East/West Relations

Despite my questionable residency in the eyes of some, Montreal is my home. I was born there, and though I was raised in Alberta, something never quite fit. I always felt mal a l'aise there. I grew tired of explaining to people that I wasn't a separatist, nor were my parents (despite the fact that such ignorant assertions made me sympathize with the separatist movement). I became annoyed that people could not understand that there was a difference between speaking French and being French Canadian. I developed an impatience for the government who propagated the idea that speaking French meant being French and being French meant being separatist. The Alberta goverment defines a francophone as an individual who's first language is French, or who has spent two or more years in a francophone school. According to the government, I was francophone. It's not that it's offensive, it's just that it's always grating to labelled something you're not. I have the same reaction here when people call me American, or Russian. When I arrived in Montreal, I finally felt comfortable. Speaking French was somewhere between a bonus and an expectation and no longer meant that I was in league with Rene Levesque. My last name, Bogue Kerr, was no longer a great mystery that would require lengthy explanations.

Being that my parents and I left Quebec shortly after the referendum of 1980, it is little wonder that I grew up hearing the tales of injustice done to the English people of Montreal. Bill 101 had just kicked in, and guaranteed that my very English father would face challenges in his career. My parents tell tales of the clear French/English divide down Boulevard St Laurent and find it difficult to believe that my Montreal is so different. There are still tensions, it's true. I found working in restaurants that I would always get good tips from French tables if they didn't hear me speak English, and good tips from English tables if they didn't hear me speak French. If my sections were mixed, my tips were mediocre. When Fred and I were apartment hunting, my messages left in French guaranteed a phone call back, while his English messages went unanswered. Sure, the Office de la Langue Francaise keeps itself busy running around to offices and checking to make sure the inter-office emails are sent in French, but all in all, from the point of view of a bilingual Montrealer, tensions aren't so bad. Once I stopped saying that I was from Calgary in interviews, I never had another problem finding a job. It is a little ignorant to assume that a Calgarian could not speak French, but it is less ignorant than assuming that Montrealers cannot speak English.

I had a rough introduction to Montreal, but it quickly became home. I am proud to live in a city that is so rich and so diverse. I knew it was unique in Canada, but I never thought that it was unique on an international scale. When I arrived in Korea, a Korean co-worker was studying Montreal in University, as a model of a bilingual city. Discussion surrounding how to make Seoul the next Montreal in terms of bilingualism was a popular topic at her school. She was absolutely shocked to discover that the politics of speaking French or English in Montreal were so complicated. Today a Montrealer who is born and raised there should speak both languages, but still many don't. The reality is that Bill 101 has given anglophones the upper hand. Anglophone children are going to school in French, so they learn to speak both languages fluently. Francophone children have no choice but to go school in French, and so they only learn French. I can't imagine being 25 years old and realizing I couldn't work in Toronto.

All that said, my point is this. The English language is artificially migrating all over the world in the name of progress. Languages are meant to evolve and change, but in an effort to keep pace with faster growing economies and an increasingly educated population, some countries are being pushed years ahead of where they actually should be. Korea has only just begun to accept foreigners into their country, but now we are here en masse. It didn't happen organically- it was forced. This country was devastated by war fifty years ago and they closed their doors to the world to rebuild. Up until 1980, Koreans were not allowed to travel outside of their country. It was a police state and they were striving to keep Korean money in Korea in an effort to rebuild the economy. When I look around, it is so difficult to wrap my mind around the rate of progress in this country. Soon after Koreans opened their doors to the world, English teachers began to trickle in. The country has quickly became Westernized, to the extent that children fail to realize where Korean culture ends and Westernized culture starts. But when two such different cultures begin to blend, we have to expect that there will tensions and challenges.

