Street Level

Ten years ago, a small advertisement in the Globe and Mail caught my eye.

The timing was fortuitous. I’d left a 25-year career at a large daily newspaper in Ontario, only to discover that working for the federal government was not the relaxing, normal, peaceful gig I thought it would be.

My husband, having also left an equally long career covering Parliament, was finding his own post-journalism job in communications at the University of Western Ontario was also not the relaxing, normal, peaceful gig he anticipated.

And there it was, an ad seeking applications for a job teaching journalism at some place called University College of the Cariboo in some community called Kamloops.

“Here, apply for this,” I suggested over dinner. “At least you’ll get a trip to B.C. out of it.”

A couple of months later, we had a massive moving van crammed with all the things a family of seven accumulates through the years — including the 34 boxes of Alan’s books — and were heading west.

Now, for a girl who had never been further west — in Canada — than Thunder Bay and who had lived for her four-plus decades in the same city, this was one emotion-filled trip.
I was leaving behind my mother and my father died just a couple of weeks before we left — a move that, at the time, had me convinced was calculated to stop us from heading to what he derided as a “pulp-mill” town.

I also had to say goodbye to a huge group of incredible friends, including Catherine, my oldest and dearest friend.

And so we drove west.

Alan takes great delight in telling people of my first reaction to the Rockies.

I cried.

Thank god he was driving because I couldn’t do much more than gaze and weep. It’s one thing to know they exist, but quite another to see them.

We beat the moving van to Kamloops — I spent countless hours learning to say it with the emphasis on the first syllable — found the house we had rented unseen over the Internet, had our introduction to the glorious pizzas Panago makes, bunked the first night on the floor in sleeping bags and set out the next day to learn more about the place we were now calling home.

That was the day I declared that, in a previous life, I must have lived in Kamloops because everything about the city just felt right.

Felt familiar.

Felt like home.

Felt like a great place for the kids to grow up.

I mentioned this to a friend recently, who gave me her patented “you are so strange” look and announced she had no idea why I would feel that way. How could I possibly think Kamloops is an incredible place in which to live?

I’m chalking that ridiculous statement up to the fact she’s about the same age as my daughter and finds the idea of pondering retirement complete unfathomable.

But there are so many reasons to love Kamloops. Here are just a few:

Music in the Park. The Farmers’ Market. The Thompson River. The hills that can be seen from almost any place in the city. Riverside Park. The way people just stop if you look like you’re trying to cross the road. Western Canada Theatre. The way people are so willing to help others.

The list of incredible people I’ve met in the past decade would be too long for this space, but each of them makes Kamloops a wonderful place to live.

Now, before some of you e-mail writers start warming up the keyboard, there are downsides to Kamloops as well, but their impact is insignificant — and often inspirational, especially when it’s time to come up with another column idea.

I still go back to London every year to see the grandchildren and check in on the ones who’ve flown the Kamloops nest. I hang out with Catherine, who delights in driving me around the city that has grown exponentially since we left. But, after about a week of gridlock, flat horizons, way too much rain and people who seem to be on a constant caffeine kick, it’s time to come home.

And that’s here. Can’t imagine living anywhere else.

Posted by Dale at 12:56 p.m. Comments