The Year That Changed Everything

One year ago yesterday my twelve-year-old son and I packed up and climbed into our red SUV to set off on a cross-country adventure. Meanwhile, my husband and fifteen-year-old son boarded a plane for Victoria, BC, where we would meet them one week later. We left our family home – the place we had been married, had kids, and lived for 18 years – with a FOR SALE sign in the yard.

Our driving adventure took us through Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, and Vernon, with stops along the way at Science North, the Terry Fox Memorial, Kakabeka Falls, Dinosaur Provincial Park, and Banff. It was a beautifully scenic drive, with the brightly coloured leaves of autumn, the golden fields of the prairies, the other-worldly badlands, and the majestic Rocky Mountains. I already knew that Canada is a huge country, but knowing that cognitively and actually driving it are very different things. Our journey gave me a new understanding of the word remote – and we weren’t even particularly off the beaten path. There were long stretches of road where I couldn’t make a phone call (no cell service), listen to a podcast (no data service), or even listen to the radio (AM or FM). I hadn’t known there were parts of Canada that don’t even get CBC. Signs indicated when there was limited fuel ahead, and at one point we passed a sign that read, “From here, all streams run north to the Arctic Ocean.” That was pretty cool. We stayed in basement Airbnbs for the first couple of nights, then cheap hotels, and then we were lucky enough to stay with friends and family, with lovely visits to get us through the last few days of travel. Unfortunate timing had us travel a good part of the Rockies in the dark, which was harrowing, but definitely worth it for the visits. On the last day, we left Vernon in the dark and drove away from the rising sun, through smoke from nearby fires, to make the 1:00 ferry from Tsawassan to Vancouver Island. I cried when we arrived at the dock. Exhaustion, anxiety, and relief mingled to make the tears spill out while we waited to board the ferry to take us to our new home.

We arrived in Victoria in time to meet the other half of our family before selling our house that night from 5000 km away! It was time to find a new home. We spent the next several days viewing over half a dozen houses each day. My husband would roll out of bed at 5am and join a remote work meeting from the desk next to our bed. He would work until about 1:30 pm, at which point we would head out on our house hunting expedition, under the amazing and patient guidance of Tammy Gray, Agent Extraordinaire! With one near miss, quite a few tears, and lots of ground covered, we finally found a house we thought would suit our family and put in an offer. Soon we had a new home!

Twelve days after we arrived in Victoria, we flew home, leaving the car behind, so as not to have to drive it across Canada in the winter. We spent the next month sorting, purging, and packing up our lives, saying goodbye to the only home our family had ever known. Two weeks before our house closed, we all caught COVID, which forced us to cancel many of our goodbye plans and seriously derailed our packing progress. On Moving Day, we found drawers that had been missed, a microwave still in its cupboard, and a freezer full of food! My parents came to help and took the boys off to my brother’s family home, where we would spend our last night in Toronto. Our wonderful neighbours came to help clean and see us off, with love and care, and so many tears. The next day, we boarded a plane to our future.

And here we are. Victoria has been all we had hoped and more. It is breathtakingly beautiful, with a forest hike eight minutes walk from home that leads to the top of a small mountain. This view is a forty minute walk from our front door. It’s an eight-minute drive to the ocean, and no more than fifteen minutes drive to pretty much everything.

We left on December 6, but we had to wait for our stuff to arrive. I tried to get Christmas ready while we waited to move in on December 18^th. Imagine my surprise that, even in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I could get parking, that the malls were clean and quiet, and that store employees were enthusiastic about helping me.

We moved in on a Saturday, and on Tuesday were buried under two feet of snow, which is a lot, even for Toronto standards, and a whole lot for a place that “doesn’t get snow.” We were in the midst of unpacking the essentials, and snow boots, snowpants, and mittens weren’t in the “OPEN ME FIRST” boxes! We dug through the garage and found what was needed, and went out to shovel snow, which was a great opportunity to meet our new neighbours. The entire city shut down for days, and we were never plowed – we just waited for it to melt. We even had a bit of white for Christmas. But by New Year’s Eve, we hiked up Mount Doug and saw how we are living next to a temperate rain forest.

We had a lovely Christmas and New Year’s Eve with my godparents and their kids, and began to settle in at our new house. I coached volleyball and joined a choir, my husband joined a DnD group, my youngest quickly found a group of friends to hang out with, and my oldest took a membership at the Victoria Bug Zoo and settled in to a comfortable routine. It was consistently warm enough to go out without winter wear and we walked every day. I missed the bright blue skies of Ontario winters, but not the frigid temperatures that go with them.