Before I arrived in Korea, I had heard that the police and media looked for excuses to pin things on foreigners. That in the media, foreigners were unfairly treated and torn apart. It makes me wonder, are they ready for Western culture? Are they pushing too hard? English teachers here have an E-2 visa, which allows us to work in a private English school, and prohibits us from working in other areas while under this visa. That also means that we are not permitted to take on private tutoring- a point of contention with foreigners and Koreans alike. Many Koreans don't have the time or the resources to attend private schools and seek out lessons with foreigners. The rule about private tutoring came about years ago because the media claimed that marriages were falling apart left, right and center because Western men were tutoring Korean women. Allegedly, these tutoring sessions resulted in affairs between Western men and Korean women, and as a direct result the institution of marriage in Korea was walking a fine line. I find it a little far fetched, but what can you expect? Rules were put in place to prevent this from continuing and most of all, to promote the conservation of the homogenous Korean race. As quickly as that issue was laid to rest, the next quickly took center stage. Western men were pushing their way off the plane, fresh from Canada or America and making their way through the streets of Seoul in hopes random women would begin throwing themselves at them. According to the Korean media, Western women were too independant and refused to care for their lovers, marry or have children, so they were forcing Western men to leave their countries in search of women in Korea. Korean women were caring, loving and subservient (said the papers), and that was what Western men wanted. But more then anything, Western men were here to deflower Korean women. The issue is ongoing and it is still taboo in the eyes of the older generations for Koreans to mix with Westerners. In the streets of Seoul, you see countless Korean women with Western men. But her parents usually don't know. I can understand the attraction between Korean women and Western men. The media almost got it right, but still missed.

Canadian women of my generation were raised to be strong and independant. Our mothers instilled in us the importance of standing on our own two feet. Of choosing a career path that we valued and never relying on a man to carry us along. But maybe we went too far. Many of us came to associate femininity with weakness, and so we suppressed it. We wanted so much to run with the boys that we came to embrace masculinity, leaving our feminine traits on the sidelines. We began to reject part of ourselves. I grew up a tomboy- and still am to some extent, and I remember being offended by being called feminine. I prided myself on being able to run as fast as the boys, but failed to realize that I didn't have to give up being a woman to do that. Feminism made many great strides in Western society, but that is one aspect where we seem to have fallen short. Feminism should be about choice. About choosing what it is you want for yourself, and being able to take that on without ostracism. But we still look at stay at home moms with a bit of pity. As though they aren't doing all that they dreamed because they're at home with the kids. If there's one thing that our generation should have learned, it is the value of having a parent at home. Maybe TV wouldn't have become a full time babysitter in so many houses if a parent could afford to stay at home.

Korean women have travelled. Many have spent time in Western countries and undoubtedly come back depressed. Freedoms enjoyed by Western women have yet to make their way to Korea. It is common for Korean women to have to ask permission of their husbands to go out with their friends. It is expected that they will do all the cooking and the cleaning. It is expected that they will have children and stay at home with them. It is expected that they will keep themselves delicate. Returning to Korea after time abroad is a difficult adjustment for most women. It follows that they would get on well with foreign men who won't have the same expectation of women's roles in society and in the home.

Some Western men, it seems to me, are at a bit of a loss to determine their roles. Women have developed independance to a point that relying on a man is no longer even a consideration for us. We've been raised that way. But men had little say in the changes that swept through the family homes and through society. Men have been socialized to believe that they are stronger than women- that they need to play the role of protectors. But we've asked them not to. We like to think we can take care of ourselves. Men will of course, always be physically stronger, but women have shown we can be just as strong in other ways. Many women are content being single mothers- making it increasingly common to raise their children alone. Our superwoman complex has put everything off balance. Of course it is possible for a woman to raise a child on her own, but that doesn't make it ideal. So we have taken from men both their roles as protector and provider, leaving them (I imagine) feeling a little unsure about what it is we want them to do. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. A man standing up on the subway to give his seat to a woman could be seen as charming by one woman and chauvanistic by the next. Is it any wonder that they are relieved to find themselves in a place that has clearly defined roles?

In Korea, man is king. Korean men are raised to expect that one day their wives will be gentle, caring and attentive with them. Who would give that up for a woman who will tell you when she's going out, not ask? For a woman who might cook, but only if he does the dishes? The combination is like oil and water, they just don't mix. After all, I wouldn't take too well to a man who expected these things of me.

