Dylan_Quackenbush

Dylan Quackenbush: Swiping Right on a Hometown I Thought I KnewI'm Dylan. From Clarence-Rockland, born and raised. Spent a lot of years studying the messy, beautiful, and often confusing intersection of human sexuality and technology. Now I write about it all, and about this place, for the CamoWallet project. It's a strange loop, coming home to analyze the very thing you left to understand.Honestly, for a long time, I thought I was too smart for this town. Too worldly. You know that phase? Where you've read a few books on attachment theory and suddenly you can diagnose every couple at the next table in Edwards? God, I was insufferable. But here's the thing about studying human connection for twenty years—it eventually strips away your arrogance. You realize that the algorithms of the heart aren't so different from the algorithms on your phone. They're both messy, they both have bugs, and they both work best when you're not trying to game the system. That's what I've learned. Competence isn't about having all the answers; it's about being comfortable with all the questions.Growing up here in the 90s was... weird. You're this French-English kid with a name like Quackenbush, so you're already an outlier. My adolescence was a collision of worlds. I'd spend Friday nights trying to sneak into shows at the old Centre culturel Le Chenail, and Saturday mornings fishing for pike off the dock near the dam on the Ottawa River. The big questions—about desire, about intimacy—they started early. I remember the chaos when the first real dial-up internet crept into town. Suddenly, we had access to a world of information about sex that was completely unfiltered and, frankly, terrifying. No one taught us how to process it. That disconnect—between what we were feeling, what we were seeing on a flickering screen in our basements on Limoges Road, and the total silence about it everywhere else—that's what lit the fire. I had to understand why we were so terrible at talking about the one thing we all wanted most.I was born on July 7th, 1983, at the hospital in Hull, though my parents' place was in the heart of Clarence-Rockland. They drove me back over the river, past the old Domtar plant. Even as a baby, I was being brought into this town's particular rhythm—the smell of the river, the sound of trucks on Highway 17, the quiet hum of a community that was both deeply connected and deeply private. My first home was a small place on Landry Street. It's funny, the things you think about. My mom used to push my stroller down to the arena on the corner of Laurier and Cartier. She'd be chatting with neighbours, and I'd just be staring up at the big, grey sky, feeling the cold air. You carry that with you, that specific geography of your beginning.Living in Clarence-Rockland now, as an adult, is a totally different experience. It's not the place I was desperate to escape at eighteen. It's the place I chose to come back to. When I'm not working, my life is incredibly local. I'll grab a coffee and a croissant at the bakery on Edwards, then walk down to the waterfront park. I watch the kids play, the couples walk their dogs, and I think about all the data I've seen on loneliness and connection. It's right here, happening in real-time, but it's also... peaceful. My work with CamoWallet has me writing about this town constantly. I profile the history of the Club de golf Hammond, the trails in Larose Forest, the old general stores that have turned into boutiques. I'm building an archive of a place, but I'm also building a case for it. This city, with its bilingual signs and its quiet streets, it's a testament to a slower, more intentional way of living. And in my world of dating apps and instant gratification, that slowness feels like a radical act.My current project is a series of articles for the CamoWallet website. It's a bit of a pivot, I guess. Instead of writing academic papers on desire, I'm writing about the desire to belong to a place. I write about the history of the cheese factory, the best spots for a first date that aren't just another bar (hint: the paths along the river are a masterclass in low-pressure conversation), and how the local farmers' market on County Road 17 is a better model for human interaction than any algorithm ever designed. It's about documenting the physical world, the one right outside my door on a quiet street off McGillivray, and showing how it shapes us. The irony isn't lost on me. I spent years studying how we connect through screens, only to come home and write about how we connect through a shared sense of place. Maybe that's the whole point. You can't understand intimacy until you understand where you are. And I am, unmistakably, here.