Close your eyes, dream a dream and maybe
‘Till you wake tomorrow morn, you’ll be home again.
from “You’ll Be Home Again”
by Allister MacGillivray
Home
My East-Coast-born and raised wife, Michele, lived in Alberta for 37 years and she never once wavered from calling the Maritimes “home”.
Family in various parts of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were the ties that bound for her. Like many East Coasters (not all), she always dreamt of being once again in the midst of “the green and the woods and streams” that the iconic Stan Rogers sang about in “The Idiot.”
As for myself, the Prairie boy, I discovered that the Maritimes had inexplicably always been home for me, too, well before I ever even set foot in the place.
The fact that I grew up on Atlantic Avenue in Winnipeg was more than a coincidence, it seems.
First visit
The first time I visited the Maritimes, at Christmas of the year 2000 – just my wife-to-be, Michele, and I, a year after I’d met her – I was absolutely enthralled. I loved seeing the places I’d learned about as I studied for my history degree, I loved the bilingual signage with all sorts of interesting names I’d never heard before, and I loved the fact that the three Maritime provinces were so close that you could visit them all in a single day.
I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store (or Michele in a chocolate or yarn store).
But most of all, I loved the people and how welcome they all made me feel, although every cheery greeting was quickly followed by, “You should be here in the summer!” Well, of course I should, but this was a damn fine way to get my first exposure to this often-overlooked part of Canada anyway. I fell ever more in love – with both my wife-to-be and the Maritimes – and couldn’t wait to get back to the people, including her family, and the places at “home” that made her who she is.
The big visit in 2004
Alas, income in a new career being what it was, the next opportunity to visit wouldn’t come around until almost four years later, in 2004, but it turned out to be well worth the wait. This time, it was four of us: Michele and I plus my daughter, Jill, who was almost eight, and my wife’s son, Joel, who was almost 18. It was a three-week adventure that would literally change my life.
And, yes, we came in the summer.
We packed so very much into those three weeks. Our adventure covered an area from Halifax to Charlottetown and even as far as Québec (so grateful for unlimited mileage on our rental). I figured that, since we were that close, we may as well cover as many of those bases as we could. I’d been to Montréal and Québec City before but doing all this in one fell swoop with our new blended family was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.
So many things to do!
The year 2004 was also the 400th anniversary of Acadian settlement (counted from the first time Samuel de Champlain settled at the island of Ste-Croix), which meant that Acadian flags were flying everywhere and there was much to see and do in the midst of that celebration as well. This was Canada’s only bilingual province at its best – no end of new discoveries and interesting places to visit!
My poor now-wife (we married in 2002) was collateral damage in all this, as she understandably would much rather have just sat around and visited with family in Miramichi and Riverview. However, we ended up going to a lot of places that she had never herself visited while growing up so, in many ways, we got to discover the Maritimes (and part of Québec) together.
Believe me when I tell you that she appreciates this much more in retrospect than she did at the time…
And then there was the music…
We attended several different sessions of the long-running Miramichi Folksong Festival and a bluegrass festival downriver from the city of Miramichi. However, there was also the chance for me actually to take part in the Miramichi music scene during that 2004 visit, which really started cementing my connection to this particular edge of Canada.
Michele had gone back to New Brunswick herself in 2002 for her grandmother’s funeral. At the time, she picked up a CD that New Brunswick singer-songwriter duo, Connie and Paul (Connie Doucet and Paul McGraw), had recorded.
Now, I did (and still do) play a bit of mandolin now and then and have the ability to play along with others in jam sessions and the like. Knowing this, Michele thought she’d prepare a bit of a surprise for me ahead of our trip out east. She e-mailed Paul and asked him whether I could play along with him and Connie at one of their “Miramichi Kitchen Parties,” which they put on for groups at Paul’s shop, Saltwater Sounds.
It was a brash ask but Paul, who’d never met me and certainly had never heard me play, immediately responded with a typical Maritime, “Sure – fill yer boots!” Wow – that’s some kind of hospitality here at “home,” let me tell you (note that the Miramichi Kitchen Party video in the link above includes, just by coincidence, yours truly).
