mane of long hair blowing in the wind, thick sinewy legs and feet rooted to the ground, full hips and breasts leaving no question of your feminine strength, and a mischievous smile painted across your face. But you didn’t know mischief then, you only found out what you weren’t supposed to do later.
You don’t look so different. Your hair has been cut but it’s already growing back. Some of those cities are pretty great and unlike tattoos the bad ones will fade away or grow into something better. Some time spent finding out what you like and a weekend of shopping will change that old European wardrobe. And if it turns out you do like the straps and lace all you have to do is find some that fit and flatter rather than constrict and misshape. Spend this time loving and appreciating yourself and that smile will come back. You will smile because you will realize that you’re just as beautiful as anyone else. Beauty is not comparative — just because other people are beautiful doesn’t mean you can’t also be. You don’t have to measure yourself against them, you only have to measure against yourself and you know deep-down that you are smoking hot. Maybe you’ll even decide you’re too good for Jules, and maybe you’ll be right.
As I have reflected on what you mean to me over these last few months I realized the problem is that your time is now and you don’t realize it. You are ten-thousand years old, Europeans have only been here for two or three percent of that and you’ll be here long after we’re gone. Sure not all of the Crown’s hopes and dreams panned out, but that’s why they left. You’re the only one holding onto those dreams. In the meantime you are in the fortunate position of being the last region around here to mature. Southwestern Ontario has the farms, Quebec has the history, the Golden Horseshoe has the industry. It sounds like, to me anyway, all the bases are covered so you get to be whatever you want to be.
What I appreciate about you is that you’re a day trip from anything in central Canada. In the north you’ve got dramatic Canadian Shield vistas and more lakes than people. To the south you’ve got some of the best shoreline in the world including beaches that can stand toe-to-toe with the tropics. In the summer you’re as warm as I’d ever want, in the winter you’re only a little colder than I can stand. But there’s always a friend with a wood stove or <gasp> a sauna to warm me back up. In the middle you have beautiful hardwood forests, rolling hills, and a patchwork quilt of quirkily-shaped farms. There’s a huge indigenous presence and they’re clearly going to be the cultural leaders in the near future — I love that I have a front row seat. I also appreciate that there seems to be a renewed sense of creativity here. It doesn’t always feel like new things are welcome but there are people really trying and I love that. It’s so easy, in the summertime anyway, to have a fifty kilometre meal and that includes the wine. You may not be the place everyone wants to live but you’re a great place for people who want to live a little slower yet stay in the thick of things. You’re the rustic farmhouse at which interesting people stop to talk into the night on their way from one interesting place to another. I may want to get away from you and see other places from time to time, but these days I’m happy to return home. And I’d love to take you with me but, you know, that’s the nature of being geography.
You don’t need Jules to be whole. You don’t need anyone but you. The thing is, Jules is a great catch and he thinks the same of you. Maybe he’s not the most conventional choice, but I say…fuck convention.
-Rachael
