September 2024
Ben Shragge

“Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house,” God says to Abraham in the Book of Genesis, “to the land that I will show you.”

God wasn’t so direct with me, but in 2015, I did leave my home and native land  — Canada, O’ Canada — to come to the land that TV and movies showed me: the United States of America.

I’m not one to leave a comfy spot — my bed, my couch, to say nothing of my country — very easily.

In my hometown of Hamilton, where I was living, I had friends, family, a library card from when I was 12ß, and intimate knowledge of each Tim Hortons and every route to get there. These things, except the library card, are hard to replace.

But I also had an apartment filled with cockroaches. I cleared out my cupboards for the exterminator to lace with poison, multiple times; I filled up every crack and crevice to block their path; I did the dishes right away and maniacally scoured for crumbs; I used the power of positive thinking to visualize setting them all on fire with a flamethrower. But the awful little personal-space invaders kept on coming back. I’m still haunted by the image of drinking a cup of coffee, and then opening the coffeemaker to find a roach squirming in the grounds. Now it’s in your head too. Enjoy.

Around this time, I received an offer from the Hamilton-based medical publisher I worked for to move to Boston, where many of our physician-authors were based. It wasn’t the most lucrative offer — my pay was not commensurate with the higher cost of living — but Boston seemed like a cool place to live for a time and roaches are a great motivator. I was ready to get the hell out of dodge, just as my grandparents fled Europe in the face of pogroms. I put my furniture in storage, my car in a garage, and told the landlord — in a most polite, Canadian way — to screw off. Violent mobs made my ancestors move to Canada; invading roaches drove me away.

I wasn’t planning to stick around for too long, because who wants to put in the time making new friends and family—family being especially tricky to make—and getting familiar with every Tim Hortons again; or “Dunks,” as it’s called here. There’s also having no credit history, needing a work visa, international tax complications, and not being under the protection of the Queen to worry about. But then, there are a lot of jobs in Boston; more, in my industry it seemed, than in all of Canada. Plus I was single then, so both professional and romantic opportunities seemed to beckon.

I met someone in Boston and found a new job, left someone and found a different job, and felt homesick until I went home one time to find it didn’t quite feel like home anymore. I noticed when people said “eh,” whereas before I thought it was natural. I watched coverage of a scandal in which the Prime Minister accidentally knocked someone over, and thought, “How cute, that’s what they think a scandal is.” I realized my friends and family had changed, I had changed, Tim Hortons had changed, and the old saying is true: you can’t go home again. Well, Tim Hortons hadn’t really changed: same old mediocre coffee wrapping itself in hockey and the flag. But everything else felt different.

Now when I catch myself being too polite, I repeat the American mantra, “Don’t tread on me,” and visualize myself as a coiled snake. Now I know people from exotic places I’d only heard about on TV, like Oregon, North Carolina, and Connecticut. Now I think in miles, and after years of denial, have even set my weather app to Fahrenheit. Now, most importantly, I have a wife and two young kids, all of them American (though my kids, by virtue of their father, are dual citizens). I still miss my Canadian family, my childhood friends, and not having to know what a copayment is. But I’m here now, settled, like Abraham in the Promised Land. Though Canada will always be in my heart, my American citizenship application is in the mail.