Meet a Subscriber: P.J. from Canmore

A Lean Out reader reflects on her optimism about the future of Canada: 'We might just be in the messy period before better things happen'

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Last month, Lean Out piloted a new column, Meet a Subscriber. The response was overwhelming, and so we are pleased to announce that we’re adding it to our regular rotation of offerings.

Today, allow me to introduce P.J. from Canmore, Alberta, a long-time subscriber. In this edited and condensed conversation, taped on January 30, P.J. and I discuss the current moment in Canada, the challenges we’re experiencing as a country — and why she’s feeling optimistic about our future, despite it all.

Tara: What do you want your fellow subscribers to know about you?

P.J.: Well, I’m a Westerner, in a way. I have lived in every major city in Western Canada in my adult life. I am currently living here in the Rocky Mountains because I love the land and the people. I know everybody feels this way about where they live, but I would defend it [by saying] that I live in the best place, with the best neighbours, including all the elk and the wolves and the ravens.

My work intersects a lot of different fields that maybe you wouldn’t traditionally think of coming together. My partner and I have a business with multiple streams, and so generally speaking, I’m working in entrepreneurship and communications. My day might look like this: I do some reading and thinking and writing and strategizing, I might do a bit of teaching or developing curriculum. I might be planning a community-building singing event for Friday night. There are a lot of different pieces there, including technology as well. So, I have this sort of strange background that gives me access to a lot of different fields of thought and study. I think it has really helped me, especially in the last few years, to make sense of the world.

I’m Gen X, like you, and I know many of the readers. And so, I feel very in between things, in a positive way — a bridge between the people who are a little bit older and a little bit younger than me. Having grown up knowing what a vegetable looks like, but at the same time absolutely loving what technology does for me and how I can use it. Seeing both sides of the economic and political concerns that seem to divide generations.

I’m very much in the middle of my work life. I’m not retiring anytime soon, if at all. So, I find it an interesting spot to be in, generationally. I have realized recently how much that impacts how I see the world and how I see our country right now.

Tara: Tell me about Canmore. What is your community like? What are the big concerns there? What are your neighbours thinking and talking about right now?

P.J.: One of the big things is always the tension between development and environmental concerns. One of our big challenges here, of course, is that progressively, after the 1988 Olympics, Canmore got more and more known, more and more popular. People come and stay here instead of Banff. And so, we have this huge hospitality and service industry. A lot of people now that are supporting retail and restaurants and hotels can’t afford a place to live. To give you an idea, we have something called Canmore Housing, which is attempting to build more housing for people, a very honourable pursuit of the community. But what they consider the top income that you can have to apply for that — I think it’s something in the neighborhood of $200,000 to $250,000. So, affordable housing is if you have a household income of $200,000? I mean, it’s mind-boggling.

I really do feel that there is a core of good and conscientious and hardworking and land-loving and community-loving people here. The challenges that we face are still unique to here. But also, [we have] what you hear about in the rest of Canada: housing and economics and everything else.

Tara: You have written in the comments section of this newsletter about having a mixed-race marriage and how that has impacted how you see the world, especially during this last couple of years. Tell us more about that.

P.J.: It’s interesting, because we just celebrated our 25th anniversary. That means, of course, that we got married in the 90s. At the time, our entire friend group was people who were either mixed-race, or first-generation immigrants from whatever country in the world, or second-generation immigrants. There was this real sense I felt — in our friend group anyways, and I’m not extrapolating this to the larger culture — but there was this real optimism around that. “This is Canada, and we are the future.” I don’t have kids, but I’m very involved with my nephews and niece, and all the kids being born are of this new culture that is Canada. As you will have gleaned from some of my comments, both my partner and I are a bit discouraged by the encouragement of divisiveness in Canada right now, from either side of the political spectrum. I’m kind of politically agnostic about that. In particular, it feels to me that the consensus we’ve lost around immigration is a huge grief. Because I think it leads to divisions in the culture that just don’t need to be there, but somehow have arisen again.

I don’t know, I humbly submit that maybe our friend group wasn’t what the rest of the country looked like and that maybe we were overly optimistic. But from the perspective of this household, it feels like something has shifted, and it’s hard to name.

Tara: How does that impact your day-to-day life? When do you notice it most?

P.J.: In our day-to-day life, it doesn’t matter. We have a beautiful friend and family group. And in the work that we do, particularly in the stream that my partner operates, which has to do with technology, it’s not even a conversation. You expect in that field to find people from all walks of life, all cultures, all races.