…so much music!
Not only did I bring my mandolin and get to play along with Connie and Paul (and some other musicians whose shoes I wasn’t worthy to shine), but there turned out to be some other small “gigs” in the Miramichi area in which I got to take part during our holiday as well. I think I walked on air every time that mandolin came out of its case.
The whole trip in 2004 was like a dream and it literally took me several weeks to come down from it. If Michele had a secret plan to draw me ever closer to “home” in the Maritimes, it sure as heck was working.
Every two years…
But the Connie and Paul story doesn’t end there. We visited every two years after 2004 and, every single time, these two talented musicians welcomed me into whatever of their shows they were doing while we visited. “Boy, if this is how things are done in the Maritimes, imagine how great it would be to live here,” I thought more than once.
And then there were Paul’s stories. Not only does he know the history of the Miramichi area (and especially its music) as well as anyone, he is a master in the telling. With every visit and all the additional reading I did besides, I learned more about the area’s history and people and developed an ever-deepening connection to it. I carried this connection back to our home in Alberta and even incorporated it into the music my friends and I were playing together there.
Now, not only were the Albertans going to the East Coast, the East Coast was coming back to Alberta with them!
We went to various places in those biennial visits, including Grand Manan (whence my father-in-law hails), the Cabot Trail (warning: don’t rush it like we did), Saint John in all its historic glory, and many other places besides. Every place we went, every person we met, every story or song I heard, and every time I laid my eyes on the ocean strengthened my own connection to the Maritimes. The place was already becoming an ever-bigger part of who I felt myself to be.
Wanting to stake a claim to home
By the time July 2008 came around, we’d already visited the Maritimes three times and were getting ready for a fourth visit later that month. We knew we wanted some sort of tangible stake in the Maritimes in general and in New Brunswick in particular, where much of Michele’s family lived and with which we had a great deal of familiarity.
Before we left for vacation that July, we looked at some vacant land advertised in a catalogue with the idea that, maybe someday, we could put a trailer there and spend our summer holidays in it. Or, better yet, we could perhaps build something on it at some point. We even went so far as to get an appraisal on one particular parcel but it turned out that the asking price was too high, so we let that pass. We also looked at some other vacant parcels when we did eventually visit that summer but the timing just wasn’t right.
And so things sat for a few more years.
Getting serious
By 2013, we’d already visited the Maritimes six times.
In the fall of that year, we moved from the village of Bawlf, AB, where we owned our property, to the city of Camrose, AB, about 20 minutes west. We chose to rent in Camrose because we were already leaving the door open to moving and wanted the flexibility to leave when we wanted.
At this point, it was all very nebulous, as we had no idea when or how this change would occur but I became ever more determined that it would.
There were two reasons for this. The first was the opportunity to live near the ocean which, since that first visit in 2000, had become very firm in my mind. The second was that I wanted to give Michele the gift of going “home” once and for all. After 14 wonderful years together, it was the least I could do.
Interestingly, she’s told me since that she never believed it would happen until we were actually preparing to leave! She said that she’d tried to move back home before and it had never worked out, so she was wary of such plans. The last time she tried was exactly when we met, so that threw a wrench into things for her as we built our life together in Alberta. I felt I kind of owed her…
Alberta was so good to us but…the call of “home” grew ever louder
Now, make no mistake about it: we were extremely happy and fulfilled in Alberta, surrounded by two of our three kids and many good friends. We were content in our careers and volunteer activities, especially as the latter pertained to our relationship with the University of Alberta (the Augustana Campus right in Camrose in particular). For us, it was never a push to leave Alberta, which had been so good to us, but a pull to where we profoundly both felt we needed to be.
Michele always said she’d go wherever the road would take us, even if that meant staying in Alberta because of some amazing opportunity I might encounter, but I wanted to make sure that this road led home for her at some point, even if it required giving up something in exchange.
The 2014 visit
It was time for another of our biennial visits, but this one would be different, as our thoughts of moving to New Brunswick were already starting to crystallize. We were moving on from “Should we?” to “How can we make this work?” We hadn’t yet figured out whether we would come just for the summers or commit to a permanent move, so we considered all options as we arrived for this particular holiday.
