A Brief History of Poutine
August 22, 2009 | Location: Canada | 11 Comments
Mike considered me with a mixture of puzzlement and mistrust. I explained again.
“You’ve got fries and gravy on the menu, right? And then right below, there’s fries and cheese.”
Mike scanned the Moon River Diner, making sure all his customers were accounted for. The June evening was hot in Shanghai, so expats and Shanghainese stayed home for the most part. We had Mike’s undivided attention.
“You put the cheese on the fries first. Then put the gravy on top to melt the cheese. That’s poutine.”
“Sounds gross, but it’s your stomach” said Mike, heading to the kitchen. My fellow Québécois expatriates grinned. Oh, it was gonna be gross alright. We would accept nothing less.
The Joual of Food
It’s fat. It’s unhealthy. A single serving can account for more than a thousand calories. It evokes sheer culinary terror in the French. Heck, even the Americans find it disgusting.
No wonder the Québécois are so proud of it.
In a society that guilts us into health, eating poutine becomes a transgressive act. You toss aside the guilt, and commit culinary blasphemy. You joke about heart attacks and waistlines, and dig in before the fries get soggy.
This guilt-fueled poutine love affair mirrors in many ways Québec’s relationship to its French dialect, joual. The language of the working class, joual suffers derision from the linguistic elite, who portray it as rough, uneducated and contaminated by the English language.
Yet if you’re Québécois, joual is the way you talk to your closest friends. It’s how you curse when you flatten your thumb with a hammer. It’s how you tell someone you love them and mean it.
Poutine is to gastronomy what joual is to language: it may not be delicate nor elegant, but it’s who we are, and we’re proud of it.
Squeek Squeek
Poutine consists of three essential ingredients: fries, gravy and cheese curds. Of these, the cheese curds are the most distinctive to Québec, and explain why the dish was invented here.
The cheese used in poutine consists of fresh cheddar, invented in the Bois-Francs region of the province of Québec some time before 1960. Looking to save excess production, dairy farmers invented the cheese curd, a simple and fast recipe that caught like wildfire.
The cheese curd is best-known for the “squeek-squeek” sound it makes when eaten fresh. The curds, small pieces of cheese, are coated in a thin, fresh milk, and rub against the teeth to produce the sound. In French, they’re known as crottes de fromage: literally, cheese droppings.
Cheese curds are at once simple and delightful. In the villages where they are the most famous, you can find cheese curd bags on the counters of convenience stores, next to the chewing gum. They’re made fresh daily, and are meant to be kept at room temperature and eaten on the same day. Later than that, and the squeeks go away.
When Cheese and Fries Collide
The combination of frite sauce (fries with gravy) and cheese curds was unavoidable. By the mid-fifties, most casse-croûtes (greasy spoons) sold the popular frite sauce alongside bags of fresh cheese curds. It was a matter of time before someone put two and two together.
Regardless of who claims to have invented the poutine, the creation myth is nearly always the same:
Some time between 1957 and 1964, a stranger walked into the inventor’s casse-croûte. The stranger ordered a frite sauce, then asked the owner to add a bag of cheese curds to the mix. The inventor was at first puzzled by the idea, but the dish became a staple of the region, soon spreading across the province.
The name “poutine” is a joual term borrowed from Acadian French, and possibly related to the English word “pudding”. Before it became associated with the famous dish, it designated any unappetizing mixture of mismatched food ingredients, a description which many find fitting to this day.
Greasy Roots
Two Québec townships hold a credible claim to the invention of poutine: Warwick and Drummondville. Popular wisdom holds Victoriaville as another location for the invention of poutine, but I could find no historical data to back that claim.
In Warwick, it was Fernand Lachance, owner of casse-croûte L’Idéal who claimed to have invented the dish. His restaurant, later renamed Le lutin qui rit, has unfortunately closed down. The Kingsey Falls cheesemakers whose curds he employed have been moved to Warwick after being bought out by Québec cheese giant Saputo, ruining the small-scale, local flair of the original.
Jean-Paul Roy from Drummondville made the other credible claim to the invention of poutine. Roy’s restaurant, Le Roy Jucep, still stands in its original spot along Drummondville’s main road.
