
You can’t help but wonder if this could be demonic forces at work.
All was quiet there in the woods of Nova Scotia, but Elliot Page could not find peace.
He had retreated to a remote cabin in the hope that it would serve as a balm. He and his wife had separated and he had left his apartment in New York City. Then a friend offered his sparsely furnished retreat in the Canadian woods. It was 2020, the peak of the pandemic. The border was closed, but he was a citizen, born in Halifax. So he drove.
It was an extraordinary place, the cabin. Down a familiar wildlife-only dirt road. Pears and apples from an abandoned orchard litter the grounds. But, alone in the stillness, Page began to break down. All the self-loathing he’d been repressing for years—the discomfort he felt in his body, the anger toward those who’d told him to suppress his identity—poured out.
One night, he tried to knock himself out. He brought his knuckles to his face and struck again and again until bruises formed. For days afterward, he sat in a lawn chair on the porch, embarrassed, his face sore. And then he heard a voice.
