From the Centre of Anatolia to the Coast of British Columbia

For anyone that has gone overseas for a certain amount of time, they know that reentering the "home" country is a far taller order than leaving it in the first place. Indeed, the greatest culture shock comes with a return, not with a departure.

So while I had spent most of my July and August engaged in various pursuits such as drinking tea with ex-PKK prisoners while discussing the interrelationship between Marxism and Anarchism, monitoring general elections in 46 degree weather, endlessly riding buses with broken air conditioners while my seatmates vomitted, trying to speak Dutch with returning Turkish migrant workers at sacred springs while the Army and the PKK traded salvoes in the surrounding hills, cutting my fingers while trying to open packages of water with my Serbian knife while talking to Communist insurgents, discussing German linguistic minutiae workers at a Fascist-run hotel, getting sick, getting sick again, getting sick and going to the doctor, getting even sicker and going back to the same doctor and being told I just needed to drink more raki, having small Turkish nurses inserting large needles into my.....lower body, riding brakeless motorbikes along the Meditarranean Coast in order to get more large needles inserted into my....lower body by different, small Turkish nurses, watching the waves crash along the Meditarranean shore, watching the waves crash along the Bosphorus, pretending to know how to dance to Gypsy music (for a second time), and any number of related pursuits, my flight on the 13th of August approached just a bit to rapidly to get everything done, let alone allow me the time to prepare for a reentry into the white Canadian suburbs.

The greatest antidote (or at least temporary postponement of the inevitable), then, would be a holiday upon returning to the Great White North. The destination was Bella Coola, a village situated in the rain-soaked Coast Mountains along Canada's rugged fjord-lined Western shore. The region is typically marked by a) A near total lack of humans, and b) An inverse abundance of bears, whales, mountain lions, eagles and anything else German and Japanese tourists spend thousands of dollars to come and see (directed to the latter group of tourists are many signs in the province suggesting to would be photographers that posing for pictures with grizzly bears is generally not recommended --- although, to be fair, when I managed to spot a bear in one village, I spent the better part of 15 minutes intelligently poking around bushes looking for it in order to take its picture, so I suppose I have no right to criticize).

The trip was also with my family, which meant that not only was I saved the burden of actually spending money, but it also meant that I did not need to resort to spending the night in hotels frequented by fairly prolific Moroccan ladies of the night (not to my room I assure you) or subsisting on apples and bread as my main sources of sustenance.

But, thankfully, the trip was not in total luxury (luxurious things can become somewhat dull quickly), for the trip was centred around a 25 hour ferry ride, which, for my mother, is somewhat slightly longer than eternity, but for me, is the equivalent of a bus ride from Istanbul to Van, and thus not very long at all.

The ferry, which can only run in summer due to the severity of Canada's winter storms, is the main source of supplies for many isolated communities along the fog drenched coast, including Ocean Falls, population 38. In a lesson that oil boomtowns (perhaps also the Gulf countries as well) should heed well, the town had a population of 5,000 in the earlier part of the 20th century, replete with bowling alleys, a pool, a vibrant multicultural community (until the Canadian government "cleansed" the town of its Vietnamese population and bulldozed their houses, Nicolae Ceauşsescu style, in the 1940's), a rather popular bordello (for those who were so inclined), plus the largest hotel on the Western North American Coast north of San Francisco for a good part of the early 20th century. Alas, when the town's main employer, the local sawmill, closed its doors in 1968, the town essentially died --- but for the 38 hardy souls that continue to work for the province's electricity company.

But while the residents of Ocean Falls were discussing current affairs and playing chess at the very popular local brothel, the residents of Sointula, a few hours down the coast, were busying themselves creating a socialist utopia. Started by Finnish socialist utopians in 1901, the town of Sointula (meaning 'Place of Harmony' in Finnish) has long been a stronghold of the left and other alternative thinkers in the province of British Columbia.

The utopia, unfortunately, did not even last a decade (the town's charismatic leader, Matti Kurikka, left the settlement in 1905 after the town cooperative's disastrous bid on a nearby bridge contract left Sointula bankrupt --- ideological visionaries are perhaps good at persuading people and pointing to (typically unfulfilled) glorious futures, but they are not known for their mathematics and accounting skills: The cooperative bid on the construction of a bridge, but only estimated the cost of the materials involved (neglecting the cost of labour), meaning that Sointula's residents were forced to work for free on the construction of the bridge for two years: Matti Kurikka, gifted and charismatic Marxist theoretician though he was, was evidently found lacking in the more numerical sciences...) before being disbanded. The town survived, however, and continues to retain both its original Finnish character and its anti-establishment ethos. Indeed, but for electricity and broadband internet, services are by and large contributed by the locals themselves, while the town's cooperative store is the oldest in British Columbia.

Alas, Turkish tea, Turkish breakfast, football, and other more Anatolian pursuits do not exist on Canada's West Coast. At least, however, I can be assured that there are interesting things to see on the shores of my own country, something I never thought possible until now --- whether they be decaying hotels in Ocean Falls, Finnish socialists in Sointula, 18% grade mountain roads, some of the most varied topography found anywhere in the world or good salmon. Hopefully the return to a life of graduate studies and suburban existence will have similar happy returns...

The present guests of Ocean Falls' hotel

A banner in Sointula, pointing the glorious socialist future.