Le Roy Jucep serves poutine with their original gravy, which actually adds credibility to their claim. The “sauce Jucep” is blander, sweeter and thicker than its contemporary counterparts, an unsatisfying proposition to many poutine connoisseurs. If Le Roy Jucep has indeed invented poutine, then theirs might be the “proto-poutine”: the original recipe that others soon improved upon to evolve it to today’s standard. This means that the poutine at Le Roy Jucep has historical interest, but very little culinary appeal.
Further down Drummondville’s Boulevard Saint-Joseph and up Route 122, you will find Fromagerie Lemaire, a cheese factory whose daily fresh cheese curds are sold everywhere in the surrounding townships. Eating their poutine layered with super-fresh curds that sing between your teeth, it’s easy to understand why poutine spread so fast.
Mutations
Since the rise of the dish’s popularity in the sixties, the term “poutine” has grown to include a bewildering array of fast food dishes, all messier and fatter than the next.
Any dish that incorporates the three basic ingredients of cheese, gravy and fries, or close variants, can be called poutine. You can make a poutine with other cheeses, such as blue cheese or goat cheese. Use spaghetti meat sauce instead of gravy and you get poutine italienne. Change the fries for breakfast potatoes, and you’ll get poutine patates rissolées, a late-night favorite at Chez Claudette in Montreal.
Add green peas and shredded chicken, and you get galvaude. Add cole slaw to a galvaude, and it becomes poutine gaspésienne, my favorite non-classic poutine.
Montreal culinary master Martin Picard, owner of Au pied de cochon, is responsible for poutine au foie gras, with foie gras gravy sauce and fries cooked in duck fat.
Montreal late-night poutine institution La Banquise offers twenty-five different types of poutines, including Mexican poutine (hot peppers, tomatoes and black olives), Kamikaze (Merguez sausage, hot peppers and tabasco), and T-Rex (minced meat, pepperoni, bacon and smoked sausages).
Then there’s the Chinese poutine.
Poutine World
Mike had humored us when we asked for poutine, but by the look on his face, my friend Hugues was now pushing his luck. Hugues was describing poutine chinoise, or Chinese poutine.
“You put the cheese on the fries. On the left side, you pour regular gravy, on the right, spaghetti sauce.”
“So poutine chinoise is half Québec poutine, half Italian,” Mike asked, skeptical.
Hugues grinned and nodded.
As Hugues dug into his poutine chinoise, it dawned on us that we were most certainly witnessing the first Chinese poutine eaten in China.
Poutine has spread far and wide beyond the region that gave it birth. It took over Canada, and you can now find it all the way to Vancouver and Edmonton. Fast food giants McDonald’s and Burger King also incorporated them in their menus across the country with great success. Poutine is quickly transcending its Québec origins to become the epitome of Canada’s middle class gastronomy.
Québécois are bringing the dish with them across the ocean, and although its quality falls the farther apart from the cheese curd factories of Drummondville and Warwick, poutine is still sought after by Québécois everywhere when they are homesick and hungry.
Poutine might not be fancy or delicate, but it’s hearthy and joyful. It demands that you celebrate its flaws to appreciate its strengths. It speaks of simpler times, uncomplicated by food fads and calorie counts, where all you needed was something to pad your stomach on cold days.
In all the ways that matter, to appreciate poutine’s joyful excess is to understand Québec itself.
Where to go
Montreal’s best poutine can arguably be found at Resto La Banquise, at 994 rue Rachel Est. The poutine institution is open 24/7. Fellow Montreal foodie Katerine and author of Montreal food blog Epicurean Life, created a cool video about La Banquise. Check it out!
If you want to experience a truly authentic casse-croûte off the beaten path, check out Jojo Pizzaria and its impressive selection of thirty-four poutines, at 6507 Papineau. If you’re in an adventurous mood, check out Chez Claudette at 351 avenue Laurier Est, where you can have a burger with fried egg and a breakfast potato poutine in the morning. Not for the faint of heart.
Au pied de cochon and its decadent, marvelous poutine au foie gras can be found at 536 rue Duluth Est. Au pied de cochon is well worth a visit for the rest of its menu as well, marrying a love of Québec traditional food with haute cuisine sensibilities and a stunning amount of foie gras.