It’s more of a morale thing. I read the news and get sad, and then I wonder if I’m protected in a little bubble where other people are experiencing things that I’m not aware of. Then that comes to the question: What is the news that I’m receiving, and how much of it is valid? How much of it is true?

Tara: How are you feeling about our media right now?

P.J.: I was thinking about this because I know you are writing a book about it. I remember a few years back, before Covid, when I was living in Vancouver. I was invited to this media event somehow. I won’t say the names of anybody, but there was somebody there who was retiring who had been what I felt was a strong and unifying voice in the Canadian media for decades. I shook this person’s hand, and I thanked them sincerely for their service. I really meant it — and I still mean it.

I know, because I experienced this in the industries I deal with, too, that there are good people everywhere. I appreciate you always pointing out on the podcast that there are good people in journalism.

And then, cut to Covid. I’m reading things, because I’m capable in a rudimentary way of reading a social sciences [paper], or a medical study, and listening to the commentary on that and understanding it. And I have feelings about it. So, I start blogging on my social media for the usual collection of riffraff we all have on our social media, the people that know me, former clients, friends, colleagues. I was seeing that not only is there what you might expect — the relief of being seen and heard in a different way — but also the sources that I’m bringing into what I’m writing about as a personal essay, people are almost treating it as journalism. Because they are not getting this information anywhere else.

At the time, I noticed that and kind of laughed at some of the comments. But later on, I realized how alarming that actually was. Because as much as I try to quote sources responsibly, if I use them at all, I’m not a journalist, I’m a personal essayist. And okay, I might be responsible with that information. But who else is on the Internet writing about stuff, and not doing the research, and not quoting their sources, and not providing receipts? And so, that was discouraging.

Then, though, there was that galvanizing moment when I started to see people like you and The Line and young podcasters like Aaron Pete, and then in the U.S., Breaking Points and The Free Press, and in Europe, UnHerd, emerge. I feel really excited about that. And I feel like whenever anything is in flux, in the midst of the evolution, it gets a bit messy. But for me, I’m actually quite optimistic and excited about what is emerging out of all that in Canada.

Tara: I share your optimism for sure, for sure. It is a difficult time in media. But on the other hand, like you say, I think it is helpful that there are more perspectives in the field now. I’m curious about what issues you are following most closely. What most matters to you right now around what’s happening in our country?

P.J.: It’s interesting, because it is not the big bugbear that is at the top of everybody’s minds, about the 51st state and the tariffs. It’s more what those things reveal about what was already here.

I remember that experience that all of us of a certain age had. If you traveled to Europe, they told you to put the [flag] decal on your backpack: “You’re Canadian, people will love you.” That was indeed my experience when I lived and worked in France. It opened all these doors, and I had this visceral sense of pride, really for the first time, in my country. I really got it in that moment. I don’t necessarily think that, on the ground level, that other citizens of other countries see us differently yet. It’s not so much that. I was just in Europe, and we were received really well. But it is more that my feelings about that have become increasingly complex over the years.

I have spent a lot of time in Ontario. I did live there for a year, and I have lots of family in Toronto. And having lived in all these different cities, and having lived abroad, I was never the person that had that sort of west-versus-east, the Laurentians-versus-Alberta, thing.

But being back here now, really committing to being somewhere after moving around for a while, I do see the claims of … I don’t know if it’s injustice, or just disregard or disrespect that is maybe there from history, I’m not sure. But there is something there in how the siblings don’t get along. I’m careful about putting words to it because I don’t want to stoke the flames, I don’t think that’s helpful. And I don’t think that at a person-to-person level, that’s how Canadians operate. But there does seem to be something, and I certainly do see it reflected back in journalism and how, for example, interviews with our premier in Alberta get approached. Or how they get headlined on YouTube, or those kinds of things.

I have this question: How are we a country? Do we have a sense of a story that unifies us? How is it that we are able to span geography, and psychology in a way, in this broad, huge space, and have anything that makes us feel like the 24-year-old kid who grew up in a neighbourhood of Toronto and works in it has something in common with the farm kid on the free range chicken farm that I encounter when I go to the farmers’ market out here?