I was riveted to the idea that we should look for a place on the open ocean along the Northumberland Strait. For her part, Michele wanted to be fairly close to Miramichi city, where her sister lives. The small Acadian fishing community of Pointe-Sapin, which is about a 45-minute drive from her sister’s place, fit the bill perfectly.
There were some vacant parcels along the water in Pointe-Sapin where a person could put a trailer but there was nothing advertised for sale and we had no contacts there to see what might be available privately. However, we did notice one house for sale that overlooked the ocean but we figured we’d never be able to afford something like that, so we put it out of mind.
Except we never put it out of mind completely, which was a good thing as it turned out.
Let’s have a look anyway
When we got back to my wife’s sister’s place in Miramichi, where we were staying, I thought I’d look it up on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) site anyway and discovered that it was about half the price I thought it would be. All of a sudden, affordability was much less of an issue, so we called the listing realtor and arranged to see it the next day.
We viewed the property – vacant because the surviving owner had recently died – with the realtor. As might be expected, it had some good things about it and some things that were perhaps somewhat problematic but that we (in our minds) would be able to overcome. We tried to keep a level head about it all, which is sometimes not my specialty, and drove back to Miramichi to give it some thought.
Did I mention it overlooks the ocean? And that it’s close to where Michele’s family lives?
We like to think that we buy things in a rational, analytical way but the fact is that we mostly purchase things based on emotion and find ways to rationalize the purchase later. We’re all adept at fooling ourselves, so it’s a good thing when we have someone with us who doesn’t have any emotional investment in the decision. In our case, it was my just-turned-18 daughter, Jill, who played that role.
Didn’t pass the first test
She pointed out a number of things that this house lacked, such as windows that were large and plentiful enough to take advantage of that ocean view (I guess that view is not as important to those who have lived next to the water all their lives as it is to some naïve come-from-away). It had no deck, a dingy basement, an old furnace, and the shingled roof looked a bit iffy – all in all, more negatives than positives.
My daughter was right about all of it, so my wife and I put on our “sensible” caps and called the realtor to tell her that we would pass on the house, ocean view and all. The quest for “home” would have to continue some other way.
Time to think
My father died in mid-July of 2014, so I found myself having to go back to Winnipeg to deal with his house in the last week of August. While driving around Winnipeg looking after all the items on my to-do list, it hit me, seemingly out of the blue. Here was a house on the ocean in New Brunswick, a short drive from where my wife’s family lives, not that expensive, and we’re turning it down because it’s not perfect? Are we crazy?
Michele and I had one more conversation about it and decided to put in an offer. We had a home inspection done (more on that in Part II) and took possession October 1. We had our stake in New Brunswick – the dream to be “home” was taking shape.
We didn’t yet know when we would actually move there or what our work situation would be once we arrived, but sometimes you just have to do things on faith. Even as I write this, I realize just how much faith we really had to have at that point because there was no clear or easy path from where we were to where we wanted to be.
All I knew is that I teared up every time we took the corner coming from Miramichi into Pointe-Sapin, as the vast ocean vista unfolded before me, like a present you get to open again and again. Despite whatever else we had to do to make this work, I knew we were on our way home.
COMING SOON – Part II
Loved reading this Jerry. Well done ! Anxiously awaiting Part 2
I do so appreciate that, Viv!
Well done.
Thanks so much, Howie!
Thanks, Jerry. I wasn’t aware of much of this as it was happening, so I feel enlightened to now know the back story. So happy for you and Shel.
I really appreciate your reading and commenting, Allen. We are just as happy for you and Becky on the West Coast!
One thing I will always consider unfortunate was the fact that our planned visit to your place in Maine never happened because of Covid.
Very nice Jerry. Looking forward to part 2.
Being raised in the prairies similarly to you, I also have a story on how we moved from the big smoke (Toronto) and ended up retiring in Muskoka (AKA God’s country)
I would absolutely love to hear that when you come visit, Fino!