One of my biggest frustrations this year has been with the lack of respect shown for my culture. I recognize I'm a guest here, and I need to accept Korean culture. And I have made an effort, but I have to draw the line at some point. When I'm out and about in the streets of Seoul, I accept Korean culture. I absorb it, I enjoy it, I suppress my frustrations with it. But when I arrive at school, I quickly lose my patience. I have tried to stress to the Korean teachers and the children the importance of learning about Western culture if they want to learn the language. It is impossible to properly learn a language without a concept of how the culture works. But this has fallen on deaf ears. In my culture, it is rude to laugh at others because they are different. But try as I might to express this to my kids- and my co-workers, they simply don't understand. They not only fail to see an issue, but in fact feel that being different is an adequate reason to be laughed at. It is frustrating that because Korean society is so regimented and there are rules for who deserves the most respect, those of us who fall outside of the rules don't get respect. It is so difficult to remember that as frustrating as it is to be treated like a new and interesting play thing, it is simply because Koreans have yet to find a place for foreigners in their culture. Working out the kinks, I suppose. The line between Korean and foreigner is clear cut. After eleven months, I can't help but roll my eyes when I'm asked absolutely ridiculous things about my culture. Like if we sometimes eat dinner at restaurants. Or if we drink beer in pubs. As though all the McDonald's restaurants in Canada are only a facade because Canadians only eat in the privacy of their own igloos. Much like the old English/French divide in Montreal, the Korean/English gap is wide in Seoul. I wonder if in the years to come, Korean culture will change by leaps and bounds and find reconciliation not only with a new language, but also with a new culture. As I prepare to leave Korea, I feel a bit like I'm leaving home. I know I'll always have a soft spot for Korea and I look forward to coming back here in ten, twenty and thirty years and seeing first hand how much of an impact we made by being here. I hope to see many blue-eyed Korean children on my next visit.

Cliches

On October 16th 2005, I boarded the plane in Montreal, said an emotional goodbye to Fred and his mom and made my way through the gate. I was leaving for Calgary, then onto Korea, but it still didn't feel real. It still hadn't clicked that I would spend the next twelve months in a country where I knew nothing of the culture or the language. And I would be doing it alone.

My stop in Calgary felt the same as always- Andrea and my mom met me at the airport and we went for lunch. Over the next few days I tried to squeeze in as many people as I cared to see. Diana and Jared were getting married, so I was sure to see all the old IMAX crowd there. I saw Andrea, Carrie and Clay, but as always not enough of them to last me the year before we would meet again. I spent alot of time with my mom this trip, and it was good. As always, I saw Rob without intending to, although this time I had an easy out as I was driving down 17th Ave or 'The Red Mile', at the time.

I realized it had been years since I stopped by Bishop Carroll (my high school) to say hi to my old drama teacher, Mr Doyle. I had seen him at Andrea's wedding briefly, but that whole day seemed so unreal to me and we barely spoke. So the day before I left Calgary, I made the trek out to my old school and swung the car into 'visitor parking'. I laughed as I tried to head in the side door by the drama room and found it locked- which it never was in my days there. I guess this was to prevent students from easily sneaking back into the school after they'd spent the day at the mall, or ironically hanging out at the college across the street. I stepped through the front door, and held back laughter as I realized every student in the halls were wearing ID tags with their name and Teacher Advisor. They had tried that with us, and failed. I was on my way to the drama room- fully intent on playing stupid if asked why I didn't have a visitor's pass, when I saw Mr Doyle in the front office. His face broke into an odd toothy smile when he saw me- an unexpected visit from a student he knew lived far away.

