Moving ... Again
By Mr.e

Lots of people do it. Move. Far far away. Frequently too.

…No, not the cross country thing, but the moving bit.

It may well be true that the Canadian spirit is as mobile as your trusty lap top computer. I’m assuming that Canadians took to being mobile long before the computer took to the open road.

They (Canadians on the move) get to where they are ‘moving to’ any number of ways. By car, by air, but train or by truck but not the chuck wagon. Someone will try that too sooner or later; crossing this great slab of land using the same means that the early ‘foreign settlers’ used to get from point a to point z.

But they all get there. Someone I met recently just moved there. Got there in about five or so days using one of the more modern distance chewing conveyances included in the options package available to any Canadian in the limbo like midpoint of yet another move.

What follows is a recounting of two very distinctly different approaches to such a shift in location.

Actually deciding to live ‘somewhere else’ is of paramount import to the decisions that follow. Now you’re moving!
A recently observed method to prepare for the move cross-country consisted of selling everything wasn’t nailed down.

We participated in two multi dwelling garage sales at the ‘new’ place. The cross-country mover was in liquidation mode, selling as much as possible as quickly as possible. What was left and unsold is still destined for a charity pick-up and carefully stacked in the garage, along with our neatly stacked fire wood that is, while regulation sized, twice too long for the fireplace that dates back a very long time (80 years for sure). The suspicion is that it may be a coal-burning fireplace.

Back to the story …

My tribe was in the enviable position of being able to ferry goods and bricabrac and whatever that completed a load in the fabled family vehicle. While one place emptied the other threw stuff into the vacuum.

When the scheduled time to depart for parts east, the cross-country mover bid adieu and clutching tight a few well-packed travel bags stepped bravely into the rising sun and the future to the east.

A good look at our new place revealed some things that had been overlooked during earlier visits. Much to our chagrin we discovered that a few buckets of elbow grease and hours of toil would be needed to make it ‘our place’.

We had now been moving things the distance of 600 meters by car and the route had become familiar. A few days later the movers arrived to cart over the big stuff. My daughter and I played a curious game of laps to and from the old place, trying not to let the movers wait too long because inevitably they arrived a cigarette ahead of us every time. We covered the distance three times return that day.

While the distance is not great at all, the total distance for someone as out of shape as this writer was not without a bit of physical discomfort for days to follow.

Then followed a thorough cleaning of the newly vacated residence. The keys were exchanged for the damage deposit. The inspecting property manager made a few noises about this’n that for show. As I made my way back to the new place, the old house began slowly to fade into recent memory.

The cross-country mover was still traveling the first morning when we couldn’t find the coffee amidst a mountain of boxes. Still on the move the next morning too, when we still hadn’t located the coffee. I found it yesterday! Glory be!

I’ve often heard that Canadians are a fairly mobile citizenry. This restlessness could possibly be blamed on the vast and varied topography stretching from coast to coast to coast; and curiosity. While I don’t have any fast and hard figures to ‘prove’ the numbers and averages I once saw were staggering if not terrifying.

On average (and this might be colored by own sense of reasonable stay) John Move packs his stuff and moves every three to four years. It’s been true for me. So far I’ve lived in three homes in this neighborhood, in six years. This being the beginning of the third one.

Well, this place is feeling more like home now and the majority of boxes have been collapsed or turned into a recyclable resource.

Still adjusting to the single person mini kitchen concept.
Make no mistake; I’d love to settle in for another long-term stay. But would I sell all in the event one of those epic cross-country moves were to rear its ugly head? Don’t know that.