In many discussions over the years about the ethics of travel and climate change, I have pushed back against the idea that people need to travel with the counter-claim that they have structured their lives to create that apparent necessity. If you think you need routine visits with someone on the other side of the world, it is because you have both structured your lives with the assumption that rapid travel across the planet will and should be available.
Preparing for my trip to Vancouver in August and September for my brother Mica’s wedding (which is taking the place of the post-PhD trip I had been planning to settle my affairs and move everything out of my parents’ house) I am being reminded of how structuring your life to not include long-distance travel gradually erodes your connection to any distant communities that you had a link to. I had a nightmare a year or more ago about being in Vancouver with my laptop and address book, and realizing that I had nobody left to visit there. Aside from my parents, that’s now not massively far from the truth. I haven’t spent any significant amount of time in the city since I finished at UBC in 2005 and — even though I try to make a special effort to keep friendships going despite time and distance — it’s quite understandable that occasional Christmas and birthday emails haven’t sustained much of a connection with people who I knew from my undergraduate days and before. Back in my undergrad days, I would try to host a couple of big parties each year to help friends from different communities meet each other. If I tried to arrange a party now, I doubt whether anyone would come, if I could even put together a list of people in the city to invite.
Of course I don’t need a party of my own, and Mica and Leigh’s wedding should provide all the celebration anyone should need. Still, the feeling that I have hardly anyone to see in Vancouver reinforces my idea about the original purpose of this trip: to settle affairs in Vancouver such that nothing which I need to get done will necessitate another trip to the city. While the sense behind the sentiment is clear enough, I can’t help feeling somewhat sad and alienated to think of how the city’s role has transformed for me, from a home town which I felt I had explored extensively and knew well into a strange and changed place where I cannot see a place for myself economically, socially, or professionally. The fact that Toronto’s housing hell makes it hard to see a place for myself here too only adds to the sense of loss and alienation.