THE REDCLIFF YEARS

May 2000, our lives were to change again when Bruce's transfer request which he had put in for 5 years previously was granted. We eagerly anticipated the next chapter in our lives. We were ready to move the Canada Day weekend and we loaded up the car and made our way down south to Medicine Hat which was very close to the Montana border to the south and the Saskatchewan border to the east. We had bought a house in the small community of Redcliff which was 7 km west of Medicine Hat. As we neared "the Hat" I made a joke that I expected to see a tumbleweed at any moment and as if on cue a tumbleweed came tumbling across the highway in front of us. We thought this was hilarious. Medicine Hat is very desert like... very dry and hot in the summer and mild winters with very little snow. That first summer it was hot and sunny every day and I remember wondering if it ever rained. There were snakes and cacti and tumbleweed. It was to my mind the wild wild west. It was a complete change from what we were used to in Fort McMurray which was a typical northern terrain of trees and lakes. The south was the opposite... very flat, not many trees and no lakes to speak of. It took getting used to but I quickly grew to love the big sky, the farmland and ranches, the coulees which surrounded Medicine Hat and Redcliff, and the most awesome weather imaginable. Some find the prairies boring but they have their own unique charm for me.
Redcliff, at that time was a community of approximately 4000. It had anything you needed... a couple of drugstores, a hardware store, bakery, small grocery store, convenience stores, doctors who took you on automatically if you moved to town, dentist, daycare, a great chinese restaurant with daily buffets, several parks, a couple of bars, chiropractor and so on. It was not lacking and it was a short drive into Medicine Hat for anything else you needed or wanted.
On the outskirts of Redcliff were nice, newer homes with winding trails behind them overlooking the river valley... there was a lovely park by the river and horses nearby and there was a trail to walk on by the river with red cliffs surrounding. I referred to them as the Red Cliffs of Dover. If you looked across the river to the other side you could see a park which was located just outside Medicine Hat called EchoDale pictured below. The red cliffs you see in the one photo is looking across towards Redcliff from EchoDale.









We liked to go for drives in the Cypress Hills to a place called Elkwater. Elkwater was a townsite about seventy km from the Hat off the highway as you headed towards Saskatchewan.
The town was home to deer, wild turkeys and the occasional moose as well as humans. Elkwater reminded us a little of Fort McMurray because there were a lot of trees and a lake with a beach. Just a bit further on the road to Elkwater was a place you could camp and a small lake for fishing. It was a little piece of northern geography in the middle of bald ass prairie.









Also in the Cypress Hills region was a place called the Horseshoe Valley. Another place we frequented often on our many drives. It was beautifully green and lush and there were farms and a few acreages in the valley... I dreamt of living on one of those acreages every time we passed through.





There was the cutest little church in the valley called St Margaret's and we would stop and visit the church which was open to the public most of the time. It was really charming inside... so small with just a few pews and an altar and old organ at the front and a baptismal font. Outside was a small cemetery with gravestones old and new and we loved to walk through and read the inscriptions.









Bruce worked at Telus in Medicine Hat until 2005 when he retired. Still feeling he couldn't fully retire he took a job working at one of the greenhouses in Redcliff. He worked for a great guy named Alf who owned a cucumber greenhouse. Perhaps greenhouse work was not the most glamorous job in the world, but Bruce enjoyed the season he worked there. It was easy work, tropical climate, no stress whatsoever. He worked for several hours in the morning before the heat of the day and quite often after work he would sit with his boss and a co worker and enjoy a cold beer and then he would return home and had the rest of the day to do what he wanted to.
The season was over mid December and he had the winter off. That was a great year!

We had decided during that time to move back to Ontario to be closer to family in 2007. This was an especially hard decision because we had made many terrific friends and neighbors and had grown to love Redcliff and all it had to offer. But our desire to be closer to our families won and we packed up and moved across country to northern Ontario... Elliot Lake, in May 2007.

