I KNOW HOW IMPORTANT HOME IS TO UKRAINIANS FORCED TO DEFEND HOMELAND

TARA COLLUM | Contributing columnist

Ukraine, a country with a 7,000-year history, and its now 44-year-old war-time leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy are facing a humanitarian crisis.

While some are posting Ukrainian flags on social media, blue and yellow hearts, or donating money to the UN World Food Program, or the Red Cross, others are determined to be hard-hearted towards Ukraine and its many refugees trying to flee a war zone.

You might be wondering who am I to hector you with my opinions, and what is my connection to Gravenhurst?

It may or may not help to know my maiden name is McGovern. I was a student of Muskoka Beechgrove Public School from kindergarten to grade 8 in the mid 1980s to the early 1990s, and I’m a graduate of Gravenhurst High School.

I’ve worked as a co-op student at Stedman’s, a cashier at the YIG, and Giant Tiger. I also worked at the Hortons on the highway.

After graduating from university, where I studied creative writing, I moved to Toronto. But my mom, who used to deliver mail on RR1, still lives in West Gravenhurst.

I strive to give a local context to world news and current events, and advocate for affordable housing and reliable public transportation. Along the way I try and add to the dialogue surrounding issues important to Muskoka.

In Toronto I worked for many years as an English as a second language teacher. I earned a diploma in community work, and as of last month now work in a L’Arche Canada community in Cape Breton.

While raised in Gravenhurst, I wasn’t born there. And not in the way that many people are born in Bracebridge, because Gravenhurst doesn’t have a hospital. I was born in Scarborough.

Being from another place gave me a sense of not being from town, making it feel even from a young age that Gravenhurst wasn’t my permanent home.

Small towns are not easy places to grow up in. There is a reason that people crave the anonymity of a bigger city.

Even now going back to Gravenhurst can sometimes feel like being in a fishbowl. People might not know you personally, but they may know of you and remember embarrassing details about you from school. They know your family, or even know what house you live in.

There are people who everyone knows, like Fred Schulz, who was the photographer at my wedding almost 20 years ago.

And there are people like me who moved away and might not be remembered at all.

When I was in high school, I was lucky to find the short story collections of Martin Avery in the library, Cottage Gothic and Northern Comfort. The northern comfort in his story is also called a “wall toke,” and is super dangerous, and hopefully not a thing kids still do.

I’d never seen Gravenhurst as a setting in a book before, and was delighted by his warts and all portrayal. He wrote of how the town was ashamed of Norman Bethune for “being a Communist.” And how the Bethune family home was once just a regular house, not the museum it is now, that people found on their own, to knock on the door, and ask for a tour.

I met Mr. Avery when he was a teacher at GHS, and was volunteering at the Muskoka Novel Writing Marathon. He is an extremely prolific author, and his work includes a poem about his wish to change the name of Gravenhurst to Bethune.

Like Canadian authors Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence, I don’t think exposing the secrets of a small town to a larger audience makes the writer especially popular.

I know the common nicknames for cottagers and that KFC is referred to as the “Chicken House.”

And I only truly found my appreciation for Gravenhurst, the lakes, the peace and quiet and how good the deals are at GT as a visitor, not as a year-round resident.

For me home is where family is — and the place I was born. I have no connection to if I’m the only one living there. Maybe someday I will find a home in Gravenhurst, or maybe I will always be searching for one.

In the meantime, I hope Gravenhurst can keep improving and revitalizing.

And I hope that if anyone in Gravenhurst or Muskoka plans to sponsor refugees from Ukraine they are encouraged to do so by a community that welcomes them.