We finally made it down to his office in the drama room and caught up. He had heard of Tyler's passing, I had heard his wife had quit her job and was doing really well teaching art independantly. Mrs Doyle was the first person to break through to me about my tomboy routine. All through high school, I wore baggy clothes and scoffed at anything girly. Mrs Doyle walked in on a costume fitting when I was in grade twelve and she was shocked. Not only was I in a dress, but, she told me, had a body I should be showing off and not hiding under piles of clothes. Everything in Mr Doyle's office was exactly as it had been seven years before, except there was now a computer on his desk that I'm sure was in truth no more than a paper weight. I was the only one I knew who got hand written report cards in high school. As it always had been, the door to his office was open and there were students wandering in and out of the room. Two girls came in crying, telling him that they had to drop drama because they just didn't have time. He shot me a look and gave them the same lecture I had heard him give a hundred times when I was a student. "Do you love it? Why did you register for it? Why are you dropping it? Who told you that you had to? No, I won't let you drop it for those reasons. I can help you make it work." The two girls left and another student entered, tentatively. She wanted an extension on a paper that was due. As check- out time came and Mr Doyle distributed the familiar 'green slips' (how you got your marks at this strange school), I felt fifteen years old again. We wished each other luck, promised to stay in touch, and he ran off to deal with two students who had gotten so drunk at school that they were sick all over the bathroom. High school kids are all the same. Everything about high school is so cliches, especially those who try so hard to live outside the cliches. You're so self-centered and so dramatic at that age that it can't be any other way. Nobody can understand you. Your love, your pain, your frustration, your stress- everything is yours and no one else's.

Bishop Carroll was a weird school. Without regular classes and the trusting system that allowed you to finish your work when you felt like it, we were short on cliques. If you asked me who the popular kids were, I couldn't have been sure. The student council was run entirely by Drama students, but I definitely wouldn't say any of us were popular. At least not in the way it means to be popular at other schools. We had stoners, but in reality that was most of the school population. We had jocks, but they weren't labelled that way, they just were.

In the wake of this shooting at Dawson College, the subject of cliches come to mind. It's a familiar theme. The misfit takes revenge. We can all somewhat understand the anger and frustration that must be felt by kids that become the butt of all jokes, that are constantly picked on and excluded in school. Or at least I hope we can. Maybe I had it easy but somehow the pieces of this puzzle just don't fit to me.

I remember I was sitting at the Second Cup in Kensington (NW Calgary) with Stuart when we heard on the radio about the Columbine shooting. Over the next days, weeks, months, even years, information slowly leaked out. Movies were produced based on the incident- Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine tried to make sense of it. Teen angst, to the extreme. I remember in high school feeling so frustrated at points that it was impossible to see an end in sight. I remember feeling no one understood me. I remember being angry that I felt I had to put in my time at Bishop Carroll before I could move on to bigger and better things. I remember thinking high school was holding me back from doing all I wanted to do. I had friends though and I had passion- places to lose myself. I spent so much time in the theatre it shouldn't have been possible for me to graduate. I played soccer and basketball and I swam. Without these outlets, I may just have lost my mind. They kept me balanced in some ways. Sports gave me a place to work out my frustrations and gave me a rest from my constant stream of sad and angry thoughts. I was the cliche of the girl who tried too hard to do it all, who kept herself too busy so she never had to stop and think. Part of me could understand how people could snap under all the pressure of high school- without realizing that they are pressuring themselves, no one else particularly cares.

Grade twelve was a miserable year for me- I'd had enough. Everything suddenly felt so juvenile and I was ready to move on. It seemed so was everybody else. As the school year came to an end, I found myself thankful that I wasn't going straight to University the following year. I needed to break away from my high school group. The first thing you realize once you're out of high school is how much time you spent making a big deal about nothing. And you see yourself as an adult. Or most people do. You realize that the boxes that people put themselves in to make sense of themselves are nothing but limiting. You realize the grass is always greener. When Clay told me that his ex-girlfriend had been jealous when he and I became friends, I didn't understand. She always wanted to be part of the popular crowd, he had explained. I don't think I'd ever laughed so hard. I couldn't get over the fact that someone looked at the group of people I hung out with and were intimidated by us. Yearned to be friends with us. For god sakes, the guys in the group camped out for Star Wars tickets later that summer. There's nothing dorkier than that. Well, maybe Dungeons and Dragons.

