Deciding to Stay in Saskatoon

I’ve come to the decision to stay in Saskatoon. In seven days I will officially have been here a year. I really thought I would just flounce back to Vancouver, but for a lot of reasons I’ve decided not to. For one thing, Vancouver is fucking expensive. I hate having roommates because I’m hard to live with and I know it, so I kept ending up in teeny apartments, I mean 300 sq feet or less. And my books were starting to overwhelm my living space. So living in Saskatoon gives me WAY more space for the same amount of rent. Plus I am close to my cousins again, and I’ve wanted to get to know them better. And I have, but one of the things that made me sad was not getting to know Chris better before he died. He was a pretty cool guy, and god he was so young when he died. Just out of high school. It’s harder when people who are young die.

Also the film industry here is going crazy. Charlize Theron was just down in Regina last month shooting a film. Capote was shot next door in Manitoba, and the infamous Brokeback Mountain next door in Alberta. The costs of making a film here are way less than say, Toronto, or Vancouver for sure. A lot of Canadian comedies are coming out of here too. Plus the best Aboriginal actors come from Canada, and we have no star system. Some people say that’s terrible “Oh my god! No star system!” I think that’s silly. We have Sarah Polley. And if Canadians really want to get into the star system they just leave Canada altogether.

I remember Sarah Polley when she was still a child actor running around in an Anne of Green Gables spin off called Road to Avonlea. So very Canadian.

If the film industry here is booming, so is paranormal activity, like you would not believe. I have seen and experienced some weird shit here. My friend Preston’s roommate has a poltergeist. I have a poltergeist at work who bangs things. I’ve seen UFO’s with my friend Laurel, my cousin has seen a TON of UFO’s, and I found someone else online who’s been seeing tons of them lately. They’re invading and Saskatoon is going to be the intergalactic customs station. It would create jobs. Really though, I have no idea what they’re up to, it was kind of creepy, especially the first one that looked like some kind of dimensional portal opening up, but now it’s getting to be old hat. You know you’re jaded when a poltergeist can’t get a rise out of you. Although if it threw something at my head I’m sure I’d be pissed. Lucky for me I’ve mostly experienced this stuff with other people, so I know for sure it’s real. Sometimes I let weird shit happen just because I assume I must be hallucinating. No, it’s true, that water cooler jumped around. Oh. Fancy that. It’s a real great denial mechanism for creepy shit. Oh, I am seeing things, oh well, I’ll just ignore it, it’s probably my brain having a hiccup. Meanwhile another person with me would yell “Holy shit! Look at that!”

A doppleganger would scare the hell out of me though, or those animals with human faces, ugh, don’t want to see any of that kind of shit. I used to want to experience these things, but now I don’t anymore. It’s interesting though that paranormal events seem to be ramping up. I don’t know if it’s happening in other places. I’ve been having some weird visions too, but I won’t say them.

The other thing I like about living in Saskatoon is being able to learn my language. People keep talking about indigenous languages dying out, so there’s been a revival of the languages. A really cool thing is that a lot of white people are learning our languages too. I like that there are non-Aboriginals who see the use and importance of learning our languages. Who knows, maybe we’ll end up with half of the Cree speakers being Euro-Canadians.

So yeah, I’ll stay here. I’ll probably travel a lot though, or as much as possible. But this isn’t such a bad home base. It could be worse, it could be a two room apartment in the Downtown Eastside.