I have a new title for my project: Where do you Belong to?
Tom said he would host a special Salon to explore the notion of "belonging" on my behalf. Here is an excerpt from the invitation that I prepared for Tom's Salon group:
“Where do you belong to?” Herb, my neighbor in Pouch Cove asked me when I first met him. I wasn’t sure how to answer this. Do I belong to the place I was born? Do I belong to the place where I just came from? What raced through my mind were all the places that I had been to, lived and settled. Hong Kong, a place I was born and raised, Canada, a place I chose to come to, Botswana, a place I chose to go to work as a volunteer. I now live in Toronto, but call Pouch Cove “home”.
Dictionary of Newfoundland English Online defines the phrase “where do you belong to” as one of the commonest phrases in the Newfoundland vernacular: one is never from or even born in a place, one always belongs to it.
How and when do people find a place that they belong to? Can we not belong to one place so that we can belong to many places? What makes a place a place to belong to?
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