In 2006, I visited a friend of mine in Mexico who had found herself in a small fishing village turned surf town on the Pacific coast. I immediately fell in love with the peaceful chaos of the place. There wasn’t yet a tourist infrastructure, and the way of life was still quite traditional. I’d arrived during the week of festivities celebrating the Virgin of Guadalupe, so a parade would tour the town every night featuring a little Mexican girl on a pile of dirt in the back of a pickup truck as the “virgin”. Little boys would chase each other around the plaza, shooting firecrackers at one another, unsupervised, in a game that shocked my prudent Canadian self. The power went out every night, the water ran out too, and there were still certain cowboy bars that were off-limits to gringas.
I dreamed of staying forever, and came back as soon as I could, which was unfortunately not for another ten years—I had been tied down by poverty and my slow attempts at eking out a university degree. Once able, I returned again and again, every time wishing I could stay permanently. Until, one year, I did just that.
For most of my life, I had loved Canada. British Columbia, my home province, was the best, most beautiful place in the world, and Vancouver, where I was born and raised (and that’s Vancouver proper, not the suburbs, which don’t count) was the perfect city. It was small as far as cities went, it was beautiful, and it was full of cool people, all just as snobbish about our pure laine status as I. I believed Vancouver had it all. I walked everywhere, and felt safe doing so, running into friends along the way, cruising down Main Street past the cafés and patios. We had access to incredible food, thanks to the notable immigrant populations—Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and of course the Greeks, who ran the show in Kitsilano, where I grew up.
I was blessed by a glorious combination of pre-internet freedom and a lack of interest in IDing teenagers at the Asian-run corner stores that sold us cigarettes or at the Greek restaurants that sold seven dollar pitchers of beer, and would stay open all night and let us play our own mix tapes. We had access to the beauty of the beaches, mountains, forests, and even secluded gulf islands, where we could escape the city via ferry in just a matter of hours.
In Vancouver, I was blessed by a glorious combination of pre-internet freedom and a lack of interest in IDing teenagers at the Asian-run corner stores that sold us cigarettes.
I lived in this blissful arrogance until about 40 years in. If you don’t leave a country it’s easy not to know what you might be missing, and I had never had the financial freedom to travel. My admin jobs barely paid the rent and my parents had moved away to the US, so if I were to leave, I would have nowhere to keep my things and nowhere to return to. I thought I was happy, though that dream of driving down the coast to Mexico remained pinned to the back of my head.
Then a number of things that changed for me around my 40th year led me to flee.
I began my career as a socialist-feminist podcaster and journalist in around 2010, and was almost immediately on the outs with the majority of my would-be allies. My criticisms of prostitution, pornography, burlesque (a thing forced upon us at every turn in Vancouver’s burgeoning hipster/dive bar scene), drag, and third wave feminism put me at odds with not just the popular “sex work is work” crowd of feminists and leftists, but with the party I’d long devoted myself to, Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP).
By the time gender ideology appeared on the scene, I was already accustomed to near-constant attempts to shut me up, though even those hadn’t prepared me for the mass cancellation campaign launched against me in 2015, when leftists and feminists across Canada petitioned to have me fired from my job as a part-time editor at rabble.ca, a Canadian leftist platform that had hosted my writing and podcasts for years. The petitioners didn’t succeed, as my higher-ups were unable to locate any particular crime that could justify firing me, but my co-workers stopped speaking to me and trashed me online. I nearly had a total emotional breakdown watching this campaign play out online and experiencing ostracization behind the scenes, while I was ordered by my bosses to say nothing publicly in my defense.
I nearly had a total emotional breakdown watching this campaign play out online and experiencing ostracization behind the scenes, while I was ordered by my bosses to say nothing publicly in my defense.
The country-wide petition and months-long online campaign, using the moniker #DropMM, to have me fired from my job at rabble accused me of abstruse political crimes such as “suggesting older women cannot be active sex workers”, using the term “illegal immigrants”, being “a white, cis, non sex-working person who writes with contempt about communities that [I am] not a member of”, and of course “racism, whorephobia and transmisogyny”.
Though I had been advocating for women-only space for years prior, it was the advent of Bill C-16, Canada’s gender identity legislation, tabled in 2016 and passed in 2017, that led to my permanent departure from the left, and left me endangered and further ostracized in my own city. There were certain neighbourhoods and bars I was afraid to frequent alone, fearing attack. Nonetheless, all I’d endured as a wrongthinker had thickened my skin, and I became evermore devoted to speaking unpopular truths, even alone.
