Canada is from the GAP A/W 1999 collection; I purchased her when I came to the painful understanding of how severely I had underestimated the power of a Montreal winter and my lack of power to withstand it. Even as I put her on the first time in the shop and an assistant generously lied that she went well with my jeans, I knew that Canada was a horror.
But a necessary one, accompanying me up and down the salty, crusted streets and softening the landing when my university boyfriend hockey-checked me in to snowbanks, which was apparently a Canadian way of showing affection.
This is a picture of Canada being sported by my friend Olivia; when, in the late months of 2010, Olivia learned that she’d won a fellowship to write in rural New Hampshire for the early weeks of 2011, I solemnly handed Canada over to her: a hideous essential, I explained. With Olivia, Canada was hideous all over the United States (here they’re in Washington State, pointing at Actual Canada). ‘I can’t believe I pulled while wearing Canada,’ Olivia remarked on returning her. (But indeed Olivia did.)
I was glad that Canada could be of real service on Olivia’s American adventure. But I was also hopeful that the hiatus would have broken my Canada habit. Having survived the winter without her, I thought that I could finally retire her to a charity shop.
As if! I wore Canada for the first time in over a year yesterday and was immediately reminded of her ugly allure, her imperviousness to the coldest of London days, of why even my most handsome and fashionable flatmate Ben used to borrow her for quick, cold darts to the Co-op or the gym. And the pleasing effect, when I take her off, that I have lost 50 pounds in a zip and shrug. Even as I see my friends’ faces sink in despair as they see me lumbering towards them in her swathes of grey puff, Canada and I, I realise, will never be parted for good.
