VANCOUVER—Improbably enough, I’m in glorious Vancouver on a payola videogame junket, looking over a downtown core that seems always fake somehow. Like those SimCity layouts where a church is wedged in between a skyscraper, a factory and an amusement park, yet the citizens are still unhappy. 

That’s always the first thing I notice here, the total avoidance of all eye contact—any person might after all be an ATM-goalsuck panhandling because of the AIDS. The ubiquitous rain doesn’t do much to allay my prejudices, piled up over years of multiple ghoststrikes: I lost the longest relationship of my life to a combination of this city and Pokemon addiction, which I suppose is nothing compared to the fact three of my friends moved here, suffered for a while, then killed themselves in unique and interesting ways, the last leaping to his death onto the roof of a Milestones down by the gorgeous bay.

But can we exactly blame the city for their fates? Maybe, with consideration. 

Vancouver is a really hard city to hold onto Edmonton ideals for starters. It’s impossible to come here and not be at least a little too serious, if only to pay the rent. Its an adult place, at least compared to what I cherish about home, namely a bunch of attractive people, defined as such not by cut of their clothes but by an unending desire to make beautiful things... and then get drunk and watch an Oilers game.

Our host here is an old friend from university, a hell of a fiction writer who went on to invent a little thing called Bejeweled and redefine the gaming industry in a way that, years later, Wii would pretend to have come up with. Namely, getting bored housewives to play games and, most importantly, pay for upgrades. Coincidentally, he gets an email in the morning from another YEG expat, a creepy computer security consultant who thought everyone would like to see him cutting the head off a bottle of champagne with a fucking samurai sword. It’s just so ... I don’t have the words.

All this navel-gazing comes after a night of cold sweats, and I apologize for it. But last night I thought I too was dying. Heartburn, a sore throat, a headache and what felt like an impending heart attack, which was all really fun until the hallucinating started as I lay shivering in the humid dark. Somehow at -2 C it’s colder here than back home, beautiful home.

It’s probably pathetic to be homesick after only 24 hours on the coast, but I can’t help it. Just two days ago I was walking on the North Saskatchewan, huge tennis rackets under Work Warehouse boots. When I was a kid I’d moved snowshoes right up to the struts of the High Level, but I can’t remember if I actually crossed from shore to shore. Incidentally, going up to the base of a bridge is dumb and dangerous as the water is the most violent there and the potential to fall through spikes. 

What’s even stupider is short-cutting across the ice, especially when there’s a long snake of exposed water 100 metres to the east, but that’s exactly what I did—check out my footprints from the LRT bridge! The snow crunched and the ice creaked underneath and my friend kept encouraging me to hold back, but I made it, north to south, full of excited idiot pride. Maybe to you there’s no difference between that and drinking a glass of champagne possibly full of microscopic ninja bottle shards, but I can feel it.

Given the casino mentality that’s overtaken us, such that TV shows of people playing poker are wildly popular, I must say we don’t take enough actual gambles in this life. I was cautious yet fucking scared on the river as my friend grew smaller and smaller, but it’s a thing I’m really so glad I did. 

I guess all my friends who moved to Vancouver did exactly the same thing coming here with severed umbilical cords. It too is a dangerous and pretty place. But, there it is, it’s a shore I won’t ever try to reach.