Many say, “I didn’t leave the left, the left left me”, but I really did leave the left. I didn’t leave my political tribe on account of bitterness, but because I no longer wanted to be part of a cult where independent thought was stifled and punished. I had struggled from the get-go to be not only an independent writer and media producer, but an independent thinker, and when I finally began to realize this was not what the left wanted, I accepted that and moved on.
Many say, “I didn’t leave the left, the left left me”, but I really did leave the left.
Our country of progressives and feminists imagined themselves as dissidents, but hated dissidence. They saw free speech as dangerous. Dissent from the agreed upon narratives was a threat to the comfortable smugness the left had attached to their assumption that they held the most right, kind, open-minded, inclusive, diverse worldview. Being progressive no longer was about politics or policy so much as it was about identity, and no one wanted their identities challenged. This was why those who stepped out of line had to be ousted and tarred as traitors, rather than understood. After all, if one understood, one might have to change one’s minds, threatening the tribe and identity. How could the left be the most good and right if the other side also held valid ideas?
Progressive Canada is a country of passive aggressives: we are so kind and caring — so polite that we won’t tell you to your face that you’ve upset us, but will unfriend you on Facebook and tell our friends, in order to ensure one’s commitment to the cult is unquestioned.
As I crept further away from the status quo, the attacks got worse. I was among just a few to speak out against Bill C-16, which led me to be invited by a Conservative senator to testify against the bill that drove us full speed ahead into the clown country known today as Tranada.
Being progressive no longer was about politics or policy so much as it was about identity, and no one wanted their identities challenged. And how could one have the most good and right identity if the other side held valid ideas?
I was particularly vexing for the Canadian media and left, as I couldn’t be labelled a “far right misogynist” the way Jordan Peterson was, nor could I be dismissed as member of the religious right, and so be easily categorized as an enemy to all that is good, right, inclusive, and diverse. How dared I, a feminist and socialist, speak out against gender ideology—in defense of women, at that?
I also suggested that Black Lives Matter was a ridiculous protest movement in a Canadian context, that there was no genuine “far right nationalist” movement in Canada, nor any powerful contingent of white supremacists. I defended the free speech of those deemed racist and refused to denounce those I was ordered to.
By the time Covid rolled around in 2020, I had already begun looking for an escape to America, land of the free, and as far as I could tell, of the more interesting.
The problems I had begun to observe in Canadians became glaring upon declaration of a “pandemic”. In lockstep, Canadians stayed inside, took their medicine, masked up, and squealed on their neighbours for having grandma over for Christmas dinner.
Had Canada always been like this or had something changed? Was it them or was it me?
The Trudeau government’s censorship of Canadians who dissented was intensifying, and I worried I would no longer be able to work, or worse would end up in jail for “hate speech”. Trudeau was seeking to pass online hate speech bills, which I knew would target people like me first. We were being warned the border would be closed soon; vaccine mandates were looming; and flights out of the country were being cancelled. I bought a plane ticket to Mexico, thinking maybe I’d return when things improved. They did not improve. They worsened.
At this point I had been visiting Sayulita for many years as a tourist. I had come on my own a couple of times, and made friends. Whenever I returned I felt a sense of peace, comfort, and happiness that contrasted with the stomach-tightening anxiety I’d begun to suffer every time I returned to Vancouver after having been away for talks and events in other countries. What drew me to this little Mexican town was in part its lawlessness, and I was thrilled to find this had extended into the Covid response.
What drew me to this little Mexican town was in part its lawlessness, and I was thrilled to find this had extended into the Covid response.
The day I arrived, I felt a sense of elation I hadn’t experienced in ages — everything was normal. There was no lockdown, no masking, no obsessive talk about vaccines and which one would you get and how soon. People were dancing, singing, drinking, sharing food and cigarettes anything else you might imagine — happily and without a care in the world. And everything was fine. There had been a brief period of lockdown in the late spring and summer, I was told, but by the time I arrived in January 2021, all that had been abandoned — the loss of income and business had hit hard. It wasn’t worth it.
Many people I met there were like me—North Americans and Europeans who couldn’t believe what was happening in their cities and towns on account of a cold. They were freaked out by the attempt to crackdown on freedoms and constitutional rights, but remained defiant, unwilling to surrender their liberties for what seemed like a money grab and a test to see how far we could be pushed.
