I’m moving from Canada to New York City this week, and I’m having a mini-existential crisis. There are the personal reasons I feel torn—what if I’m lonely, what if I don’t fit in, what if New York doesn’t magically fix the frustrations I had in Toronto, forcing me to confront the horrifying possibility that there’s no “better place”? But there’s also a bigger reason I’m feeling this way.
It feels like I’m abandoning Canada—not just the physical place where my friends and family live, but the idea of Canada. I’m not merely a Canadian by birth—I believe in the Canadian project. I believe in our values. I believe, as Etienne Fortier-Dubois argued in this great article, that Toronto specifically, and Canada in general, are about as close to utopia as it gets. The national motto, Peace, Order, and Good Government, isn’t just a bureaucratic slogan on a government-sponsored advertisement; it actually encapsulates something deep about who we are.
I guess part of this is that not only do I resonate with Canadian values, but I think what we created is fragile and worth protecting. I worry that my move is seen as a sort of tacit endorsement of American values over Canadian ones, and if Canada went more in the direction of the U.S. (or if more people like me left), what makes Canada so special could deteriorate. The reasonable nature, the high trust, the synergy of individualism and collectivism—the things that make Canada so wonderful, are difficult to maintain.
So, if Canada is my utopia, why am I leaving?
Canadian culture, while great, is very complacent and conformist. If your life ambition is to become a dentist or work in insurance, Canada is a great spot to be. But if your talents lie outside these neat boxes or you have grander ambitions, the system isn’t really designed to recognize or encourage you.
So, what happens to the ambitious weirdos born in Canada? Most never have their passion or ambition developed in the first place, largely due to a lack of empowerment. For those who do feel the fire burning, they often end up leaving for cities like New York, LA, San Francisco, or London. With so few developing these ambitions or niche interests, and so many others leaving, the problem becomes more pronounced, as there are even fewer people around with these traits to connect with or to help encourage the next generation.
Canada doesn’t produce “Canadian” superstars. Sure, we have famous Canadians, but most Canadians with potential never materialize into anyone famous, and those that do typically do so only in an American/global context, rather than a Canadian one. The only exception I can think of is Glenn Gould, and even he stuck around because his mental health issues made him want to stay home. The biggest we have otherwise are Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Oscar Peterson and The Tragically Hip.
In many ways, the American Dream is a self-selecting system. Most Canadians who leave for the U.S. are, in some sense, spiritually American—where America’s hyper-individualistic, hyper-competitive culture doesn’t frighten them away. There are plenty of high performers who are spiritually Canadian and therefore never leave, remaining unknown to the rest of the world. Joseph Heath, who I previously blogged about, is one of them. Despite being one of the world’s best essayists and one of my favourite thinkers/writers, he’s relatively unknown outside Canada because he chose to remain in the Canadian environment.
But it can sometimes go the other way too. Kevin Bryan, for example, is an elite American economist who is now a professor at the University of Toronto. Kevin is one of the best thinkers I’ve ever met. If he wanted to, I’m confident he could become a famous public intellectual like Noah Smith or Matt Yglesias. But he doesn’t care about that or put himself out there in that way. In my eyes, despite being born American, Kevin is spiritually Canadian.
I don’t think Americans quite realize how different the rest of the world is, even in countries as similar as Canada. Even cosmopolitan Americans who engage with people born or living outside the U.S. are typically interacting with those who are more spiritually compatible with American values. There’s an asymmetry here: because the U.S. is so exposed to the world, many outside the U.S. know the real America. But Americans have a much more difficult time observing the true version of anywhere outside the U.S.
This highlights a larger issue with Canada: we don’t have the infrastructure to support ambitious, outside-the-box people. Our elites, which in the Canadian context really just means moderately rich people, are boring. The richest people here are typically in real estate or mining, and our “next-level-up rich” are lawyers, doctors, and bankers. There’s no venture capitalist throwing money at a 20-year-old on a whim to pursue crazy ideas, but rather family offices or government funds writing small cheques to boring conservative businesses or DEI projects. There is no “fun” funding in Canada. We’re too boring, sensible and judgmental for that.
Look at Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures fellows. The most frequently selected winners are teenagers from Toronto’s suburbs. That’s great, but what if they hadn’t won that fellowship? They’d probably end up going to a top Canadian university, only to spend their careers as mediocrely paid software engineers in the back office of a Canadian bank, their talents underutilized and unrecognized. Canada simply doesn’t have the infrastructure to support such unconventional stars.
I’m not trying to put myself on a pedestal here, but in my current situation, I have a “sexy” job as a tech lawyer for one of Canada’s most successful start-ups. I serve on the boards of the largest YIMBY organization and the leading effective altruism organization in the country—two causes that align with my personal interests. I’m very satisfied with these roles, but there’s nowhere else to go from here. There is no better job. No bigger role. And the truth is, in Canada, it doesn’t really matter what I do — nobody at all cares about these experiences. Whether you work at an insurance company or spend ten years building your own niche passion project, as long as you dress the same, talk the same, and show the same other interests, people won’t see a meaningful difference between the two. If you don’t dress and talk the same, then you will socially suffer with no corresponding gain in some other, more accommodating community.
I think this is why I feel so guilty. Instead of committing to help build spaces for ambitious people in Canada, contributing to make Canada a better environment for the next generation of people like me, I’m leaving.
So, I’m moving to New York. Not because it’s bigger. Not because it’s richer. But because it’s full of ambitious, passionate people with niche interests like me. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking New York is just like other cities, only more so.
New York isn’t just a bigger Toronto, and therefore has more ambitious weirdos. Toronto, like most cities, doesn’t just have fewer ambitious weirdos simply because it’s smaller than New York. New York actively filters for the ambitious and the driven. The only people who can tolerate living there, and can afford to stay, are those with both the talent and the willpower to make it work. New York isn’t big enough to hold a larger percentage of ambitious people just by luck. Other cities are leaking ambitious people. New York is sucking nearly all of them in.
And this, I suppose, brings me back to my initial dilemma: why am I leaving, if I care so much about Canada? The answer is that I honestly believe Canada is a utopia—but arguably not for me at this current chapter in my life. It’s a bittersweet irony that I’m moving from a place where I’m surrounded by friends and family to a city where I’ll hardly know anyone. Yet somehow, I’m moving to NYC to be less alone.
PS – if you are reading this and live in NYC or have friends who do and think I’d get along with, I’d love to connect.
Enjoyed the read. Good luck! I’m based in Amsterdam and constantly thinking about moving to NY or London for similar reasons. This post really resonated with me—thanks for sharing it. Reading things like this makes you realize you’re not alone in your thoughts. It’s easy to feel like a ‘weirdo’ in a negative way, or out of touch, if you want something different while everyone around you seems to focus on ‘normal’ things and have ‘normal’ desires.
Yep, you’ll like it here.
Might take some time to find community but there are a lot of people here in your same boat if you look for them. Caveat & Nerd Nite stand out as particular events you might like. But whatever flavor of person you’re looking for, we probably have it
Random reflection update:
On my second day here, I was behind an older woman in line at a store who seemed flustered and unable to carry all her bags. I asked her if she needed help carrying her bags to her car. On the walk over, she asked me where I was from because she claimed it was obvious I couldn’t be local.