April 24, 2024
Where the Heart Is: Where are we?
How do you define something that means so many different things to so many different people?
Where the Heart Is
‘Where the Heart Is’ is a biweekly series from the Features section intended to complement the ongoing ‘Places to Go’ series. From this new series, the reader will be shown around someone’s hometown as the author recounts a fun story, lesson learned or other memory. This series is intended to showcase communities of all sizes — tell me about your block in Delhi, tell me about your apartment complex in Toronto, tell me about your sparsely populated municipality. For more information or to submit a piece, reach out to features@ubyssey.ca.
All in Where the Heart Is
February 13, 2024
Where the Heart Is: Edmonton is being known
Whenever I go home, I visit a bench overlooking the river valley. It’s one of my favourite spots in Edmonton. The city, and the memories it contains, spread out in a panorama.
September 28, 2023
Where the Heart Is: Calgary is more than cowboys
Calgary is commonly associated with conservativism, oil and gas, extremely cold weather and most importantly, being cowboy crazy. This is something I have run into whenever I introduce myself as a Calgarian. And for the most part, these are all true.
September 27, 2023
Where the Heart Is: If memory changes, at least I’ll have doujiang
As a child, my parents would take the three of us kids to T&T to buy doujiang. The predictability of the store was comforting. White waxed floors, edged by subtle grime; the smell of plastic wrap and the mist they sprayed to keep the vegetables fresh. The bright lights, the temperature, the layout — these elements create theoretically perfect conditions, yet are too sterile to make me feel at home.
September 18, 2023
Where the Heart Is: Winnipeg lies at the heart of the country
My family moved to Winnipeg when I was seven — another family in a long migration of those leaving their homes to start again in what seemed like an isolated tundra. We subscribed to all the Filipino things available to us in Canada: church, any bakery with good pandesal and other Filipinos.
July 25, 2023
Where the Heart Is: Pune reminds me of spilt milk
And when I finally succeeded in escaping my hometown, I became crudely aware of my origin. “I am from Pune,’’ is a line I will be repeating until one day I give up, seeing people’s confusion and just say Mumbai. It’s easier — geographic simplifications never hurt anyone.
July 24, 2023
Where the Heart Is: Ottawa's cold grows warm in my memory
If I am truly honest with myself, Ottawa isn’t that cold — it grows warmer in my memory the longer I am away.
June 28, 2023
Where the Heart Is: Istanbul is made of colourful tiles, of old memories
Painting a portrait of Istanbul is impossible — laughable, even.
June 8, 2023
Where the Heart Is: Home is a quantum superposition
I always believed I was someone whose life was in constant motion — at least that’s what I believed when I first left Vancouver in May of last year. And yet, seeing the familiar Vancouver grid come into view from above, I discovered a discomforting warmth arising with my arrival “home.”
May 9, 2023
Where the Heart Is: I turned 20 in my childhood home in Gurgaon
A few days ago, a friend asked me how many times I had moved growing up, I paused as though the answer wasn’t simple. I had never moved. I grew up in one 732 square kilometre city in the same house and graduated from the same school I had entered 14 years earlier.
February 10, 2023
Where the Heart Is: Finally seeing Surrey as home
I have a complicated indifference toward Surrey. It never felt much more than a name on the map.
January 16, 2023
Where the Heart Is: Quang Binh is my uninteresting yet peaceful shelter
I am from a small town in the middle of Vietnam, so small and uninteresting that I never explicitly mention it unless people ask.
November 24, 2022
Where the Heart Is: Everywhere and Nowhere (All At Once)
I feel a deep sense of belonging to a city where superficially, I don’t belong. Is it fair for me to call Manila home when I’ve grown up in a bubble of privilege and foreigners living in the exact same situation as me?
November 7, 2022
Where the Heart Is: Nowadays, I keep watch on North Kingstown
There’s a coastal stretch of land inside the smallest state in the US. It sits along an oceanic passage as if hugging the brisk Atlantic. It’s a sub-rural area but large enough in size that it stretches halfway across the state. It’s quaint, sunny, lively and historic. It’s nothing like busy, fast-paced Vancouver.
September 28, 2022
Where the Heart is: Sacramento is the Midwest of California
Lady Bird said it best: “I have to get out of Sacramento … Because it’s soul-killing. It’s the Midwest of California.”
