I want to start this post with two initial thoughts:

1. To my Kiwi buddies, or any random Kiwi readers: your country is lovely, it’s pretty and filled with interesting things to see and do. The people here are lovely. Many of your buildings are lovely (pity about the lack of heat and insulation). There is much to recomend your country to visitors and immigrants. Your stable (if confusing) democracy and it’s system, your laid back attitude towards much that is going on around you… it’s all lovely and wonderful. It’s just not my home.
2. When I am at home I kind of treat Canada Day as a bit of bunk. As a joke. Something to be mocked and ridiculed.

Ok, so that’s out of the way…

Where I am it’s already the afternoon of July 2nd, so for me Canada Day has come and gone and right now, I have to tell you, I’m feeling every cm of the distance between Montreal and Dunedin, all 1,516,900,000 of them.

To give a sense of how far that is, take a peek at this:
(this image is from Wolframalpha.com)

At the best of times, I miss home, but true homesickness comes in waves and is mostly managable. The pattern of day to day life (take Lucas to school, make dinner, clean the house, do the dishes, shop for food, job hunt - yes, still) tends to blot it out for the most part… but periodically, birthdays of family members, holidays, elections (yes, I’m a geek - sue me) etc, it just washes over me. For the last 2 days I’ve been basically engaging in the interwebs version of self-flagellation. I’ve been reading blog posts, looking at youtube videos, reading articles… like some kind of Canada junkie looking to score just one more hit of that Mapley-goodness.. it’s been a touch unseemly.. I’ll admit that I’m misty, and a bit maudlin and when I think about the fireworks and the crappy hotdogs and the mildly offputting flag waving etc I realize that I would give almost anything to have been at home today.

I think Christine put it best “Based on this experience, I think everybody should leave their country for an extended period of time in their lives to really appreciate what they have.”

There are some posts that I’ve read that I thought were really awesome, that showed what my Canada is like, if you follow me on twitter or are friends via FB you’ve seen them, but here goes anyway:

Galloping Beavers thoughts are those of an expat as well.

Dr Dawg has worked tirelessly to help bring a fellow-Canadian’s plight to the fore (others deserve credit as well, but I like this post the best.

This was a good whomp on the old heart strings.

From 2002, from the Sunday Telegraph.

This tickled me muchly, from the NY Times

This made me laugh.

And finally, this tweet was just lovely: @Rawnsley: “Pardon me for saying so, but I fucking love this country.”

O Canada! This native son misses you so.

Last night the Spectrum closed.

For most of my life the Spectrum was one of the poles of the Montreal music geography. For my generation of music fans it was the place your favorite local band played when it had out grown Foufounes, or where your favorite out of town band played when they were too small for Metropolis or Maurice Richard Arena.

It wasn’t much to look at, the sight lines were good and the sound system was loud and pretty good, apart from that it wasn’t the prettiest place on earth, nor even the most grungy.

But the bands I saw, oh god the bands. Two moments stand out in my head, both of them in the company of my oldest buddy, Ian. One year the Voodoo Bar BQ, complete with indoor grilling, 7 million bands and Gerard Van Herks glasses flying into the crowd (”that’s what I get for trying to be a cool rock star”). The other moment was when Ian and I caught Iggy Pop when he dove off the stage (yes I washed again, yes it was bizarre to touch the muscle that sings and walks like a man).

There were other bands, other weird moments (the concert where some guy next to me in the pit gave his girlfriend an orgasm kind of sticks out), but in the end they all kind of blur into one bit of Spectrumy wonderment.

I’ll miss the old dump.