Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Read an interesting article this morning on the BBC website about migrants to Oz (yes I know this is the Canada thread) about this feeling of even if you've been settled for years in your new country you can always feel a bit detached – on the outside looking in on something you can't fully understand.

Like to hear from any Brits in Canada that have this feeling of never really belonging and how do you deal with it?

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

No such feelings from Ajax.

Next!

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

I feel like I belong but since I don't have any family or history in Canada I know I will always feel British and I am happy with that because that's part of my identity :)

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Can you please post the link as I can't find the article? I returned here 9 months ago after 29 years in Australia. ;)

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

That feeling isn't just for people moving to another country. I had that same feeling when I moved from London to a small village in Bedfordshire. Most of us adapt and settle in to a new stage of life.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

There's no need to "deal with it". I'm abroad. Of course I don't feel as if I belong.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Pretty much the same for me. No family or previous history either, however was pretty long in the tooth when I moved over here. This may explain why I think of myself as a 'Scots Canadian'...but happy to be here in Canada and have now accepted it as 'home'.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

It’s not a bad feeling, just the side effect of most of the Cradle friends and colleagues growing up with different TV shows, different school culture, they’re informative years and “home” was sufficiently different to mine that we can’t relate to all things all the time and something’s will always need an explanation, but each year I need a little less explaining.
To put into context snow was a half day novelty for most of my childhood and more than three consecutive days was amazing, days that were over 25c well you had to drive south for that or get on a plane, now I have both every year guaranteed

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Well put.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

"You can take the boy of of Essex but you will never take Essex out of the boy"...funnily enough i felt the same when id lived in a different part of the UK so not really a Cananda thing...ill never be an 'insert nationality here' Canadian.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Here you go

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15799571

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

You can't really "belong" to somewhere you aren't from.

I'm from Brighton. Technically I belong there but it doesn't feel like it when I go there. I know my way around but I'm not part of it any more. I didn't belong when I lived in France, Epsom or various bits of London.

I don't think any of my close neighbours are from Gatineau. At least three are not even Canadian-born and quite a few are Ontarians. It doesn't seem to make the slightest difference to anyone.

What I have noticed over the last few years is that when I'm not here I wish I was. Sure, there are things I don't understand. It would be the same if I moved to Glasgow or Birmingham.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Pretty much this. I don't really feel the need to feel like I belong.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Thanks for all the replies so far.

Feel quite reassured as we're about to move to BC.

I guess I don't feel like I belong where I am now and that's why I explored moving away in the first place. The England I knew and loved has disappeared anyway.

I suppose what I was getting at is it too strange or too big a move to last

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Never felt the need to belong. I moved 3 times in my life and if had to choose one it would be the most recent, here in Ottawa where I have lived for the past 48 years. The place I was born in and lived for 22 years is just a memory and I expect some place I would not feel at home in or even recognise.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

No

you be amazed at how quickly everything that looked strange at first, gas bars, drive thru banks, wide roads, accents, and so on, all begin to look normal after a few years.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

After reading that article this morning I had a moment of self-doubt and posted this thread.

No more. Everything that's different and 'not like home' is part of the big adventure. And I'm looking forward to the adventure just as much as settling down and staying in Canada for good

Cheers

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

For me it's the other way around. I sit here in what is supposedly my "home" feeling sick to m stomach. I have tension headaches, migraine attacks and what not. Just been to Canada for two weeks and no headaches and the only time I felt sick to my stomach was the day I boarded the plane to return to Sweden.

I'm on the outside looking in when I'm here but when I'm HOME in Toronto I feel very much a part of the community and life there.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

I've never belonged anywhere as I lived in so many places and countries as a child. So the feelings and emotions I felt for the last place I lived in in the UK are very similar to those I am now experiencing here in NS.
I'm used to being an outsider looking in so it's not bothering me.
However I think that what makes me feel more settled when I move somewhere is the feeling of acceptance by the "locals" and I'd say that here seems to be a good place for that!!! ;)

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Thank you, very interesting.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

..... until the next one! ;)

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

It seems a high proportion of Canada's residents have at least a bit of somewhere else in their psyche, so when you start to feel that way, maybe you've gone as native as you will ever be!

