The Arthur office on the sunny afternoon of April 30th is quite lovely. My colleague beside me is shuffling some electronic drone playlist that I will never remember the name of but somehow miss. This afternoon I will vacate this office and this city for good. My lease and contract ending on the same day is symbolic, I’m sure, but not entirely concerned as to why. 

I’ve written before about how much I truly deteste this city. It feels cruel and wrong and a disservice to the many wonderful people and beautiful friendships I have made here at university, but it’s the truth and the truth isn’t always pretty. I do not like Peterborough: I have not enjoyed living here and if it wasn’t for this job, I would have left a long time ago. 

What that means for an editor whose job the past few years has been to dive knee-deep into the gutters of this city and train other journalists to do the same is complicated. It’s a transgression into how this city has changed me, and how I hope when I one day come back for good, it will change me again. I used to like this city, the weekends spent visiting my father growing up bouncing from The Only cafe to Island Cream and burns at evenings in Del Crary Park are pasted in my photo albums. 

Peterborough is part of who I am, for better or for worse. My high school was in the boonies, and as a child Peterborough was a vibrant weekend away that made me feel “grown up” as I struggled to learn the bus schedule and scour loose coins in couch cushions for convenience store slushies. 

I wish I still saw this city the same way I did back then. I wish a lot of things were different, but I wouldn’t be here writing this editorial one last time if I didn’t recognize the very things that made me grow contempt for this place. Peterborough gives me a headache at the best of times and the greatest people I have ever known at the worst. At times, this city feels like it’s working against you. 

The council that I, for better or for worse, have gotten to know quite well during my years here has deflated the joy I once felt walking around Peterborough. The rhetoric around the unhoused and the white privilege unabashedly leading the horseshoe table makes it hard to call this place home. The crumbling state of the buildings I can’t afford to live in and the roads that only offer second grade concussions makes it hard. 

None of this is exclusive to this city, but it’s present nonetheless and real to the people who live here. 

Like I said, it feels that this city is working against you. Knowing the inner-working of the municipality and the (to put it plainly) stupidity of the council was the nail in the coffin that sent me spiraling down into a months-long depression wishing to turn the calendar faster and get the hell out of here. It’s hard. It sucks. And I’m lucky to be doing so under the privilege of a roof and a university degree. 

Peterborough doesn’t offer quiet resentment to the unhoused, to the poor, to the disabled, and disenfranchised. Instead the city affords councillors that aren’t afraid to broadcast their bigotry and disdain for the poor a trigger finger to continuously vote down any efforts to help our vulnerable. In my years here, I hoped that it would change—it hasn’t. If anything, the MAGA nationalism disease has spread to Canada and shows its face in F*CK TRUDEAU flags. It’s a new wave of conservatism rooted in Facebook propaganda with white thumbs that cannot tell the difference between AI generated images and reality. It’s dire out here. 

It’s sort of debilitating, to be honest.

The strangest thing about all the grievances I’ve laid out with the direction of the world and the unique dumpster Peterborough finds itself in is that I am going to miss it. 

Weirdly, surprisingly, I am going to miss it. 

The friends I have made in this city, both at Trent and at this job, made this city liveable when all I wanted to do was leave. It makes it hard to shit on this city too much when it houses the most amazing people I have had the privilege of meeting, and the memories I’ve made these past few years. I am who I am because of the people in this city, no matter how much I try to deny it. 

I made “a name for myself” in this paper writing my first editorial introducing myself through the guise of my fat orange cat, Gator, because I didn’t feel important or interesting enough to put forward anything else. As a result, I dubbed myself the “secret editor” known for the inbox constantly filling with readers asking to see more pictures of Gator. It was strange, I’ll admit. 

During that first introduction that birthed the fan-favourite column Gator Goes Global, I wondered if I had made a mistake by pigeon holing myself into the category of “weird quiet girl who only writes about her cat.” It was all I had in me at the time and looking back now, I think it was probably the best thing I could have ever done to document the growth and insurmountable confidence this paper gives you. 

Therefore, as my last contribution to my editorship and closing editorial, welcome to the last Gator Goes Global.

The flow of this editorial doesn’t make sense, and I think that’s beautiful. It speaks to my claim to fame here as the woman with that cat who sometimes writes things.

Gator’s been good, for the three people who have asked about him in my complete absence from Arthur’s homepage in the past few months. He is still fat and I recently went to a pet expo where I bought him a mechanical fish that he humps (or, goons) and carries around the house as he terrorizes my one-eyed beagle.

He still puts his ass in everyone’s face constantly, for some reason. Last night my partner Jake was rudely awoken by my son’s round orange behind t-bagging him in the face at three in the morning. He couldn’t even get mad; Gator just does that sometimes. 

To my heartbreak, he is not coming with me when I drive across the country with Jake to British Columbia. I’ve tried, trust me, to figure it out. I’ve tried to map out a plan, negotiate with my family, talk to Gator directly, and came up empty handed: bro would simply kill me if he was put in a car or a plane. 

Don’t ask me how I’m doing about that. I’m not ready to talk about it.

In all seriousness, thank you.

Thank you—despite everything—to this city: I don’t like you, and I am very excited to leave today. I am grateful you brought me to this gay paper and the best three years of my life with co-workers and lifetime friends who have helped show me that sometimes, bad things can be good and I need to learn to not be such a bitch.

There is more I could say here, but I don’t know exactly how to sum up my experience here. Being editor of this paper is the sort of experience that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been a part of it. Arthur isn’t like other student papers, if I can speak openly.

Thank you to everyone who followed along with me and gave me the opportunity to grow not only as a writer, but as a person.

Thank you to Evan Robins for being my rock as we navigated this somewhat paperless volume when everyday brought some new form of chaos to the office door. I could not have done this without you, or third member of the Arthur polycule Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay. I am so grateful for the team I’ve been so privileged to work and learn alongside. 

To leaving Arthur in a better place than we found it.