You can experience Le Roy Jucep‘s original poutine at 1050 boul. Saint-Joseph in Drummondville. Drummondville is located an hour away from Montreal, along Highway 20 heading east. A little further away is the amazing Fromagerie Lemaire, at 2095 Route 122 in Saint-Cyrille-de-Wendover. Make sure to get there at noon to experience their cheese curds at the exact moment they come out of the kitchens.
Moon River Diner, the American eatery in Shanghai that gave birth to the world’s first true Chinese poutine, unfortunately closed its doors on July 8th, 2008.
A big thank you to my friend Hugo, who drove us to Drummondville on a sunny Thursday morning so I could eat way too much poutine in his fine company. Thanks also to Hélène, who pointed me in the direction of Fromagerie Lemaire for the best cheese curds I’ve ever had.
The Bagels of Mile End
August 10, 2009 | Location: Canada | 7 Comments
Here is what I miss about Montreal when I’m away:
The smells from the wood-fired oven rush at me even before I step inside Fairmount Bagel. I barely squeeze through ceiling-high racks of bagged bagels, lining up along the fridges full of cream cheese and spreads, listening to the happy chatter of the bakers. When my turn comes, I’m sweating from the oven heat. The girl at the counter picks up a handful of bagels, fresh from the oven pile. When she hands me the bag, it’s nearly too hot to hold.
Outside, the breeze flushes away the steamy air, but the smell lingers. I take a bagel out, holding it at fingertip, careful not to burn myself, and bring it to my lips.
I close my eyes.
Mile End
I’m a Montrealer, and we’re proud of our bagels. Eastern European Jews brought it with them a century ago, and the recipe found a new home in the multicultural area known as Mile End.
Mile End today stands as a testament to Montreal’s cultural diversity. Order an espresso at Italian café Olimpico, and sit at the window: outside on rue St-Viateur, you’ll witness the peaceful coexistence of Greek workers, hip, young videogame designers, hijab-clad mothers, and Hassidic schoolboys. Mile End doesn’t assimilate its immigrants: it celebrates them.
It’s no coincidence that Mile End is home to a staggering number of Montreal food institutions. Within walking distance of one another, you’ll find the Wilensky Special with its mandatory dash of mustard, Olimpico’s old-school cappuccino, Serrano’s mouth-watering Peruvian rotisserie chicken, Clarke’s sandwiches, and New Navarino’s delicious baklava. And then there’s bagels: a mere five blocks separate Montreal bagel legends Fairmount Bagel Bakery, and St-Viateur Bagel Shop.
A Tale of Two Bagels
The question of whether St-Viateur or Fairmount offers the best bagel in town is under intense debate. The truth is, there are more similarities than differences between the two.
The Montreal bagel is a distant cousin to the New York bagel, their differences owing to regional preferences back in Eastern Europe. The Montreal bagel recipe produces a sweeter, smaller and less doughy bagel, typically covered in either sesame or poppy seeds.
Whether you buy your bagel at St-Viateur or Fairmount, you get a chance to observe the wood-fired oven in which the bagels are baked. The expert bakers hand-roll the dough at the shop, then poach them in honey-sweetened water before baking them in the deep oven to a golden finish.
According to Jewish historian Joe King, the first man to bake a Montreal bagel was Chaim Seligman, who sold his bagels on the Main from the back of a horse-drawn carriage. Seligman went in business with two men, Myer Lewkowicz and Jack Shlafman. Seligman and Lewkowicz founded St-Viateur Shop; Shlafman went on to found Fairmount Bagel. Fairmount Bagel’s sign pays hommage to Seligman’s practice of stringing bagels together for sale by the dozen.
Bagel Chic
The St-Viateur Bagel Shop, at the corner of avenue du Parc, has changed little in its fifty-two years existence. That is not to say that the business itself hasn’t adapted to Montreal’s unique beat.
Love for the fresh bagel reaches eastward out of Mile End, to the heart of the posh French-speaking district known as the Plateau. Once the home of immigrants, artists and students, the Plateau’s thrift shops and discount pizza joints have mostly given way to French-inspired restaurants and sophisticated cafés.
St-Viateur Bagel & Café adapts the St-Viateur formula to a Plateau crowd. In this cozy café setting, the smells of fresh ground coffee mingles with that of baked dough.
