Last weekend, the fire alarm in my building went off without cause. Though there was no smoke or flames to be seen, I dutifully evacuated, taking with me my keys, phone, and camera, because the only thing worse than my building burning down would be my building burning down and taking my work camera with it.
As I sat on the hood of my car in the summer sunshine and waited for the fire department to arrive, clusters of people came wandering out of the building, standing in small groups in the shade, talking, gossiping, and catching up with one another. That's when I realized I did not recognize a single person who apparently lived next to me, not by face, nor by name.
Growing up, moving from one army base to the next, I remember no matter which part of the country we were in, at the end of every summer, the Military Family Resource Centre would throw some sort of barbecue and all the neighbourhood kids and their families would gather somewhere to meet, form new bonds before the school year started, and get to know each other.
In Victoria, before I started kindergarten, I can remember hazy potato sack races, coal barbecues, bright sunlight, and the screams of the neighbourhood boy who would become my best friend as he and his brother accidentally knocked a beehive out of a tree in the nearby woods.
Unbreakable bonds were formed that day. That boy and I were best friends and probably soulmates. Sure, two years later I'd move to Ontario and never see him again, but for those two precious years, despite having just moved to the community, I belonged. Games of tag and bike races were easy to arrange on the playground, and a sense of community was forged in the embers of those old coal barbecues and their delicious charred hotdogs.
Since leaving military communities, things have changed. We lived off the base for the first time when I was in high school, and spent four years in that house. I never once knew who lived in the house to my right or my left, or across the street. Living in Halifax and Vancouver was the same, if not worse. It seems the bigger the city you move to, the harder it is to get to know anybody, despite there being so many more people to choose from.
Instead of neighbours, the people you see as you leave your house in the morning are strangers, and we all know not to talk to strangers.
Stranger danger has replaced neighbourliness and the result is a crushing sort of isolation that is hard to explain.
Smaller towns seem to pride themselves on escaping that isolation found in bigger cities, and that's true, to some extent. If you're from a small town, you automatically belong, have a sense of history, and a relationship with the people you've known all your life – those you've gone to school with.
Moving to a small town, however, is so much harder than moving to a city. I never got to know my Halifax or Vancouver neighbours, but I was lucky enough to be attending post-secondary in both cities, and university students are an entity onto themselves, sort of like military children. Most of them are from somewhere far away, most of them are missing other friends and probably family, and it's pretty easy to form lifelong friendships.
In small towns, sometimes it feels like the lifelong friendships have already been formed, and there isn't room for any more.
As I sat on the hood of my car thinking about this and feeling very much alone, the girl who I had seen coming from the apartment directly beside mine came over.
She only moved to town a week ago, so I didn't feel too bad for never having seen her before, and she said we would have to hang out, have dinner together, that sort of thing.
“It's hard to meet people here,” she said.
I totally agree.