And then, it was spring. I had never understood Groundhog Day, that promised an early spring or six more weeks of winter. In my experience, six was a short estimate for the remaining weeks of winter. But here, by mid February, we were counting blossoms and marvelling at plants I would expect to see on a Caribbean vacation. We even have a palm tree out our back window!

Spring seemed eternal, with cherry blossoms and new growth for MONTHS. We even slept out in the yard without a tent – no bugs! We had visitors come and stay in my first ever guest room, and we began to get to know both Downtown Victoria and our local community. It was fun to share our new favourite haunts with friends who had come all that way to see us!

In the early summer, our younger son’s best friend came to visit, with his mom, who’s a good friend of mine, and we spent eight days visiting, travelling, and doing all things tourist. We travelled up the coast as far as Campbell River and saw what it would have taken us years to see on our own. This island is so unbelievably gorgeous!

After saying goodbye to our friends, the two of us headed over to China Beach for a night to join more friends from Ontario on their epic camping trip. We enjoyed the beach, the woods, and the company. Sadly, we couldn’t stay longer, because we were about to hop on a plane for a month in Ontario.  

We left our puppy dog with my parents and spent our first day in Toronto with another mother-son friend pair, who fit us in before leaving for their own trip to BC. Then my son headed off to overnight camp, which had been a promised part of the moving transition. I spent the week in Toronto, staying with my parents and feeling like a teenager, borrowing my dad’s car and sneaking in late at night, trying not to wake anyone. It was a fabulous week of visits with so many people I hadn’t seen in a long time.

After a few days at the cottage and a few more visits, my husband and older son joined us in Toronto for the second half of our trip. We traveled to the cottage to spend a wonderful Family Weekend, with my parents and my brother’s family, before heading off for our yearly trip to Family Camp at Wanakita. As usual, Wanakita was wonderful, and it was lovely to connect with friends old and new in a relaxed outdoor setting. The kids run like a pack of wild dogs and gorge themselves on unstructured peer engagement and it is lovely to witness. Even my older son, who has been out of school for three years and rarely leaves the house, was fully engaged in the social scene. The kids swim, play volleyball, and wander around finding ways to enjoy their time together, while the parents relax, go to camp-style programs, and catch up with old friends. It is always a great week!

At the end of Family Camp, my older son declared that he was ready to go back to school. The week had been such a resounding social success that he wanted more. He decided that he wanted a high school diploma and to have a more typical teenage lifestyle. He was ready to leave his comfy cocoon and face the world.

After camp, we had a few days left of squeezing in all the visits we could. We even went back to see the old house, where we were invited for dessert by the new owners who are taking good care of our old home. Later that week, we packed up the whole family (including puppy dog) and returned to Victoria to see what would be next. It was so lovely to spend time with family, friends, old neighbours, and colleagues. Our cups had been filled by all of our visits, but we were also all ready to come back to our new home.

I reached out to the Victoria School Board to see how we could support a return to school. My son is of an age to go into grade 11, but has had no formal schooling since mid grade seven. He wanted to start in grade ten, since a diploma here consists of courses from ten to twelve. No problem. My next blog post will be about how impressed I am by the school system here, but suffice to say that he has had a warm and supportive welcome to high school and that enrolling him was an easy and well-supported process. He had taken up piano at camp and spent the next few weeks teaching himself to play while he waited for school to start.

Meanwhile, our younger son picked up right where he’d left off, having regular sleepovers and lots of hang outs with his new friends. My husband and I were introduced to Blood on the Clocktower, a fascinating role play murder mystery game, and are in the process of joining a board game club. In the last weeks of summer, we travelled back up the coast to show my husband and older son some of the things we’d seen earlier in the summer. Apart from everyone being sick on and off, it was a lovely, low-key end to a wonderful summer.

Both boys started school after Labour Day. It has been a positive start to school, and they are both in the swing of things now. I’m working on getting my teaching certificate transferred to BC. Because my husband is working remotely and following Ontario hours, he starts work at the crack of dawn and is done before 2pm every day. That gives us time to hike, run errands, play board games, and otherwise enjoy our afternoons. If he takes a half day, he is done by 9am. He feels like he is “cheating at life.” We are genuinely happier than we’ve been in years. The pace of life is truly calmer out here, with more work-life balance and a laid-back style to most everything.

Except the ferry. That’s not laid back. When they say a half hour before, they mean it. But I’ll leave that for another post…

This last year truly has changed everything. We took a risk that at times seemed almost crazy, but it has made such a positive difference in our lives. We were lucky, for sure, but we also worked hard for these gains. For those on the brink of a big decision, have faith! Those risks can be worth it. If you were not constrained by fear, or by what should be, what risks might you take and what might you gain?