#fraser is example of you can emotionally or physically survive a place and enjoy or be accustomed to it's nature

[pigtailedgirl]

Due South and a Canadian White Girl North-ish

I'm so nervous. Addition: Perhaps some trigger warning for abuse and illness talk?

So I read this great Due South fanfic.

BLESSED

I think it's going in my top ten. And I have a bunch I like that deal in the same theme. In Fraser's fit of himself in the city versus northern Canada and how he finds something in the contrasts.

Still this fanfic, though it does a neat re-examine overall, and others, have an image I guess that is put out by Fraser, by the narrative, of Canada that just does not work for me.

EXAMPLE

***

"Think about being somewhere else," Cleve told him as the strings began to vibrate again. "Anywhere but here."

And he did. Where did he want to be? Anywhere but here. Yes, Cleve had indeed answered the question for him.

The MacKenzie River, strong and swift, slicing through the spruce and pine, cutting a path between the snowcapped mountains.

The frozen, inhospitable Beaufort Sea, where a man could see his own breath turn to ice on the air and blow back to his face, clinging crystals of ice on his skin and lashes.

The mighty forests of tamarack and poplar that covered the western slope of the coastal mountain ranges. The warm, gentle breezes of heady lodgepole pine scent. The soft hiss and crackle of campfire, mellowed by a handful of cedar bark.

"There you go," Cleve decided at last in a quiet, satisfied voice.

Ben smiled until his face hurt, not quiet ready to open his eyes and let go his vision just yet. The strings felt good, like the strips of cedar bark he had imagined for the fire, the neck of the guitar a more than adequate rendering of the canoe paddle the MacKenzie demanded. The smooth, time worn wood of the box pressed into his belly, a body that complemented his, perfect in its unyieldingness, yet matching his every bend and twist.

Stella the True.

Ben would have given her another name.

His eyes opened then, noticing first how the world seemed to have blurred in more ways than one, and that the smile had faded away as the memories had faded in upon him. The world was only blurry for a few seconds more, until he realized that once he blinked the beginnings of tears from his eyes, the world became amazingly clear. So much became amazingly clear.

"Don't give up on yourself, son," Cleve Abernathy's voice came from somewhere very, very far away. Fraser gave his saturated eyes to the man who had spoken.

***

"Where I come from, people help one another. If one goes without, then all go without equally, so that everyone has a chance. You don't let your neighbor's coal run out in January. You don't let their stomachs go empty when your kill is plenty. When their children don't return from the trail, you go looking for them. That's just the way it is."

***

It's beautifully written, but feels wrong to me. Feels like lies to my lived experiences. Being from a small place like Fraser, this is a beautiful sentiment, and not at all true to it's realities.

When Fraser, Due South's narrative and comedy, and fandom view the otherness of the wilderness or northern Canada, make big deals to study it, never mind just mark Canada different in broad... It feels othering. Othering in a way I think is really important to how Fraser doesn't fit in if he's got this perspective too.

I've grown with stories about people and family who lived the same kind of lives as the Fraser family. In modern ways my home here still is like this. I even lived some like this and I'm baby in comparison.

Remote and isolated. Lots of nature to be in. Law, education and medicine as tiers in the community that are mostly outsiders to the community either brought in short-term or recurring.

Even those who live here permanently now, have founded themselves career wise, and have to, going away to do it or having been born and raised elsewhere. Christ, we have to basically leave after high-school more than 1000km away. HAVE TO.

And there is a definite disconnect between this group who are outsiders and the what I would call settled persons in the emotional connection to the place and town and the ability to fit in.

If it's a truism to me, this idea of grand north, natural beauty or isolation in a small town, with the people, to get in touch with an emotional growth is the biggest lie I have ever witnessed done by people to themselves. And this is an idealism of outsiders. You don't come out into isolation or live it to get NEW emotional needs met. You don't grow yourself thinking this is something special or the true way or will fix you.

Those that say living like this is a personal spiritual ride are:

1. High on their own supply as it were, aka, either tapping what they had dormant before or pretending.

2. Doing so off the backs of those who just don't think too much about it and are where and what they are.

If I had a dollar for every doctor or therapist I met who came here and were enamored by the place, the seas and freedoms and kind people and opportunities in solitude, expected it to change the people here and them, and then ran wild because they were always dumbasses, or took advantage, or after a year of seeing it day to day still wouldn't or didn't understand how to live with it and ran or got burnt out...RICH.

Because the truth is that small communities and remoteness don't make special or perfect people or places. We aren't magic, we aren't even that different, we just face a different or smaller reality.

I'm struck by the story One Good Man paints of Fraser's grandmother, who faced early trauma, and to me tells a reality you maybe don't want to embrace fully but should reflect on before concluding the nature of life here. A young woman who saw her town burn, who saved some of the children in it, but watched the others and adults die and was also horribly physically and probably emotionally scarred by it. Who only had an idea, and with it, bravery in the face of that moment, and after the strength to hang on as her backbone tip of surviving. Any wonder then, the tough it attitude and gift of wisdom was maybe her main survival and emotional mantra. That what tied her there to keep trying to give knowledge to people and how she pushed that above emotion on her grandson was this.

I think canon does a good job of highlighting an undercurrent of why Fraser and family still didn't fit in and why Fraser and Due South is a story of growth as a person and finding his home/community is going outside. His emotional needs weren't here. That's alright to find elsewhere when you need it.

