I guess I should give a brief run down of the sorted little bergs I called home over the years to provide a bit more context to future stories. Sorry about this. Probably should have been my second post!
I was brought into this world at Southampton hospital (when they were still delivering babies) in the winter of ’79. The day of my birth was a beautiful day as it should be… however the day after was something else entirely. My Father wasn’t able to visit Mom and me in the hospital due to the roads between Port Elgin and Southampton being closed from a snow storm. Ahhhh… Port Elgin. This is the town I lived in the first few years of my life. I do have some vague memories even that far back. Some friends across the road and a neighbor girl I used to play with that lived right next door. But I believe the most vivid memory I have of this town is the day Mom told my sister and I to sit on the front porch and look for a big truck to come down our street. That’s right… it was a moving truck. Right up to the hour we moved, I had no idea we were leaving Port Elgin (I would eventually come back about 25 years later).
From Port Elgin we moved to Orangeville due to a job transfer Dad got to the training facility for Hydro in Hockley Hills. We moved into a 3 bedroom back split in a lovely section of town called “Brown’s Farm”. At that point, it was on the outskirts of town yet it was a pretty built up neighborhood. I really enjoyed living there. The house was right next to a catwalk (that’s a sidewalk between houses that links up to another street) which also led to a large play field and park. Once I got a little bit older, I hit it off with the kid across the street who would become my best friend at the time. His mother also became my babysitter. The subdivision was chalk full of kids and we would play games until it would get dark (posts about that later). The house was a great little house for growing up in. My sister and I even got to help knock out the kitchen wall to make room for a breakfast bar between the kitchen and dining room. On the main floor, Mom and Dad had folding doors to the living room to keep us kids out of there (the only room in the house with good furniture!). Heading downstairs was a nice wide open basement with my parent’s piano, a tv, small dry bar and the computer. Heading down a few more steps was the subbasement which had a spare bedroom, sewing room, Dad’s work room and a large play room for my sister and I. It was a great little house and thinking back on it… I miss it. I’m sure I’ll post a lot of stories about that house in the future. We lived there for about 6 years I think. Mom and Dad were never really happy with the house and how Orangeville was growing. So half way through grade 5, they did the unthinkable. They moved us to another town!
I believe this was around 1987 or so, Mom and Dad had had enough and simply wanted something different. After looking at a lot of houses, Mom and Dad found a 2 storey, 3 bedroom house in Grand Valley. That’s about 15-20 mins outside of Orangeville. It would add to my Father’s commute to and from work but they thought it was a small price to pay. I guess they never calculated in the traumatizing effect of moving to a different school would have on their kids! Or maybe they did… who knows. I later found out talking with my Father that this house was their dream house and all others would be compared to it. They really did love living there in Grand Valley. The house had a double car garage and fair size lot. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it also backed onto a farmers’ field so you had a pretty nice view out the backyard windows. I must have really liked the format of the house because the first house my Wife and I bought has nearly the same layout. I still get pretty nostalgic walking into my daughters room because that was my old room in the old house.
We lived in that house in Grand Valley for about 11 years and we all THOUGHT that is where my parents would stay for a long time to come. However fate didn’t see it that way. Around 1998, the training center where my Father worked closed up with the fall of Ontario Hydro. Things looked pretty bleak and it was no shock when Dad received his termination notice. What WAS a shock was Dad got an acceptance letter to work in the training department of a now privatized nuclear plant back in Port Elgin! He had seen the writing on the wall months earlier and applied for the job. He got the acceptance letter the same day as his termination notice. So we were moving back to Port Elgin! This posed somewhat of a dilemma for me. Not only was I firmly rooted to Grand Valley, I had only 1 term left of high school before heading off to university. There was no way I was moving to another school for one term! So when Mom, Dad and the Sister moved, I shacked up with one of my best friends and his family for the remainder of my high school career. I’ll post lots of stories about this little adventure later on! When I finally did complete high school, I moved to Port Elgin for the summer before heading off to university. Mom and Dad had bought a much smaller house knowing that my sister and I wouldn’t be around much longer. They still live in the little side split to this day a few blocks away from me. And I’m still not used to the tiny little kitchenette they have instead of a full size kitchen and deep down, I know they aren’t either!
That about does it for the moving around stuff when I was younger! I lived in several residences while going to university and a couple apartments that I may talk about later. Each has some good stories linked to it so I’m sure I’ll be bringing them up.
I know there wasn’t a whole lot of humour in this post but I needed to lay some framework and context to future posts. I suppose I’ll have to do that from time to time.
The title for this post is somewhat misleading. Although the trauma was very real as any kid that had to move away from their familiar surroundings can attest to, it also passed relatively quickly. Once I settled into my new school in grade 5 (about my second day), I made friends fast and planted some seeds of friendships that would turn out to be my best friends in the world. I say second day because the first day of going to the new school I got in a fight. Go figure.
I hope I never have to uproot my family for any reason but if I do, I know they’ll be fine because they have a Dad/Husband that’s been there, done that and can help them through it!
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