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Interesting perspectives.
For me, having very little family in the UK, and having my two children out here, this is very much our home, and after 6 years, all is very familiar to us.
I feel Canadian, not one part of me feels British any more, and consider myself to be Canadian.
Good luck with your move!
x

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

I'm still in blighty and hoping to be off in a month or so, and tbh I've lived within 40 miles of where I was born all my life and I do wonder how I will feel half a world away. But as suggested by the wiki I thought about the bits of my life that I like, and if they will transport and the only thing I can honestly anticipate missing is family and friends. I can make new friends, I'm a mature student so there's uni, and I'm a scrapbookers, and a more welcoming ingroup ive never encountered. Family is the one thing, but eventually, love them as you do, you have to cut the chord.
Maybe I'll revisit this in a year as we wait for our PR( about to post off now, pnp thru London, 12-14m) but even the village of 1000 people where I grew up, I don't feel I belong now, we were priced out when we got together, neither could afford the village and now I wouldn't go back there if you paid me! It's a great place to live till you're 11, then everyone you know at school comes from somewhere else and there's not a single bus after 7.30pm which makes going out in the evening impossible etc. I wouldn't raise my kids there.
I think you have to make an effort to join in. I had no idea who Wayne Gretzky was for instance and that is likely to surprise most Canadians, in the same way they might not have heard of pam ayres.
It helps to have some expat friends I think, I have one already lining up coffee mornings for me with some of her cradle friends.
I have an aunt who moved from north Scotland to south England and back again because she wanted to be near family that in small doses she loved and missed, up close they got on like cats in a bag! She is never really at home anywhere because she has been gone from hometown too long, and never stayed anywhere else long enough to join in etc.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

I, too, have lived in a few different places for up to 5-6 years at a time. I'm 28 and have only lived in my 'home' country for 6 years of my life. I guess one of the things this feeling depends on is one's definition of 'home'.

Does home mean where you were born? Or where your family lives? Is it the country that issues you your passport(s)? Or where your life is at this current time?

It also depends on the kind of person you are. Personally, I'm very proud of being an Indian, and don't want to give up my Indian passport. Most of my family lives in India, but my close friends are scattered all over the world. So, even though I love being Indian and a part of the history, culture and customs that come with that, I know deep down that I don't belong in India. I've only lived there 6 years of my life, and I've been too far away for too long to want to go back.

I've lived in North America since 2004 and specifically in Canada since 2005. I have more friends in Canada now than I do in India. I have been in India for the past few months now, and I get messages from my friends in Canada every so often asking, "When are you coming home?". These people know Im not Canadian, but have accepted me as a part of their lives and community in Canada. So, the bottom line is I feel accepted, but I do sometimes feel I'm on the outside looking in. That, however, is not a bad thing at all. It gives me a different perspective to share. My girlfriend is also Canadian, and I guess everything I mentioned in this paragraph makes me feel more at home in Canada than in India.

However, like another poster already said in this thread, I will always consider myself an Indian, and Im happy doing that because it is a part of my identity.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

I went to Canada when I was 8 and was very excited about the move at the time. In the months leading up to that move I read every book I could get my hands on about Canada, wanting to learn as much as I could about it. When I arrived I picked up the new accent in no time flat as much out of necessity (none of the other kids could understand a Geordie) as of wanting to fit in. I kept the Geordie accent "in my back pocket" though. Over the years I never really felt as if I fit in or belonged and that I was trying to be something I wasn't and always was something of a loner. 45 years later I returned to marry someone I met in the infants school when we were both 5 years old. Now I feel that I can finally be myself again. This England is far different from the one I left behind all those years ago and obviously having that special someone to share my life with helps immensely but I have to say that despite all the changes, coming home felt right. I've nothing against Canada, for the most part I had a good life there and I was the first in my family to become a Canadian citizen but I've always felt English and always will do. To those of you who have or are about to make the move to Canada I wish you all the best; the country has a lot going for it and I hope that you are able to fit in and see it as your new home. The most important thing you can take with you is an open mind.:starsmile: Some of us are able to make those changes, some aren't, its as simple as that.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

It may take generations. I've met lots of Canadian-born people who identify themselves primarily as something else.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

You sum up my feelings exactly Mike. I can say (showing my age here!) "It's five o'clock, it's Friday night" and my husband doesn't shout "and it's Crackerjack!"