I guess I have this question: Are we a country? Do we have a sense of a story that unifies us? How is it that we are able to span geography, and psychology in a way, in this broad, huge space, and have anything that makes us feel like the 24-year-old kid who grew up in a neighbourhood of Toronto and works in IT has something in common with the farm kid on the free range chicken farm that I encounter when I go to the farmers’ market out here?

It’s not anybody’s fault. But I think it just takes an act of wild imagination and empathy, and really a conscious practice, to put yourself into the mind and heart of someone whose life is so different than you. That is something that journalism could be doing for us.

Tara: I feel like the CBC used to do that, and I miss it so much.

P.J.: Me too. Me too. I grew up very much with that. There was always the transistor radio that my dad had running in the background of the house …

So yeah, I don’t think that any individual Canadians are to blame. I think we generally bare goodwill to each other. But there is something that’s happened. We are not able to connect with a story that helps us put it all together. I think there is something there. Again, it is hard to put a finger on it.

I also find myself a little disappointed. To me — I’ve heard you express this, and many guests on podcasts — the biggest differential in this country is along economic lines. I find it disappointing that that seems to get covered over in the discourse, and that I sometimes feel like my fellow citizens are a bit disengaged around that. Again, I don’t know that it is anybody’s fault. I think we are all exhausted, and sometimes don’t know how to engage, or don’t know which lever to pull.

I notice if I post a photo of what me and my partner did this weekend, it gets all the likes and all the loves. If I post about our freedom expression on the Internet going away, it’s crickets. I know that’s partly algorithms, but still.

I guess all that is to say: I feel really cautious about blaming the political class for anything that we perceive or don’t perceive as going on in Canada. Because I think if there is enough movement among citizens, things happen. And so, my question is always: How do we show up for each other so that we have the energy, the resources, to actually contribute meaningfully to civic life?

Tara: I think about that a lot too. There are so few outlets now for us to come together that don’t cost money. How do you create spaces where people can encounter people of different economic classes, of different backgrounds, and talk through some of these issues in an informal way where the stakes aren’t super high? We don’t really have a lot of those places anymore. Do you know of any in your community?

P.J.: That is a fantastic question. One of the pieces of my work that I have determined is not the main money-maker, and therefore raises the question around this, is that I facilitate community song circles. The idea is that you come together, whether or not you think you can sing, and you sing together. We do simple songs from various traditions, that are positive in message. In the past, I have done folk songs or circle songs or mantra songs, those types of things that are easy to come together, easy to harmonize. We are not sitting there talking about politics, but we are coming together to harmonize and to be together in a meaningful community activity.

The quality of conversations that come after that, when you serve tea and cookies, are really something to behold. But the challenge — and this gets to your point — is that where I live [is expensive]. I think this is true in a lot of urban centres. But here, because we are a tourist town, it’s really escalated. The cheapest place I could find for a two-hour song circle sometimes is $400, $500. What does that do to my ability to offer that without charge, which is what I want to do?

For me, one of the things I have run smack-up against in my attempts at community-building through song is the lack of actual physical spaces that are free to use and that are designed for a purpose like that, and that don’t have an affiliation with a particular religious group. It’s interesting, because the challenge is the place, the space.

Tara: That is interesting. Just to close, you mentioned your optimism. I can feel it talking to you, and I do share it. What are you most optimistic about looking at this next period of time?

P.J.: I love that question. My partner and I, as we run our business, we spend the mornings in the darkness, with the fire and the candle. We meditate. Or I go out and gather information in the news, and then we have a bit of a free-flowing session. A lot of the times we’re talking about the things that concern us in the world, and talking through our feelings around that. What almost always emerges, even when we are almost laughing at the level of chaos and the ridiculous turnover of the news cycle — if it wasn’t our lives, it would be entertaining how much drama is going on — but what comes out of that is this sense that in the [chaos] comes the possibility for new things to emerge.

I have this background in gathering a bunch of people together who have never met, and may or may not be singers, and making music together. I have this template. If you create the right container, you can trust the process. If you just create a little bit of a sense of safety and security and belonging that people can participate in, interesting and often beautiful and unexpected things emerge.

I don’t say that with any degree of Pollyanna. If you were the fly in the wall for our morning conversation, you would hear me just railing on about whatever [is in the news]. So, the optimism comes with a lot of hard work. But I do feel that even in the current so-called existential crisis, as the media are calling it, of what is transpiring with this president in the United States, there is the possibility for a whole new set of things to emerge. We might just be in the messy period before better things happen.