Building Houses: Welcomed Here by Margot Van Sluytman

I have been building houses. Reducing. Reusing. Recycling. Recreating. Birthing homes from giant cardboard boxes, old newspapers, twigs, twine, flour paste, and joy. Joy for it is vital for me to nourish my days with meaning that strengthens my commitment to being. To belonging. heART that is offered to and for community because community and housing are siblings. With the sale of each finished piece, both funds and awareness are raised for the New Canadians Center Peterborough. Here in my city. A city which offers the heart of welcome. Newcomers to this city, to any city, to any country, yearn for home. To find, to create, and to be: welcomed home.

Home and welcome are an intricately and finely woven fabric.

The heART of home, the heARTh itself, is welcome and warmth.

A recent state of emergency was declared in Peterborough because of an ice storm that raged and raged and raged, and raved. Razing all in its wake. Uprooting homes, trees. Over-turning entire communities. Raw instability and losses mounted. Chaos reigned, for a time. In tandem with reigning chaos was rapid, life-affirming examples of the meaning of home. They burgeoned. They burst open.

Shared-humanity in the crucible of Sawbonna, bloomed. Blossomed. Strangers no longer strangers. Coming together. Reaching out by reaching in. Neighbours knocking on doors. Family and friends near and far attempting to connect. With communication torn asunder, roads savaged and blocked, days of waiting meant days of deep worry, fear, concern. Deep care, rooted in the acts of unfettered kindness spilled. Spread. Shone.

As the ice storm tore down, rent asunder, so too did the self-same ice storm build, and indeed rebuild. Expanding bonds and boundaries. Enlarging how and what it means to transform. To reshape and hand-fashion home and welcome. With care. In the poignant and precious present that is the present. The gift of now. What we live and know and go to sleep to and wake to. The present that is the present. The gift of the now. The gift of how we shape and are shaped by home. When we have it. When we lose it. When we begin again. For many of us, over and over yet again.

In building my papier-mache homes and selling them to raise both awareness and funds for The New Canadians Centre, I affirm and deepen my need to know that I too belong to the rich fabric of welcome. Fully aware that as immigrants, my family was welcomed here, in Canada. New Canadians. Sometimes not welcome. Due to accent. Home country. Education. What was in wallet. Or not. Yet, welcome we were in more places than not. Those welcommes sculpted, sanctioned, and sustained my parents’ and grandparents’ clarity of purpose and vision. New Canadians. Rebuilding homes. The figurative and the literal of home.

Storms rage. Fear sears. Scars remain. And yet we build homes. We create with colour and words, hand in hand with community, for community, because of Sawbonna: our shared-humanity, colours of joy and justice. Fully aware that daily we rise and daily the heART of home finds us seeking and being welcomed and welcoming.

The New Canadians Centre Peterborough – The Living Library Project aims to share human stories of immigration and integration by highlighting unique and compelling stories of transition, settlement and belonging.

The Papier-Mache Homes by Margot Van Sluytman are at The Main Ingredient