One of the most interesting things about travel is how the small things can suddenly become incredibly important. Details about home that you never take notice of when they’re right in front of you suddenly become meaningful by their absence.
I’m not talking about a clash of civilizations or anything, but having just returned from a trip to my old home in Montreal, with a foray into New York City, I can say that as much fun as I had on my adventures, I’m extremely happy to be back in a city where smoking is not a thing.
I was only 13 years old in 1999, when the Capital Regional District introduced the clean-air bylaw, which banned smoking in bars and restaurants. For my entire adult life, then, Victoria was a city where smoking was not a socially acceptable activity, at least not in public spaces. It was a pariah habit, to be performed furtively in corners or under awnings in the rain. Subsequent bans have pushed smoking further and further beyond the pale of Done Things.
Even though I know my best friend’s father was a chronic smoker when we were growing up, I don’t remember ever smelling it in their house, nor can I recall him smoking in front of us kids.
Victoria’s an anti-smoking success story. Our anti-smoking bylaws are more than simply regulations. They seem to reflect our values, or perhaps our values have grown to embrace them. Either way, non-smoking is a big part of Victoria’s (and British Columbia’s) culture.
Most of us view smoking bans not as limits on our personal freedoms, but as right and proper protections of our collective health, our children’s health and our environment. (I’m not saying that they’re not limits, just that most of us don’t mind them.)
Introducing myself to my hostel-mates in New York, I mentioned I was from B.C., and the Australian girls I was rooming with (you always meet Australians in hostels) nodded interestedly and said: “Oh, yes, B.C. — you’re very healthy there.”
Victoria is a health-conscious city, and one of the biggest parts of that — even more than the yoga and the cycling and the organic foods and the gluten-free vegan-friendly cafés — is our attitude toward smoking. For most of us, smoking is Not On.
This isn’t the case in Montreal, for example. Montreal has its own bans on smoking, of course — you can’t smoke in bars or restaurants, and you have to be several metres away from the entrance to a public building before lighting up, but smoking is still a big part of the city’s culture. It’s rare to see diners on a patio in summer without a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, although Quebec is reviewing its provincial Tobacco Act to consider banning patio smoking. People will even brave the appalling Montreal winters to dash outside the club for a smoke.
Similarly, New York has a ban on smoking in public plazas, but in these cities, you still run into an overwhelming amount of it on the street, on outdoor patios and inevitably outside metro and subway stations. For a (mostly) non-smoker coming from a (mostly) non-smoking city, the difference is arresting. And gross.
We all know that second-hand smoke is dangerous and physically uncomfortable for passersby. Yet smoking is a part of these cities’ atmosphere, if you will tolerate the terrible pun, and it reminded me how thoroughly and how well our city has embraced a non-smoking identity. Our clean-air bylaws mean that you don’t have to be assaulted by some stranger’s carcinogens when you’re in a public space, and that’s awesome.
That’s why I’m eager to see the Capital Regional District attempt to expand its clean-air bylaws to include all parks, playgrounds, public squares and beaches. While the motion was rejected narrowly last May, the issue came forward again this week. The major problem, it seems, was the difficulty of enforcing such a ban, but it I don’t think we’re facing the same hurdles as other cities. We’re already a non-smoking city at heart.
Moving forward with this ban would put us back on par with the other jurisdictions in B.C. that have already embraced it. We’re a health-conscious city, and I’m eager to see if we can take it all the way.
