Tag: Johnny Cash

52W Mark II – Week 47: This Ancestor Stayed Home

Stayed home??? This is not the  52 Ancestors theme for me! My ancestors never stayed anywhere for very long! Even before moving to North America, my ancestors moved around a lot.

I follow in that tradition, having lived all over western Canada. By the time I moved away from home for university, I had lived in Lethbridge AB (two places), Regina SK, Medicine Hat AB, Creighton SK (on the Manitoba border), Duncan BC, Chemainus BC, Terrace BC, North Battleford SK (two houses), Terrace BC (again – and two houses!). The longest we ever lived in one house was the second place we lived in North Battleford. I was always the new kid in the class.

We lived in one of these houses in the first year of my life. I need to ask my mother if this was the first or second place we lived in Lethbridge. The other place we lived was in an apartment on the north side of the city. Decades later, one of my sisters lived in the same apartment complex when she began university.
(For the life of me, I cannot figure out why images no longer centre!)

Even after I moved away from home I didn’t stop moving. While I lived in two different residences during undergrad, I spent the summers in Terrace, Coquitlam, and Vancouver, respectively. After graduation, I lived in North Vancouver for a short time until I relocated to Victoria BC for a six-month legislative internship (where I stayed at two different addresses). I then relocated to Vancouver for a few months until embarking on a seven-week trip to Europe. On my return, I stayed at my folks, who by then had moved to Williams Lake BC (with several moves still yet to come for them). I moved back to North Vancouver, followed by longer residencies in Vancouver, Burnaby, and Richmond BC.

By my count, to date I have lived at 25 different addresses since I was born. The longest was 13 years, a record I set in the 90s. I would be very happy to beat that record. Our children, on the other hand, have only moved once in their lives, and have attended the same elementary school for every grade. I can’t even imagine what that’s like!

I feel like I lived a Johnny Cash song.