I feel I might want to fit into Canada now, and am really looking forward to trying to do so - I don't fit here in France, and I've been here 12 years, and it's not just a language thing. I fitted in in the Gulf, and North Africa, but not here, I am surplus to their cultural requirements.

Sometimes you want to belong, more than at others. I left the UK more than 20 years ago, and I don't want to live there, and have no family or roots left now, but I still define myself as being British. It was England that shaped me, and my parents - and five generations ago, my husband's family too. A need for a sense of belonging has grown since I have become older and a mother.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Shared experience is a great bond. I can imagine that if you move to Canada and spend all your time with born and bred Canadians you will feel as though you are on the outside. And as nice as they will try and be, there is no way they can understand the stresses of emigration/immigrating.

However, in a city like Vancouver there are many, many thousands of first generation of immigrants who do understand. Like you, many of them want to met new people and make new friends. I think there is something vaguely unhealthy in seeking only people from your own ethnic background but it is good to spend time with other immigrants. Almost all of our circle of friends are first generation immigrants. I don't think any of us feel on the outside - we are on the inside of our bit of Canada.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

He probably knows that it was screened at five to five, not five o'clock!

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

I'm just that bit too young to remember!

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

This has to be the most overused statement on BE.

What exactly was the England you know and loved????

It hasn't all of a sudden become hell on earth overnight if at all.

I reckon its like a relationship thats going wrong - ie at the begining you always thought evrything was just great - then things get stale and you get bored and your life and you, change, mature. You get jaded and look for pastures new.

Any new place / partner will always seem more romantic than the current, but when you get there its still the same ol sit different bucket.

I had no dislike for the UK, so Canada didn't really have a lot to beat as there were no bars set. I feel an outsider when my Canadian hubby and his friends and family are reminiscing, but thats only natural - he does too if I get together with Brit friends and we talk about Brit stuff.

Don't sweat it, get on with your life and don't feel like you HAVE to fit in to get on.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Summer's getting worse, policemen getting shorter and younger, no more pipes and people wearing flat caps, the Hovis delivery boy no longer comes around on his bike, no more milkmen, pop music is noisier than when ol' king came t'throne....I could go on ;)

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

What exactly was the England you know and loved????

I'll tell you. How about 3 playing fields/recreation/nature spots I'd played on as a child and adult given up to housing.

Factories and offices in my town closed – places friends and family worked that hosted Christmas parties and other local gatherings. No more. Many people I knew gone away due to lack of jobs in a once industrial small Midlands town.

Little new investment other than yet another unneeded supermarket bang in the middle of a traditional market town. Stalls gone, shops boarded up.

I'm not talking about an England I new and loved that exists in movie reels of the 1930s or rose tinted memories. I'm talking about very recent history in a forgotten community I did love that has disappeared leaving people no choice but to look elsewhere.

I do agree that we shouldn't necessarily feel the need to fit in and we should just get on with it and that's exactly what we're doing.

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It's funny, my wifes uncle was complaining about the same thing in the area he lives in Canada the other week. "So much has changed, and not for the better" He worries for his kids.

People change, places change, some for the better, some not so much. It's not different in either country. My father-in-law hates the way Vancouver has changed so much and become more dense in population, road network, buildings, strip malls, etc. He used to love visiting Yorkshire. I couldn't move back to where i grew up mainly because we've both evolved and are completely out of synch.

Re: Always on the outside looking in feeling
 

Old people are old.