The truly unfortunate thing about these high school cliches is how terribly normal everybody is. As hard as you might try to be different, there are always other people trying to be different in the same way. As I read the online updates from the Dawson shooting, my first assumption was that the young man must have been a student there. Even at that, the environment at Dawson is so drastically different from high school, it just didn't make sense. It's a college- cliques don't happen in college. School yard fights mostly end at snarky comments by that age. The pressures that one experiences in college have gone far beyond Mary talking behind your back. People are too frantic about getting work done to bother with such nonsense, not to mention that in a school of 10 000 people, no one stands out. Put all these factors together and then throw in the fact that Montreal is probably one of, if not the most diverse city in Canada. And it's difficult to be a misfit in a city that is so diverse, because everyone fits.

When the facts finally started coming out, I began to feel sick. At twenty-five years old and a resident of a burough of Laval, it seemed the shooter had no relationship whatsoever to the school. He lived with his parents. I assume it was their Sunfire that he hopped into to make the hour long drive to the school that day. A goth kid with a mohawk, the papers tooted. Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson blamed again. As I caught sight of the pictures on the website, the first thing I noticed was the complete absence of a mohawk. Maybe he stylized his hair differently for his day at Dawson. He may have been dressed head to toe in black, but he was no more goth than I am. A black polo shirt does not a goth make. The quotes off the web and the pictures with the guns revealed pieces of his identity. Far from being crazy, he in fact seemed normal to the extreme. Perhaps disgruntled more by the fact that he was still cast in the role that he created for himself in high school than by anything else. It's a lonely life if you refuse to grow from the identity you made for yourself at fifteen. Based strictly on the exerts I've caught from the paper, and knowing nothing about him as a person except for his final dramatic goodbye, it seems to me that's all he was after. A dramatic goodbye. Someone who was just so painfully normal and couldn't find any other way to set himself apart. He never attended Dawson college- didn't even live in Montreal. He didn't have a message like the Columbine shooters, or Mark Lepine from the infamous Polytechnic school shooting. He was just a painfully normal kid with no outlet for his angst.