The café offers toasted bagels with a variety of spreads for breakfast, and tasty grilled bagel sandwiches for lunch and dinner. To sit at St-Viateur Bagel & Café is to appreciate a great quality of Montreal: how the city can remain true to its roots, yet blend them all into a joyous art de vivre that is at once simple and sophisticated, Quebecois and Jewish, old world and new.
Home of the Bagel
As I finish my fresh Fairmount bagel, I brush the sesame seeds from my fingertips. The area pigeons, grown for generations on a sesame diet, crowd me for an impromptu snack.
Eating that one fresh Fairmount bagel is my required ritual every time I’m in town. The simple, wholesome taste brings to my mind the beauty of tradition, and the richness of Montreal’s roots. It reminds me that we are stronger when we celebrate our differences than when we try to stamp them out.
But above all, it reminds me that wherever I might live on the planet, as long as the Mile End ovens bake their bagels, I will call Montreal home.
Where To Go
Fairmount Bagel Bakery can be found at 74 avenue Fairmount Ouest, near rue Clark. It is open 24/7, and since it bakes bagels for customers as well as wholesale, you can always catch a bagel fresh out of the oven at any time of the day.
St-Viateur Bagel Shop is located at 262 St-Viateur Ouest, at the corner of Avenue du Parc. It is also open 24/7.
St-Viateur Bagel & Café can be found at 1127 avenue Mont-Royal, near avenue Christophe-Colomb, as well as in NDG, at 5629 avenue de Monkland.
Wilensky’s Light Lunch is located at 34 avenue Fairmount Ouest, one block east of Fairmount Bagel. New Navarino can be found at 5563 avenue du Parc. Olimpico, Boulangerie Clarke, Serrano, and many other amazing shops, restaurants and cafés are all located on rue St-Viateur, between avenue du Parc and St-Laurent.
If you have a Mile End favorite that I forgot to mention, please enlighten me and this blog’s readers by sharing it in the comments section!
The Friends Who Fed Me
July 26, 2009 | Location: Canada | 2 Comments
“There are things you will miss dearly about Edmonton when we leave.” Hélène laughed every time I told her that when we arrived, a year and a half ago. She’d glance out the window at the urban sprawl, its highways and shopping malls, as if to say, What is there to miss about this?
On Saturday the 18th of July, Hélène was still laughing; but this time, it was to hide the sadness in her heart. We were going around the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market for the last time. I almost wished I hadn’t been so right.
The Rural Rebellion
Growing up as a city boy, I always pictured farmers living dull intellectual lives. I know; it’s a terrible stereotype, and I’m glad the market shattered it. As it turns out, the farmers and producers at our local market are among the most rebellious, anticonformist individuals I’ve had the delight to meet.
Jerry Kitt, owner of First Nature Farms, is a prime example of this rural rebellion. In 1977, he and his wife moved to Goodfare, near the British Columbia border, to begin raising cattle. Today, Jerry operates his farm as a natural reserve, focusing on biodiversity and sustainability. He has traveled to Cuba to learn from the farmers there, who have faced the phenomenon of peak oil 30 years ahead of us all, as the fall of the USSR condemned them to oil starvation. In 2008, he was one of a handful of farmers invited to Italy by the Slow Food movement to discuss the future of agriculture under the dual threats of global warming and oil depletion.
Jerry figured out decades before most of us that perpetual growth is impossible in a closed system. To Jerry, sustainability and biodiversity are more precious than growth.
How’s that for a revolutionary idea? And it makes for a stunning good steak, too.
Shake the Hand that Feeds You
Take the time to talk to the various producers at the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market, and their stories converge on Jerry’s point of view. The market itself has changed little over the years; you hear ‘sustainability’ a lot more than ‘expansion’ coming from the market administrators. Some of the vendors barely break even, but nevertheless come to the market every Saturday, providing their customers with the same food they have come to love over the years. In return, they get a Saturday spent with the extended family of vendors, and the deep gratitude of customers they can call friends.
Shaking the hand of the men and women who grow your vegetables or roast your coffee is a transformative act. You stop relating to brands like Starbucks or Safeway, and instead feed yourself based on human-sized relationships. You don’t need an organic label when you can look the farmer directly in the eye.
