What if you decide to take root, but discover a quicksand instead of a firm ground? Serendipitously, I have stumbled upon an essay about dislocation and walked into an exhibition about uprootedness on the same day.
As I wrote earlier, mobility is part of the job description of early career academics. A boost to the local university, economy and science are the promised trade-offs for the temporary relocation. Few have considered the tremendous impacts that mobility has on people’s lives.
Bruce Alexander, a retired Psychology professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, theorizes that dislocation causes addiction. Free markets force people to move where the work is and leave their connections behind.
Walter Scottinspired visitors of the Stride gallery in Calgary, Alberta, to think about the fragile links that tie oneself to the place where they are born. They are nourished over the lifetime, consciously or unconsciously. One may not realise how frail they are, until they become stretched to a point of breaking.
Finally, in the Letters to Grandchildren (Greystone Books, 2015), David Suzuki offers grandfatherly advice to his five grandchildren, including this story about the horrendous journey of his Japanese ancestors to Canada:
