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Monday, August 22, 2011

The tipping point

This October 3rd will mark a milestone in my life. It will mark the point where I have been away from my native Nova Scotia for as long as I lived there. Exactly half my life spent in the north. I left Nova Scotia on a sunny morning with $150.00 in my pocket and three bags. I had never flown on a plane and had never been further from home than P.E.I. I guess it was the final rite of passage; I was leaving the nest and flying on my own. One thing for sure it was a long way home. I started as a Management Trainee for the HNC for the princely sum of $10,500.00 B&L (board and lodging) which meant that after the cost of my travel was taken off my first six months wages I took home just under $100 a week. Airfare to Halifax in those days was nearly $2,000 so going home really wasn’t an option.
But the weather was nice for early October in northern Alberta. Within a week I had made some friends, met some people from home and caught my first pike. I called home every week. I had a lot to say in ten short minutes that first week. Ten minutes was my ration. We often think that things have gotten so expensive over the years, but not everything has. A phone call in 1985 cost $1.70 a minute at the cheapest rate. Ten minutes a week was all I could afford. Saturday night was my time to call home. I hated when you couldn’t get a line out. The exchanges were crude and “all circuits are busy please try your call again later…” Was a frequent response; in that cold, business likes voice. Still; God bless A G Bell because there is more you can hear in the sound of someone’s voice than can be written in the most eloquent letter.
I wrote letters too; they were way cheaper. I sent pictures home of my new surroundings. When I got a part-time job doing guard duty for the RCMP I bought a truck. I proudly sent pictures home. I wanted them to think I was fine and doing well, prosperous even. I think I even believed it. Until Christmas eve I heard Stan Roger’s “First Christmas” and melted like a snowflake I felt every inch of the nearly three thousand miles between me and home. I may have gone over my ten minutes that first Christmas day; and what a job getting through; I think it took more than four hours. I wanted to thank Mom for the gifts; but most of all for the Santa Bag. She had always put together one as a stocking for us. It was a cornucopia. When opened it revealed a mixture of the practical (combs, toothbrushes and shampoo) the fanciful (Quality street chocolates, Candy chicken bones, and candy canes) and the sublime ( a small toy of some kind, no matter how old we were just to remind us I guess that we were still her little boys and girls). This continued for many years until I met my wife. Our first Christmas together my Mother sent us each a Santa Bag, I was delighted as it meant that Lina was officially “part of the family”. The only thing was I knew it was my last stocking from Mom. From now on Lina and I would fill each other’s stockings. At about the halfway point of the time since I left the little blue house on Third Street I had crossed another bridge; severed another apron string.
Back home communities are small and tight. Move into one and you will always be a CFA (come from away). No matter how long you live there you will always be “from away”. It is like that up here too. Small towns have that dynamic no matter where they are. Nova Scotia will always be the “away “ that I am from. But home we always be wherever Lina and I are together.