Besides that though, most of us didn’t talk much about politics. My friends were my friends without knowing much about what I thought about anything or even what I did for work. Who you voted for and why seemed irrelevant. We just liked hanging out together.
Having come from a place like Vancouver, where everything was politics, and it was the norm to cut people out who were Trump supporters or anti-vaxxers or Jordan Peterson fans, I was so relieved to not have to explain myself to people demanding to know why I was mean to “trans people” or “hated sex workers” while I was trying to have fun at the bar.
The way Mexico differs from Canada extends beyond the lawlessness, though of course that is an appealing factor to someone like me, who values the risk attached to freedom, as well as the chaos of a place that can’t be Karened into submission by uptight people grown so accustomed to their routines that any bump in the road demands a call to the manager.
While the ninnies of Vancouver continued their social distancing, followed arrows around grocery stores, pretended to have whatever they could recall of “fun” during Zoom cocktail hours, mainlining algorithmic Facebook slop and pornography (indeed, Pornhub thrived during the Covid years, jumping on the opportunity to encourage men to “stay safe” by masturbating to women and girls who most definitely were not), the rest of us went on with life.
One thing that turned me off of Vancouver, beyond its elite, out-of-touch politics, was the disappearance of community. No one seemed to care much about maintaining relationships, celebration, tradition, or fun. They cared a lot about comfort, which translated into control. They wanted to know where they were going, who was going to be there — would it be worth it, really, to put on pants and leave the house, when the comforts of their condos and Netflix were right there?
It felt as though everyone gave up on life after 30. There was no spontaneity, no adventure, no risk, #nonewfriends. Only comfort zones. I didn’t want to give up on life. I wanted to learn and experience new things, meet new people, take risks, have adventures, and fun. The fact I would choose, in a way so few understood, to risk my social status, my safety, my financial security, my comfort, simply to be able to say “men aren’t women”, spoke to that.
Why I would choose, in a way so few understood, to risk my social status, my safety, my financial security, my comfort, simply to be able to say “men aren’t women”?
But that risk — including the financial and personal uncertainty that came with choosing to be an independent writer — served me well, allowing me the freedom and will to leave Canada. I was poorer, but in a better position to find happiness than my friends who felt chained to a lifestyle I was not part of.
Canadians tend to think of Mexico as either a danger zone or a resort where they’ll be handed frozen margaritas in a pool while a group of men in sombreros serenade them. And of course it is those things, in places, but much more. It’s perfect, to me, in its imperfections and weirdness and slowness. Nothing ever works as it should and little happens when it’s supposed to. Everything is negotiable and you have to be smart and savvy, or you will get ripped off or maybe worse. There’s no authority to complain to if you don’t like dog shit on the sidewalk or the workers playing banda outside your window all day.
Honestly, you’d hate it. Don’t come.
What I learned about Canada became ever more pronounced upon leaving. Every time I return I’m astounded at how lifeless people seem, going from point A to point B in their new EVs, from yoga to their condos, and to their lifeline, the internet. They don’t know what they’re missing because they think they have it all. They know everything they need to know about the world — the CBC told them — why go out and experience it firsthand?
They know MAGAs are bad, Hamas is good, the world is on fire, and that jab saved lives, what are you, a conspiracy theorist? No, I’m a human. Living life with a bunch of other humans who are very different from me, and who are joyful despite having few of the luxuries middle class Canadians take for granted, and little control over their surroundings. They have community and family and music and food and drinks and parties and fun. Who cares who got vaxxed?
What I learned by leaving Canada and living a much more inconvenient, but in some ways simpler, life is that I am happier and freer than almost everyone I know in Canada. I own little, don’t have access to all the new gadgets, tech, and appliances, and make much less than most of my friends in Canada do, yet so many of them—among the nominally most privileged people in the world—seem purposeless, lifeless, bored, anxious, and depressed.
What I learned by leaving Canada and living a much more inconvenient, but in some ways simpler, life is that I am happier and freer than almost everyone I know in Canada.
Marcus Aurelius famously wrote that “it takes very little to live a fulfilled and happy life”, but Canadians have utterly lost sight of this.
I’ll take the dust, the storms, the power outages, the poor plumbing, the noise, the smells, the unpredictability of everything, over the comfort of a cage. I can be grateful to Covid for one thing—it pushed me to further commit to freedom, and to a better life.