A Severe Case of Commitment Phobia

I have always suffered from a severe phobia of commitment. From the time I moved out of my parent's home at the age of eighteen to twenty-one when I moved to Montreal, I count five apartments and twelve roommates. Alex was the only one that lasted a full year. The perpetually complex state of my revolving-door relationships must have been difficult for my friends to follow. Until I met Fred, the longest of these had lasted four months. The first of these four month relationships, was of course the infamous Rob who I believe was forced out of the apartment after promising to move to Montreal with me and revealing he believed we were 'meant for each other'. Famous last words, it would seem. The second of these was the less than infamous Daniel who was kept a guarded secret (one that mysteriously leaked out anyway, Caycee) because of the questionable age difference between us. Daniel saved me the trouble of ending our relationship at the four month mark when he announced he was moving to Ireland to pursue his Master's in Acting (or some such non sense). But Daniel had not yet boarded the plane when I met Fred. I distinctly remember telling Fajer (my roommate of the moment), that Fred terrified me because I had the unsettling feeling that he might break through the four month expiry date. It seems that uneasy feeling was right- here I sit four years later wondering how it is that he snuck up on me like that. I have come to realize that this fear of commitment is not unique to roommates, apartments and boyfriends. It seeps into every aspect of my life. I hate to make plans ahead of time- commitment phobic, you see. More than anything, this commitment phobia has affected my direction with theatre. Teachers and fellow students in school told me that I was a bit of a mystery to them- I had all the pieces to be really successful, but I was choosing not to put it all together. It's true. Putting all those pieces together means making a commitment to myself, to follow through. It means no more excuses, no more bad jobs. It means making a real commitment to theatre.
I glance at my fancy Korean cell phone and realize that the countdown it began long ago to my final days here is fast approaching. As I stumbled in late last night from a day out with Song, I began to feel the first pangs of resistance. Was I ready to leave? For months I had promised Song that I would be back, but the realization has begun to hit that this may be it. Maybe I won't be. Throughout this year, Fred and I have talked many times about returning to Asia together in the future. Part of me loves to believe that it'll happen, but another part of me wonders. I have been bitten by the travel bug- it is certain that I will find myself back 'dans ce coin', but in promising Fred and Song that I'll be back, I suddenly feel as though I'm promising to put my life on hold again. Life in Canada has been on pause for nearly a year now- my career and education plans put aside for a time while I take a year to work on me. The only thing that has changed in Canada is my relationship with Fred. It's continued to grow and change as it needs to under these odd circumstances. In saying that in two years we'll be back, implies that we'll be perfectly willing to again pause our lives in Canada and return to Asia. I'm not sure that's reality. I have found a direction this year. I have come to realize that committing to theatre does not need to mean a commitment to poverty. It doesn't necessarily mean that I am deciding to pursue acting at the exclusion of other interests.
Years ago someone told me that Sesame Street was to blame for the existence of Attention Deficit Disorder in our generation- that we had become so accustomed to receiving a full story in the space of a minute or two that this later affected out ability to focus in school. Perhaps. If this is true, than it is not only my knees that bore the brunt of my active childhood. My parents encouraged and supported my involvement in ballet, gymnastics, figure skating, soccer, basketball, baseball, swimming, synchronised swimming, horseback riding... the list goes on and on. It wasn't until I reached high school that the line was drawn, as it seemed that it was suddenly impossible to participate in everything that I wanted to. My activities were grudgingly narrowed to drama, soccer and basketball. Maybe this is where the reluctance to commit stems from. There's so many choices, so many options- why commit? Why should I choose? To be honest, I've come to realize that it is just not in my nature. There is too much to life that I want to experience, and I've acquired interests and skills in too many areas to say that 'this is it'. My reluctance to commit to theatre is exactly that. I have scattered passions, and I want to pursue them all. And I've realized I can.
Months ago I began to have minor panic attacks at the thought of returning to Montreal. The prospect of returning to customer service both infuriated and terrified me. Now I find myself looking to it excitedly- Montreal, that is, not customer service. At points this year, I have fallen into the trap of treating this year as though it's my one and only opportunity to make money. I felt incredibly guilty buying my computer, convincing myself that I should put the money aside for savings. Illogical when you consider that I'm not sure how I made it through my first degree without a computer, and I am certainly not going to do it again. I contemplated my trip to Taiwan, again thinking I should save the money instead. Fortunately logic kicked in at moments. I've waited since high school for an opportunity to travel, I'm not about to waste this opportunity to see the world. Further, this year has prompted me to see how many opportunities there are and assured me that if I am willing to go a few uncomfortable months upon my return to Montreal, it will pay off. I know what I'm going to do, and I love that I'm tossing around a hundred different possibilities, none of which involve passing out CVs to restaurants.
I seem to be rambling today. Truth of it is that my feelings about returning to Canada change every ten minutes, making it very difficult to articulate them without contradicting myself. Even with the contradictions, it's hard to communicate. Last week, my secretary at school passed me a belated-birthday present. I held back tears as I read her note that apologized for her poor English and expressed how sad she was that I would soon be going home. Kate and I have hardly spoken this year as her English is only slightly better than my Korean. I hadn't considered how difficult leaving was going to be until that moment. I never realized it was possible to feel so close to someone that you had exchanged so few words with. And even fewer were understood. My countdown tells me that I have 50 days until the end of my contract. Part of me feels like that I need more time. I wish I had fewer week-days and more week-ends before October 31st. As Song and I parted ways last night, I felt upset that I am now left with only six Saturdays before I head home. The interviews for the poor sap that will replace me are in full swing. Whoever it is will arrive in five weeks. October 31st will be an incredibly emotional day for me. Not only is it my last day at school, but it is also the two year anniversary of Tyler's death. Instead of rushing home after this emotional day, I'll be packing my bags to rush through Thailand, Laos and Cambodia (true to my nature, making things as difficult as possible) for two weeks before landing in Calgary to visit my mother and my few remaining friends. With all these thoughts floating in my head, I went to bed last night and called Fred this morning when I woke up. He was busy and we only spoke for a minute before hanging up. Suddenly the seven weeks before my departure felt like an eternity. I checked my cell phone, hoping that somehow in the last ten minutes time had sped up and it was finally October. No such luck. The end is so close and so far all at once- and time seems to be slowing down the more excited I become at the prospect of being home at last...