Who says you can't go home?

I know, I know. You are really wanting to read a blog post from Mike and hear about his adventures in the US. Well you are in luck – there should be another recent blog post called interview with Mike. Check it out if you want more of the “vanlife” stories. In the meantime, my latest blog posts have sort of turned into part journal, part exploration of the places I am hanging out in (not living in a van) and part just wanting to blog because I miss it.

This one happens to be about Kenora. A small town in northwestern Ontario situated on beautiful Lake of the Woods. If you are taking a cross country trip from the west, you will drive through it to start your 2000 km journey through Ontario. If you have already driven through Ontario and think you are never going to reach Manitoba, it will be the last full service town on the TransCanada highway you can go through before you reach the Manitoba border (just be sure to head into Kenora rather than taking the bypass around it).

I grew up in Kenora (As did Mike). We went to school here and moved back here after Mike and I got married (only to leave again to move to Thunder Bay). And now here I am here enjoying the remainder of my “vanbatical” that is not in a van.

I have an interesting relatinoship with Kenora. The parts that I love include the this time of year (October/November). There is a kind of quiet here (especially in the winter) that you just don’t experience living in a city (even a small city like Thunder Bay). A Sunday morning walk with Maverick close to my parents home and I will maybe see one car driving. And yes, walking downtown as we get close to Christmas means things are bustling and busy but it still doesn’t feel as hectic as a city (that only comes in the summer).

I love it here because this is where our families live. My parents, Mike’s parents, Mike’s sister and her family. I have old friends here that I have enjoyed re-connecting with (in the last 6 years, visits to Kenora were a rushed weekend where there wasn’t really time to see anyone else but family) and I have friends who have recently moved here that I am so excited to see regularly.

Other highlights for me include volunteering with It’s a Dog’s Life again. This organization does amazing work and is where we adopted Jerome (2007-2015), Moe (2007-2014), Maverick and Dawson from. We also fostered over 30 dogs while we lived here. It was a really important part in our lives and something we truly missed when we moved to Thunder Bay and couldn’t find an organization we felt connected to.

I also admire Kenora for fighting back after being named one of the worst places to live in Canada by MoneySense in 2011. The MoneySense website doesn’t allow me to link to the article anymore but the phrase they used at the time to describe Kenora was “Cultural Wasteland”. However, being back here for the past 2 months, I have been to a Giller Prize night at the library, a ballet performance by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet professional division (brought in by the Lake of the Woods Concert Society), a local theatre production by Trylight Theatre and live music at the Lake of the Woods Brewing Company. There is a also now a permanent outdoor stage at Anishabe Park, continuous free concerts under the tent on the harbourfront in the summer, an annual music festival on Coney Island (although they still call it “maybe annual”), Harbourfest, a vibrant arts community (and currently in construction is a new arts centre) and the Seven Generations (in what was previously Lakewood School where Mike and I first met!) educational centre has been hosting a variety of cultural events.

My struggle with Kenora is some of the “rules” that personally affected me when I lived here with respect to environmental issues, leisure activities and health care processes (I am sure my friends and family have heard me talk about them many times). I won’t go into them now but just know that in trying to suggest new ideas for change I too often felt the answer was no, we do it like this rather than, “that’s interesting, tell me more”. I admire the people who continue to fight for change but I personally got burnt out by always hearing this is how it is. In hindsight, maybe there were different ways I could have explored making suggestions and maybe there were other battles that were easier and where change happened that I have forgotten but it so often felt like a struggle and when a work opportunity came up in Thunder Bay, I took it.

However being back now, I feel like I am making my peace with Kenora. There are great people here and yes there are challenges but these exist in every community. And maybe it is because I am not working that I am a bit removed from those stresses. Either way, I am happy to be here and grateful for the opportunity to live here again and be welcomed back even if just for a short period of time. So thank you Kenora. It is good to be home.