Imagine if every CEO of major food companies was forced to spend an entire day meeting the people whom they fed, to shake their hands and greet them. How many times would they sacrifice the well-being of their customers in the name of profit?
The Grind of the Industrial Machine
To understand the beat of the farmers’ market is to get an intimate glimpse at the gears moving below the surface of our society. Edmonton, in many ways, replicates on a smaller scale the vicissitudes of our entire civilization, as it completes its transition from sustainability to multinationalism.
Many travelers complain about the way American culture is taking over the world. The truth is, American culture has been dying for a long time. What took it over is something else entirely, bred from greed. It moved in with an army of Walmarts and Starbucks, and slowly choked out the pockets of authenticity, one town at a time. Some are still there, but they’re getting harder to find.
Edmonton, just like most North American cities, is under siege from those same forces, and it’s slowly losing that battle. Most of its surface is comprised of malls bursting with multinational corporations. The farmers, growers and bakers of the farmers’ markets around the city are an eccentric, even folkloric breed, with their antiquated values and unproductive methods.
But they hang on. And many of us are barely just beginning to understand the importance of their fight.
They cling to ideals and principles that we thought we had buried with our ancestors. But in an age when we are growing more and more aware of the ecological, sociological, cultural and health impacts of our modern way of life, they have kept alive principles that may prove to be our salvation.
This Is Family
Helene and I hug Grace, of Grace’s Traditional Foods. Poor Grace has tears in her eyes as she gives us one last poppy seed roll, a traditional recipe she has brought with her from Poland and recreates every week.
We also receive hugs from Paul and Janice, whose creams and natural beauty products Hélène has fallen in love with over the last year. From them, Hélène received a gift of essential oils to bid her health on our journey. Maureen gives us one of her delicious, spicy lentil soups that got us through winter. Tracy from Catfish Coffee Roasters gives us bags of coffee to drink with our friends and family in Montreal.
Over our last days in Edmonton, each meal brings back memories of the people who grew, raised or baked everything we eat. When we taste the flair of spices on Ayikarley’s Ghanaian chicken, we remember her easy laugh and generous smile. Tasting Mrs. Helbig’s stunning broccoli, I picture the kind, elderly woman plowing her field, her quiet strength brought to harvest the bounty of her land.
This is what we left behind in Edmonton. We left amazing food, but also a deep sense of community, a family.
I’ll miss it as I would a dear friend. And every time I will look at a new city’s urban sprawl, I will wonder what rebels hide behind this facade, keeping the soul of our society alive.
To Dom, Tracy, Jerry, Gisèle, Mrs. Helbig, Ruth, Walter, Molly, Dawn, Ayikarley, Paul, Janice, Grace, John, Madalina, Mariana, Sue, Maureen, and everyone else I have the terrible misfortune of forgetting in this post:
I will miss your food, your friendship and your kindness. You have taught me the true meaning of community, and for that I am eternally grateful.
Bless you, one and all!
The Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market is located at 10310 83 Avenue, in the Old Strathcona historical district of Edmonton. Edmonton is fortunate enough to have a few other high-quality markets around town, including the City Market in Downtown Edmonton, and the St. Albert Farmers’ Market.
More and more farmers’ markets are appearing everywhere in North America, and chances are your local city or town features a similar band of rebels and iconoclasts growing delicious food outside of the industrial food complex. Find out about them, go try their food, and listen to their stories. They deserve to be heard, wherever you are.
For more thoughts on sustainability and small-scale production, please see my blog post about Catfish Coffee Roasters, Black Coffee, No Barcode, where I recount my experience as a vendor at the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market.
Out of the Matrix, Into the Light
July 17, 2009 | Location: Canada | 11 Comments
“The Matrix is the wool that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
- Morpheus, The Matrix (1999)
The TV unit’s prints linger in the carpet as they take it away. The DVDs, videogames, beer glasses and souvenirs it used to host will spend at least a year in cardboard boxes. The wall previously hidden by the TV unit blinds me with white. I am one step closer to the light.
