Valerie G Barnes Connell Jordan
Northern Advocate
Moving!
I have moved so many times in my life and never wanted to move again, but here I am – MOVING!
Moving is a process! When the decision is made to move, the leaving process begins. I have moved by almost every conceivable way possible.
When I went to work in the north first, I moved by train. I’ve done that a few times really.
When family members drove us at a time we were moving from Winnipeg to Calgary, it was a scary trip!
Our driver was a speed Demon and a tailgater. It was scary. I’m sure my husband had dents in his thigh from my holding on for the rest of his life. We stopped on the way to visit his grandmother, and I refuse to go any further. We caught the train for the rest of the way.
Of course, I’ve often moved by car from one end of a city to another. A couple of times I’ve moved with moving companies.
I always tell people that I can move into someplace at eight in the morning and by noon you would think I had lived there forever!
But, leaving is a very different story. It takes a tribe to move me.
Several times I have moved when I was not ready to move. I really didn’t want to leave, but a change of jobs or some other reason included and necessity of moving to another place.
My first move was traumatic for me. I was 15 and living in a wonderful house which my grandparents built. I love the house with all its nooks and crannies to explore. I lived in a neighbourhood where my mother grew up, and adopted the people that were important in my life. I had a whole lotta grandmothers!
And my mother decided we should move and bought a house without discussing it with my father. It was a traumatic time in our family. That was unfamiliar behaviour on my parents part.
It changed my life in many ways. My father made it home until he died.
On the upside, I have lived in many interesting places and gotten to know wonderful people, for the most part on the Prairie, but in other places as well.
Iqaluit, one year after the new territory came into being, was a wonderful place to begin a new career in Journalism. Nunatsiaq News with Editor Jim Bell was a great place to start and I am so thankful that I had the opportunity and the mini adventures that ensued.
Having lived in the city for most of my life up to the birth of my son, I moved to the country and loved it.
I moved to Okotoks, Alta. where I lived on a farmstead for a short while. I loved it. I had to haul water and wash clothes by hand. But I love the country Okotoks, then was only for 345 people; it has changed I understand.
Perhaps my most unusual moving related story – I move from one community for a job in another community about a five hour drive away. I had many people helping me move and everything was packed in the moving van and me with a load in the car, I set off.
I arrived and got myself settled very quickly.
Then, I got a phone call from a friend. She had noticed she still had my roasting pan. She was quite concerned about it and hoped I would get it very soon. In a couple of weeks, we had a couple more talks about the roasting pan so I decided I better go and get my roasting pan.
I got up and left at about 4 am to travel back to the community I had just left. I decided I would leave early so I could make it on time to join my Saturday morning breakfast group one more time for breakfast
I made it and had a good visit. I picked up the roasting pan and headed back to my new home.
A while later when I left that community, I had gone into a bakery and the woman working there recognised me, she told me how she enjoyed my column, particularly the one about my roasting pan. She even showed me that she had gotten it laminated! She loved to cook so I could understand by wanting my roasting pan.
But, the end of the story really got to her, when I reflected on the way back how odd it was for me to have gone all that way for a roasting pan, when I don’t even cook!
