Choosing My Community

In 1970 there were lots of choices when it came to communal living.  One could always go the traditional route and live in a village, town or city.  Voila! Instant unintentional community.  Maybe you didn't know your neighbours (or even want to know them) but all the necessities of life were available, close at hand: food, shelter, work, culture, religion, school.  Police to keep order, water, sewage treatment, paved roads and lots of shopping. Of course, along with all of that came air pollution, traffic jams, noise, crowds, crime and lineups at the checkout counter.

Or one could find a commune in a rural or urban setting; groups of idealistic young people sharing resources, attempting to live co-operatively, even raising children as a collective experience.  Then there were the more structured "intentional" communities, in urban and rural versions.

If none of these were suitable, well, Canada is a big country and you could always find a place to start your own version of community.

We checked out a few communes, toyed with intentional community, but ended up living as a nuclear family on a series of farms in Eastern Ontario, Southern Ontario and Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia.  We often took in stray humans to help out, and depended on our immediate neighbours for assistance in our various farming endeavours.  Even though I sometimes envied people who spent decades in one place (imagine being able to watch a tree grow up!) my restless search for the ideal life kept me on the move.  Finally I realized my true community consisted of all humans on the planet.  In that sense it did not matter where or how I lived, I would always be living in community.

What about the other creatures that shared the world with me: the four-legged, six-legged, eight –legged, multi-legged and legless beings who occupied every nook and cranny of every single habitat in the sea, on the land and in the air?  Weren’t all of them, plants, animals, insects and bacteria, a part of my community?  Even my own body was a community, a collection of co-operating and sometimes competing organisms that travelled everywhere together.

Seems community is inescapable.