Eastender Blues

I grew up in Regina's east end, and I've recently returned. I hardly left it until I was in my twenties, and I still don't feel totally at home anywhere else. The trouble is, lately I don't feel at home here, either.

I don't want to talk about everything that's wrong with the east end. The critic has talked about that already. Yes, it's tragic that east Regina is turning into a dreadful pastel suburbia full of SUVs and parking lots and ticky-tacky little boxes and bigger boxes where you can buy tacky furniture for your little ticky-tacky box. North Regina is going the same way. It's happened to many, many parts of many other cities, and it will happen to many more. This is sad; but the real tragedy lies less in where these places have gone than in what they've lost getting there.

I know: east Regina was never on anyone's five-neighbourhoods-to-see- before-you-die list. When I was a kid, it was nothing but low-income housing and a highway. When they built the mall, it was across from a plant that made concrete bricks. We lived close to the edge of the city: I could walk a block, and see fields full of stubble. The only thing further east was a lot that sold used trailers. It wasn't exactly pretty.

It wasn't exactly affluent, either. The neighbourhood I lived in was just wealthy enough to be boring. It was full of the sort of families who could afford a house -- but only the sort of house where the builders had cut corners, like using aluminum wiring (legal here in those days) or putting the studs in the walls too far apart to save lumber. There were lots of kids, lots of pickup trucks, lots of street hockey and lots of fights.

This all sounds like a terribly generic blue-collar suburb in the 1980s. It wasn't. It was terrifically, sometimes painfully specific: I was always aware that whatever happened there, good or bad, would never have happened in quite the same way anywhere else. That's why for years I hated it more than any other place on the planet: everything bad that had happened to me happened to me in that particular way because I lived in east Regina. Then I lived in a few other places for a while. Good and bad things happened there, too -- every bit as good and bad as they had been in east Regina, just not quite the same. I didn't hate it anymore. I started to miss it. I didn't have any romantic delusions that things would be better back home; I just missed the peculiar east-Reginan way that things happened there.

And now I'm living here again, and I still miss it. The particularity of east Regina is gone. Instead, there's a certainty that anything here (and increasingly, that anyone here) could be found in just about any other suburb in English-speaking North America.

Some might claim that this is the price of growth and affluence. But any new wealth remains concentrated in a few hands. The nice, new subdivisions have nice, new walls around them; the working-class neighbourhoods are still gritty and, in places, squalid -- perhaps more so than ever. But even the poorer neighbourhoods have no sense of place, now. Thanks to the creeping Walmartization of virtually every major retailer, even squalor has become generic.

What saddens me is that east Regina now seems to signify precisely this generic quality, this utter lack of uniqueness, when the real east Regina was wiped out and paved over almost before it could figure out what it was. It was rough and a bit dodgy, but it was itself, and when you were there, you knew where you were.

The Need for Speed

I grew up in southern Saskatchewan, and called Regina home during highschool, four years of university, and four more years of life as a teacher. However, like many young Saskatchewanians seeking an adventure and a life without Agribition, my wife and I ventured overseas to teach.

For two years, we dealt with a constant language barrier, unresponsive public utilities, corrupt traffic police, shady trips through immigration, an inconsistent grocery supply, and everything else that comes with living as an expat in a developing country. The biggest initial shock was the traffic: there are some traffic lights, but they aren't necessarily obeyed. There are five motorbikes on the road for every car. On each of these five motorbikes are up to seven people at a time. Yes, I said seven. At one time. Traffic never really stops -- and isn't confined to the right side of the road. However, with practice, we both became comfortable navigating the streets.

That said, in the last months before coming home, we both reflected that we were excited to get back to driving in Regina. However, all it took was our first trip on Ring Road to notice the need for speed Reginans now feel. Driving in the right hand lane at 100km/h is almost dangerous because you are going so slow compared to the rest of the traffic. God forbid you try driving 90km/h to conserve. Expect people to come up behind you quickly, and give you a dirty look as they fly by, shaking their heads.

When did we get into such a hurry? To travel on Ring Road from Albert Street North to Albert Street South is 16km. At 90km/h it will take 10 minutes and 40 seconds. At 100km/h this will take 9 minutes and 36 seconds. At 110km/h it will take 8 minutes and 43 seconds. At 120 km/h it will take 8 minutes. What are people doing with that 1:36 that makes it worth endangering people's lives for? Watching 2/75ths of an episode of So You Think You Can Dance?

A New Power Rises in the East

When I was in high school, the city was divided North-South. The Northenders had mullets, drove Camaros, wore tight black jeans, and listened to heavy metal. They parked their Camaros in the Toys-R-Us parking lot and compared engines of a Friday night. The Southenders were rich, snobby preps who studied for their IB exams and/or got drunk at basketball games of a Friday night - or so my Eastender husband tells me. I would have painted the Southenders differently, being one.

At the time, the East End was dead to me. It only had one high school and a lame mall. It was a non-entity.

Twelve years later, I fear the East End. It is a bloating, teeming, florid conglomeration of our neediest, most thoughtless desires. Feeling lonely, and in need of a new coffee table for a pick-me up? Drive your SUV down a warren of poorly-planned, treeless roads to an Ikea knock-off box store. Want a glass column filled with coloured pebbles for your coffee table? Visit one of many dollar stores or craft bazaars. Crave a faux Italian eating experience? Select from several chain restaurants with patios overlooking neighbouring concrete parking lots. Still not happy? Why not? Don't you live in an enormous beige stucco pasteboard house overlooking mud flats on the eastern edge of the city? Is your daily solo commute downtown not quite long enough to prove that you live in the most desirable eastern location?? Is your lawn sprouting a weed???

I have a feeling this will be the first of a few posts about the east end.

Regina Nostalgia

Thank you The Critic for starting this page. I’ve been away living in Toronto for almost four years and my last visit was a week long, back in October 2006. A week is not a lot of time to observe how the city is really changing, so my recollections of my hometown are already way outdated. I’m returning for eight months on contract for work. It will be interesting to jot down my nostalgic notions of the place before I get to know the new Regina.

Unlike The Critic, I love change. Regina stayed the same for too long for me. The same job for a small company. The same walk through same deteriorating downtown. The same students at the fitness centre where I taught. The same pubs, the same stores, the same faces at the super market.

When I moved to Toronto (I moved for love, not for Toronto), I discovered what transition is really about. I swear, businesses in my neighbourhood rotate every month. A Thai restaurant is suddenly a water specialty store (?). That girl down the street who looked friendly moved before I could ever say hi. I have yet to see the same person twice at my gym. This city changes on the hour and sometimes it makes me very nervous.

I missed familiarity. Regina started to look better and better. In Regina, I not only knew how to get somewhere, I knew the shortcut. I had a great routine. I knew people. I could afford to buy a house someday soon (though I hear that may not be the case anymore). Overall, I think I was healthier and happier.

Or, was I? This is the Grand Experiment for me.

Things I’m looking forward to:

• Knowing where everything is
• Wide, open spaces to run the dog
  
• Sky you can see to the end
• Fewer line-ups
• Fresh, breathable air
• Rider pride enthusiasm and community spirit

Things I’m not looking forward to (and that are certainly not unique to Regina):

• That suburb feeling and big box store culture
• Having no choice but to buy a car
• Polite but firm dismissal of anything having to do with Toronto. Regina can be very “why would you ever live anywhere else?" More so than Toronto, actually (it’s too busy gazing at London, New York and LA, but that’s another column).

I think that a lot of these are assumptions based on nostalgia and memory, both suspect on a good day. The Real Regina might be something completely different by now. Will I love it? Will I hate it? Will I have absolutely no opinion at all?

I wonder.

Is there still a turtle at Les Sherman park?

Kicking off the Campaign

Regina is the place that I always come home to. I've lived in a big west coast city, a small northern village, a Eurasian capital, and a university town in the Deep South, but I've always come home to this claustrophobe's paradise. I appreciate Regina anew each time I return. After my last sojourn away, I am proclaiming my love for Regina because I have never seen a cockroach here. (No, don't tell me your cockroach stories. I have never seen one here and never intend to.) I love the tenacious handplanted trees that blanket the city. I enjoy the small city size that allows me to frequently run into people I know and yet easily avoid seeing people I don't want to see. Mostly, I like the familiarity and the memories that places evoke - I'm an elderly person at heart.

Because I am elderly-hearted, I hate change. You could chalk up this curmudgeonly blog to my excessive nostalgia - if I hadn't recruited other ex-pat Reginans to contribute as well. There have been incremental changes for a while now, but in this past year, Regina has changed remarkably. Perhaps irrevocably. And we're going to complain about it.

Let the finely honed, articulate, incisive carping begin!