Plato’s Cave
In Plato’s The Republic, the great philosopher asks the reader to imagine men born prisonners in the depths of a dark cave. The only light they see comes from a fire outside their reach that projects shadows on the walls before them. To these men, Plato argues, the shadows would be all that is real.
How, asks Plato, would one of these men feel if he were taken out of the depths of the cave, and allowed to see the real world? How would it feel if he were then returned to his emprisonment?
The New Machines
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave has been at the forefront of my mind ever since I returned from living three years in China. I have seen and experienced things during my time in Shanghai that reveal to me the illusory nature of our world. Kind, honest folks getting by with a tiny fraction of my weekly income. Crippled children, sold into slavery by desperate parents, broken by their owners to illicit more pity. Buildings of such insane proportions as to put Blade Runner to shame. Opulence and poverty, living side-by-side, an image of the world, impossible to ignore.
Our consumer society is, to paraphrase Morpheus, the wool that has been pulled over our eyes. (And isn’t it ironic that a Hollywood film would present such a self-aware metaphor?) We are trained to think that hundreds of Iranian students dying for democracy are of passing interest, but the death of a pop star affects us deeply because we once purchased his records.
The tragedy of this consumer matrix is that its machine masters move among us in plain sight. We even know their names: Coca-Cola. McDonald’s. General Motors. Monsanto. Shell. Pfizer. These corporate entities exist as full moral individuals in our laws, hold recognized rights. They have self-perpetuating mechanisms, clear goals, and are fully able to defend themselves from any threat to their survival. When we feed their hunger with our money, they gently rock us back to sleep. But when we speak up, they use their human agents to crush our spirits. They have even subverted our own means of government to their own means.
What’s more troubling is the machine’s ability to adapt. When consumers began to reject industrial food, for instance, the food giants began adopting organic by also industrializing it. When the airline industry came under criticism for its carbon emissions, it began selling ‘indulgences’ in the form of carbon offsets. All so that we continue consuming without question.
Out in the Light
When I traveled to China, I took the red pill. I didn’t know it at the time, but something within me was awakened by three years in Shanghai. It started as an itch on my soul, and grew into full discomfort. It was knowledge: that the world was more than it seemed. That the struggles and triumphs of billions were drowned by manufactured entertainment.
I don’t travel for comfort, but for authenticity. To exchange a smile or a meal with someone outside your own personal sphere of influence is to take a step outside the cave. You don’t need the news to tell you what to think of them. Hollywood fables finally reveal themselves: projections on the wall of the cave, meant to distract you from looking back at the projectionist.
Unplug Yourself
Turn off the television. Question authority. Crave human contact. Sell anything that is neither useful nor beautiful. Become a citizen first, a consumer second. Volunteer. Favor independent music. Read books that don’t make it to the bestseller list. Talk to strangers. Travel without a tour. Buy your food from farmers. Trade your used clothes. Care.
I’m not saying I’m free of the cave myself. But I’ve seen a glimpse of the Sun peeking through the entrance. I can no longer stand in the darkness, and I’m pulling at my chains. Soon, I hope, I will stand in the grass.
We are more than our bank accounts. Let’s see what happens when we act as human beings first, consumers second.
Further Reading
Here are a few books and movies that helped shape my worldview and led to my decision to step away from the corporate life and travel the world as a nomad. I hope they can help you as well. Aside from Food, Inc., they should all be available from your local library.
The Merchants of Cool is a Frontline exposé on how a few big media corporations manufacture mainstream teenager culture and recuperate any trace of dissent. Although the documentary focuses on teenage culture, it’s easy to see how it applies to almost every facet of our lives. You can watch it for free on the PBS website. Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma is the most important book I read last year. It discusses the chains that bring food to our tables, from industrial corn to small-scale organic. This book inspired me to radically change what I eat. Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy picks up where Omnivore’s Dilemma left off, and discusses economic models that promote sustainability, community and happiness. This is a book I am keeping as I begin my world travels, as I plan to reread it every few years. Tom Hodkinson’s How to be Idle is a tongue-in-cheek discussion of how the corporate world has fed us the values of hard work and obedience, and how to reclaim leisure in our lives. What Hodkinson has to say makes a terrible lot of sense, and is not as light a topic as the book’s cover and blurbs would let you believe. Food, Inc., just out in theaters, is a fascinating and insightful documentary in the vein of Omnivore’s Dilemma and Fast Food Nation. I would recommend those two books over this movie, but if you don’t want to commit to reading them, this is the right place to start. Even if you have read Pollan, the sight of the gigantic feedlots is a striking, somber reminder of the excesses of our industrial food chain. Although I have not read Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods, it has left a powerful impression on Helene, and she recommends the book to all parents and educators. Louv argues that we are emotionally stunting our children by cutting them off from nature.