@juniperpomegranate made a really great point of difference of Fraser's north, so often idealized in show or fic, and how it isn't actually like a town. It's not imagined or filled or understood in the reality of a community. Which is hella important. Because your community and relationships is how you really fit in a place like that or in my home.

And that's people. People to connect to. People who aren't wildly different. Experiences only seem wild to outsiders. Perfection or an image of better peeps is only lauded to cover in my opinion.

We face hardships and issues. We don't face them mythically. Nature is pretty and it requires work and understanding of it, learned only from experience and listening or knowing others who have, to survive and thrive in.

The reason we have outsider law or medicine or education come in is...

Well it can be real fun when the town is faced with say influenza and has no resources, or knowledge about it. Where you have to be cajoled to get immunized by your sister dressing up in the nurse's coat and leaving, to trick you into coming out of hiding. Where Dad tells stories of my great-grandma who plastered everyone with coal oil for cures as the rock of the town. Or where, when you have criminal stuff or domestic violence or mental illness and you can't treat or stop. A woman who hurt her family for decades because she was sadly untreated and unknown Schizophrenic. When another woman my dad's age wrote of her harrowing experience of childhood, of her mom dying from cancer and her father putting her to work as a teenage girl to care for the siblings and home, and then not providing any of his income or the support people gave him for them, until she and her siblings were literally found starving. Cause he fucked off to the neighbors. Cause the whole town knew it was happening, but there was no alternative, this was just their monetary and work survival versus that family and that family's lack of social capital paired with no place to go. Where solution was when law finally came in an forcefully moved the minor kids to different fosters in villages 100s of kilometers away, this was just a daily continuation of life though for most here.

See law, as external resource, can't even do much beyond come in twice a year and judge people. Punishment for crimes is more social than moral and depends on taking a person out of the community most times. Bob Fraser, Mounties and cops who ship around to different spots, if they are good get then respect sure, but they were and always have to stay detached to not bias too. It's a hard one. It's you can have impact and respect, for example the priest use to come a couple times a year and get the good dishes out for him, but you don't build the emotional connection of say staying for the weddings after-parties of music and dancing all night. Of people crossing islands to visit each other at the end of weeks' work.

In this vein I'm not surprised Bob had a great reputation and a lot of "friends" he didn't know.

And education. Where it's people come to knowledge at you, or knowledge from you. Where it's students come to study you like you are a tropical native of the 18th century. Write their papers and go back and take your history and skills to sell and forget the here left behind. Or come dodging the drafts of the States. All our stories or archives are in a "local" museum we can't even get to without a plane ticket yo. Or again those who come to give wisdom like they are the holders and we are heathen plebs. With maybe a one in ten being someone or something honest or decent. Though I'm a little bias here. My mom was a teacher who came here in the 70s and spent her whole life teaching grade school. Literal one room school house start. Who met and married and stayed with my Dad here. Some people do catch. Some, I think like maybe the example of Fraser's grandma, which I have soft feeling for probably because of this, just really want to impart shared knowledge and get happiness from seeing it grow and having that personal shot to help it. In a small community that seed growing outwards, to see it, is freaking awesome. But key is shared. You got to learn from too.

Finally, small isolated communities need and foster their connection through the people. Who you know. How you are all related. The meme of does everybody know everyone in Canada hits lol. But that's got the inverse too. There is no privacy. Loners be seen and judged. Again, social fit and capital being supreme.

That's why the nature loner or lover is myth too. Drop you off on a pretty snow covered lake. Pretty yes, magical and just for you, no. You still need the community knowledge to know where the fish, which direction is inland or sea, where is best shelter, where is Indians in the country to help you trap, when does the supplies boats and airdrops come. Nothing is done alone okay, trust me on this. You go out to snowshoe alone on a clear day, and weather strikes and you die.

I guess my point I keep trying to rope back into is maybe the experience or place or people sound different, or magic, but it's superficial. It's no different than how stories of history or cities sound to some. Emotionally I think we run the same. I think the true beauty is in seeing that reality. That you can't be the best stuck in an unreality or hiding from finding your fit. And again the true charm of Due South and Fraser, is his going south grows himself to see it. The show gets us to play and have fun seeing it.

And that the best of people or place, Canada or States, small town or city, outsider or no...is accepting and acknowledging that difference and sameness is the way to grow. Is the best beauty.

It's how my community did grow out of most of it's struggles imo, and hopes to go further I tell ya.

So here are my recs on the wonder of difference and sameness in Due South. Again like the fic above, can't rec enough.

Here are a small sampler of finding yourself near and away.

Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall (squidge.org)

Smaller Gods - arrow (esteefee) - due South [Archive of Our Own]

Our Dancing Days - sdwolfpup - due South [Archive of Our Own]

Also, does anyone have a link to an old ds flashfic of Fraser wandering Chicago in a power outage? I loved that one.

#due south #due south meta #personal life i dont know how much to put in honestly #fic recs #fraser is example of you can emotionally or physically survive a place and enjoy or be accustomed to it's nature #but does that mean you fit it? #i think there is a pretty good argument his longing for emotional contentment beyond his isolation inside himself means no to the north #his lack of friends or family up there #his dad's and grandparents as well #and their lack of ability to give him emotional happiness or get him tied to the towns #even if it doesn't mean yes always to chicago either #which would have lots of overwhelming differences to see and grapple with and explore #also this hits what i think meg thatcher could have touched on as a character #as a canadian city woman trying to entice or grapple with fraser #a fun idea of othered but from your country to play with #benton fraser