“Oh, who are the people in your neighbourhood?”

Small child off on a Canadian suburban adventure

In the three years we lived in Kingsland (central Auckland), we got to kind-of-know only a handful of our neighbours. The people across the street were very friendly, and we were chatting acquaintances with the people on either side of us. But they were both rental properties, and the tenants periodically changed.

The strange thing was that there were plenty of kids on our street, but they were phantoms who got in and out of cars, then ferried into houses. Between parents’ busy lives and children’s busy day-care schedules, and no school in safe walking distance, I sometimes felt like the only person at home during the day on our entire street. Peaceful, but disconcerting.

Maybe we were as distant as our neighbours, but during the eight months we lived on a lovely street in the seaside Auckland suburb of St Heliers, we hardly even met a soul - and I was at home with a brand new baby to coo over, going for walks, out and about prime for some interaction.

New Zealanders always like to go on about how friendly they are, but I’ve found this claim a bit disingenuous. We’re definitely keen to tell people about New Zealand, and to ask people how much they like the country, but that doesn’t really count. We always talk about how we all muck in together, but by the time you get into your 30s, I think it’s quite hard to break into a group to muck in with.

Once, when I was living in the UK, I read this joke article - I think in the Metro of all places - about patriotism amongst ex-pats. It was in list form, and clearly written by a knowing antipodean. I recall the Top 3, and another country down at no. 20. Went something like this:

1. Australia - AUSSIE! AUSSIE! AUSSIE!

2. Sweden - Well, we do have the best society.

3. Canada - I’ve got a maple leaf on my backpack too, eh!

...

20. New Zealand - Do I know you? Well, fuck off then.

I laughed so hard on the train; it’s funny cos it’s true. Aside from the two-year OE types who congregate together in London, a lot of New Zealanders abroad have a ambivalent process of catch-up and avoidance. When you met another New Zealander in Edinburgh, there was this almost apologetic sense of stepping on each other’s turf. Pretend you don’t hear the accent, so you don’t discover that you have friends in common and then, cringe, social obligation ensues. Someone will be asking you to sleep on your couch for a week/month.

But Canadians are definitely, most genuinely friendly. In the last five weeks, we have actually got to know our neighbours. They keep introducing themselves, and inviting us to stuff. Random people from down the street will note that we’re the new family on the corner and welcome us to the neighbourhood. There are kids everywhere, riding bikes, walking to the park, catching buses to various activities. We had a spontaneous hour-long chat in the garden with a couple from down the road, while their kids entertained ours. Another young mum down the road has told me to knock on the door if I’m free in the mornings, because she’s usually home. I’ve gone to the movies with our next-door neighbour and her friends, and another couple a few doors down have told us to come over for a swim whenever it suits. A family we met at the park have invited us over to their house.

And our next-door neighbours have an open door policy with the kids. You can tell it’s genuine, because they’re happy to just tell the kids to go home if they’re busy. Tell them off, if need be. They even took it upon themselves to babysit the other night, and ordered us to go out.

It would be easy to write this off as the habits of a Pollyanna-like suburb, but we actually live in a municipality of 300,000 people contiguous with the city of Toronto. This is no small town, and to put it into an Auckland context, it’s got parts that make Remuera look a little middling, shall we say.  

There will always be neighbourhoods anywhere in the world, anywhere in Auckland, that get on well. My parents’ street in Mt Eden has a lovely camaraderie, and friends who live further out in Auckland definitely have something of a community spirit, but it’s often centred around school, or an extracurricular activity, or church. It usually takes a good couple of years to develop.

Over the course of my 12 years growing up in Howick, I knew many of our neighbours very well, but I keep recalling that the really welcoming people on the street were the English ex-pats. The people who understood what it was like to move to a new place. And before someone says, oh, that’s just an Auckland thing, the only open door policies I was able to get as a four-year-old in small-town Kawerau were at the houses of an English family and a Canadian family. Families we still count as our dearest, if not nearest, because they returned back to their home countries after a few years. 

For all of the faults of North American society, there is a touching lack of cynicism when it comes to interpersonal relations. When someone is friendly to you, you can pretty much guarantee that there’s nothing in it for them beyond the desire to say hello and meet someone new. It makes you feel very welcome.