The Cost of the First Step
July 9, 2009 | Location: Canada | 15 Comments
“We quit our jobs, sold everything, and left on a world trip.”
That’s how our future selves will sum up their decision, over drinks in a foreign land, with nothing but their backpacks to call home. People listening might admire their courage, but they might not know how much they left behind.
Voluntarily Unemployed
When I explained to my boss at BioWare my decision to leave, I damn near broke down in tears. I’m not sure which one of us was the most surprised. Here we were, sitting in my office, having closed the door at the first sign of gravitas. I tried to explain why I was doing it, and I couldn’t find the words. Looking back, my choked attempts were more convincing than anything I could have articulated.
Until I closed that office door, there was some theoretical way of backing out of this project. I had sealed my escape route.
I’ve taken leaps of faith before, but this is the first without a bungee cord. As of Friday, June 26th, I’m voluntarily unemployed, and not looking for a job. That kind of life-changing decision usually leads to sleeping on a park bench. Hopefully, it will be somewhere tropical.
I closed that door on eleven years of continuous employment, including six in the game industry. I didn’t just quit my job, I quit the corporate world. I quit the 9 to 5 and the steady paycheck. I try not to let my mind wander to it.
The Weight of Stuff
Here’s something you find out real quick when starting a vagabonding lifestyle: owning stuff sucks.
‘Selling everything’ sounds like such a simple thing. I have daydreams – steadily turning pornographic-intense – where I snap my fingers, and all the furniture is replaced by little piles of money. Instead of that, I harass my friends with an insistence right out of a carpet bazaar. “You’re sure you don’t want a used guidebook to the Netherlands? How about a mattress?”
With two weeks to go before we leave Edmonton, you’d think I’d be stressing over the contents of my backpack or how to avoid roadside robbery and malaria. Instead, I wake up worrying about the fate of my couch. (“Just $250, how can you say no to a friend!”)
Ownership is slavery. Every piece of furniture drags at my ankles as I try to walk away. I stare at the piles of seldom-used clothes cluttering my wardrobe, and it dawns on me: freedom is owning three pairs of underwear.
International Hobo
Another source of malaise lingers deeper within me: two weeks from now, I will be unemployed and homeless. In a society where success is measured by career and ownership, the alternative is at once terrifying and exhilarating.
I’m working hard, not always with success, at referring to my videogame career in the past tense. I was a videogame producer. But what am I?
At the same time, I watch some cherished items – game consoles, books, furniture – disappear from our apartment, and it transforms our home into a place of transit. We sold the coffee table, so we put down our beer bottles on the floor. Soon, we will probably join them there. The emptiness of space reclaims what we worked so hard to coax into a home.
Friends now hesitate before saying goodbye, calculating the odds of this being our last time together. Sometimes, we lie to one another and promise to make time before I leave. Other times, we shake hands firmly and wish each other luck, only to do it again when next we run into one another.
My New Self
I am percolating under the forces of this emerging reality. Some unknowable alchemy transmutes my sense of self-worth, the way I see myself. I am not a traveler yet, but neither am I a videogame professional. I don’t really live in Edmonton anymore. I have no home, only destinations.
In suspension between my past and my future, my present is a footnote in the narrative of my life.
The fleeting ghost of a videogame producer moves in exact synch with my body. Someone else than him will do the travel. Some other form of me, having shedded me, will board a plane a month from now.
Such is the price of the first step: you feel the wind mess up your hair as you slip off the cliff, not knowing yet the thrill of the jump.
Helene and I are hard at work selling everything, and will be leaving Edmonton on the 23rd and 25th of July, respectively. In the meantime, if you live in the Edmonton area, I know a great couch looking for a new home. Check out Helene’s sale listing if you’re interested in helping us get rid of stuff!
