Hellobee

There’s a legend in my town that whoever drinks water out of one of the main lakes in the area is destined to return. Of course, what nobody mentions is that our drinking water comes out of that lake so… there’s not really a way around it!

In all seriousness, there seems to be two types of people who come to live in northern Ontario, if I may generalize: those who cannot wait to get out of here and get back to civilization, and those, like me, for whom the lakes and trees and air seeps into their bones and blood.

That may sound overdramatic, but let me tell you this — I spent my formative years in the north, in a town that is roughly three hours north of where I currently am; a place that is known as “Ontario’s Last Frontier” because the all-weather roads literally end there.

On the North Road

And although we moved further south before I was three years old, and I don’t actually remember living there at all, when I visited Sudbury as a teenager I got out of the van, looked at the pine trees, took a deep breath, and felt that familiar stirring of hey, this feels like home (and now I kind of laugh at myself for that because Sudbury is more than halfway back to southern Ontario from where I am now!).

My parents’ work took them north and south a few times, and so even as a young adult I found myself back in northwestern Ontario, visiting for a summer between university terms. We all headed back south, eventually, but that pull to the north? It ended up drawing me back.

Mac Daddy, too, is someone who has boomeranged from north to south and back again. He grew up in Peterborough, but spent some teenage years and summer vacations up where we are now, because part of his family lives here. When the city bustle got too much for him in his late 20s he packed up and headed north. I met him a few years later, when I came back up to this somewhat familiar stomping ground for work.

I was going to stay for one year and leave. Then I met Mac Daddy, we started living together, got married, bought a house, had a baby, then his more lucrative job came along… and here we are. While I’m not sure that we will live here forever — and I know Mac Daddy would love to return to the south one of these days — this is our home, for the foreseeable future.

The town has a snow dump, where they take everything that’s been plowed up over the season.

There are pros and cons to living here, like anywhere else, but they seem to be felt more sharply given our relative isolation from a lot of things many people take for granted. It is truly a whole different way of life here, something many people don’t understand until they actually spend time in the north.

Our cost of living in general is high — grocery bills, heating and energy costs, utility costs, fuel prices. On the flip side, if you get into the right industry here (because this town exists, in many ways, as a hub of government, healthcare, and other service providers) those high costs are at least somewhat offset by high wages. Real estate is also very affordable here, and rarely a losing proposition when it comes time to sell.

There are fewer choices, when it comes to basically everything. There is one licensed daycare provider, which is our municipality. There’s no such thing, really, as shopping around for schools, for internet and phone providers, for after school activities or for places to shop. The biggest stores available to us are an hour’s drive each way, and consist of Walmart and Canadian Tire. I do a lot of online shopping, and a few times a year we shell out the money to drive to Winnipeg or Thunder Bay, each about a five-hour haul, if we need to do something more intensive like pick up furniture or expedite a passport.

A somewhat unexpected perk? Our health care system is surprisingly good. That’s because, as I mentioned, we exist as a hub. Indigenous people from remote communities that are only accessible through air travel or winter ice roads come here for their shopping, their government services, and largely, their health care. We have a lot of services, from mammography to CT scans, that are not in place in towns of a similar size without that added northern population. In fact, our maternity ward is the busiest in the region, and nurses from smaller centres come here to train.

That being said, if you run into problems with labour or delivery — a premature birth, a baby who needs support beyond the most basic of NICU services — you’re getting sent out on an airplane to a bigger hospital, where you’ll have to stay, often without a support person. And women from further north are coming here to do the same thing, without access to anything beyond nursing stations, so we have a very, very busy maternity system. I went home a day after having M via C-section, mostly because the ward was getting really really crowded and I didn’t want to share a room.

There are a lot of workarounds and flexibility required, sometimes, when it comes to health care. I’ve had a few telemedicine appointments through this pregnancy, and have been working via email and phone with specialists at larger hospitals. I’ve had to schedule appointments so that even basic blood draws can be handled correctly because our lab has to process them out, and the planes only fly so often.

On rainy, cold, blustery days, or just plain boring days, there’s no “let’s go to the mall and kill some time.” Any time I’ve had to take M out of the house for sanity’s sake, or to make room for Mac Daddy to use power tools, or just to kill some time, it’s basically a choice between the one public playground left in town if the weather is decent, the library if it’s open, or a trip to a local restaurant for a snack. I haven’t seen a movie in a theatre since I was pregnant with M!

We are isolated from a lot of family, and from our friends from a different era in our lives. Not a lot of people understand just how large Ontario is, and just how much of a challenge it is for us to visit — we’re either driving five hours and then getting on a plane, or we’re embarking on a 2,000 kilometre road trip with kid(s) in tow. That trip takes us through some of the most beautiful scenery in the province, but it’s daunting, and it eats into our vacation time considering it’s realistically four days of driving, there and back.

Aguasabon Gorge — about six and a half hours down the road back south.

We see my dad most frequently, as he’s retired and loves the drive up. My mom and her partner visit about once a year, and other than that we try to cram as many people into our visiting schedule if and when we make it south, which is as exhausting as it sounds. There aren’t many real vacations — it’s bouncing from house to house, person to person, trying to make the most of our time in our old stomping grounds.

So — why do we live here, then?

Like I said, real estate is a big factor. We bought our house inexpensively and have been able to chip away at renovations in a mostly affordable manner, and we know that we’re 99.9% likely to turn a good profit when we sell. Mac Daddy’s job is great and I like what I do. We do have some family nearby, though the number of Mac Daddy’s brothers who still live in the area is dwindling as they all seem to be migrating west. Mostly, it’s just what is working for us right now.

And there are some unique, fun things here. We have very long summer days, with empty stretches of beach available a short drive away from home. One of M’s favourite places is a nearby equestrian centre, where we can go to hang out with the horses, no money needed. We fish, we snowshoe, we pick blueberries by the fistful. They’re all experiences that I think will ultimately enrich M’s life, and her baby brother’s, if we stick around long enough for him to remember.

If you pretend to fall while snowshoeing, you will ACTUALLY fall. And then your husband will take a picture instead of helping you.

When I feel frustrated about the high costs of living and the isolation and the inconveniences, I try to remind myself that the people living further north of us are facing things like decades-long boil water advisories and underfunded services, and that helps put things in perspective. I feel like I’m a more well-rounded person for having the experience of being a northerner, and understanding some of the major differences between here and the more metropolitan areas of the province and country.

One day, when the right opportunity presents itself, when our house is in order and we’re ready to go, I am quite certain we’ll say goodbye. I have no idea when that will happen, but I suspect we’re in the group of people who sticks around long enough to have great memories of this place, but eventually leaves to pursue bigger things. Until that happens, we take the bad and celebrate the good.

I’m glad the north shaped my early years, and I’m glad my kids will be northerners by birth, too.

What are some of the unique challenges and advantages of where you live?