WELCOME TO FORT MCMURRAY

I want to describe what it was like living in Fort McMurray. As most of you know I was born in Toronto and raised for the most part in Brampton, Ontario.
It was back in the 60s when we moved to Peel Village from Downsview. It was a great place in those days to raise a family. It didn't resemble what it has become today. Even when I left to move out west which was 1984 it had started to get too busy for my liking.
Moving to a northern Alberta community was culture shock at first. We were away from family and friends we had grown up with. In a new community which was kinda backwards a little bit at that time so we quickly learned to rely on ourselves. We made friends just as quickly and some of my best friendships came from those days. But McMurray was transient and a lot of them moved on to bigger and better horizons. They did remain life long friends.
Fort McMurray began booming again and life as we had come to know it changed. I personally loved smaller town living and seldom experienced cabin fever. I loved no traffic and no line ups at banks and no waiting to get into restaurants. As the boom came and population grew all that I had come to love changed and not for the better. Today McMurray is overpopulated. There is too much traffic, lineups, too much money and not enough of the good things that had made it a wonderful place to live in the 80s. It is too surreal now. Most of my friends have moved on, although some remain.

Bruce worked for the telephone company, back in those days it was known as AGT but became privatized and is now known as Telus. Back in the day it was an excellent place to work and Bruce took pride in his work as a cable splicer/lineman. But times changed there as well and it was not as nice a place to work as it once was. But he stuck it out for 27 years and is now retired and collecting a pension. He made some lifelong buddies.

I had several jobs... I was a jack of all trades, master of none. I worked in the Fitness industry for a while, then at hotels as a front desk clerk, briefly at Safeway in the deli, at a gift shop/stationery store, as an Optician's assistant at an eyeglass store, at the newspaper as a collator and finally at Walmart pharmacy. That was my last job and we moved shortly after that. I met so many people working in the public sector and I enjoyed that part of it but working with the public also had it's downside.

I would like to talk about some of the friends I made. My friend Pat whom I met shortly after arriving has remained a great friend today. We did everything together. Her children were small then and we took them places together and I would visit with her at her house in the evenings when her husband was working the night shift at the plant. Those were the days... lots of laughter, lots of tears... we saw it all together. We drank a lot of cups of tea too!

My friend Deb Hall.... she was my workout buddy at BodyBuilders gym and we would go for long walks and hikes together. We would walk from the area she lived at to the downtown to have lunch at Grandma Lees. She loved the tomato macaroni soup and egg salad sandwich, always with a slice of cheese on it. We had a lot of laughs too and shared so much, good and bad. She moved away to the Okanogan in BC... boy I missed her! We have remained friends.

Bruce had a buddy, Mike. Mike met Barb on a trip home to Ontario one time and brought her back with him to McMurray. They are now married. We became friends with them as couples. We saw a lot of change, some good and some bad in all our lives. They have recently retired and are living their dream of owning a motor home and traveling the world. We have remained the best of friends to this day and will be seeing them this September.

So many others have passed through our lives, some who stuck and some who didn't.. Such is life.

In 2000 we bid Fort McMurray goodbye and moved on down south to Medicine Hat. Stay tuned..........................................

Tribute to a Great Dog

This is my Bailey. Cute, isn't she? Bailey, unfortunately passed away on June 24th. We found out she was in kidney failure and had only a matter of weeks left... we regretfully chose to have her put down. We knew in our hearts it was the kindest thing to do but I am still asking myself if there was anything else that could have been done for her. Bailey was always a healthy dog and very energetic, making her sudden illness that much more difficult to accept. It was a shock to find out she had chronic kidney problems from a young age. Apparently yorkies are susceptible to this. Makes me wonder why they couldn't test all dogs for this condition so that preventative measures could be put in place to help lengthen their lives. We could have kept the disease under control with her diet... had we known.

Bailey was as cute in life as her picture shows. She had the greatest personality and I always said she must have been Babe Ruth in a previous life because she loved playing ball for hours right up to the end of her life. After the untimely death of our other dog, Dylan, I swore we would have no more dogs. But three short months later I was adopting Bailey from a co-worker's parents. Bruce tried hard not to like Bailey but he quickly fell in love with her too! Bailey was my girl. We were inseparable. Bailey seldom left my side and you get used to them being there... always. Bailey was a happy dog... as you can see in her picture... she was always smiling. She knew she was loved and she loved back with as much enthusiasm as she had in everything she did in her short life.

I could go on and on... but I won't. I know every pet owner out there knows where I am coming from and could tell a million and one stories about their beloved pet. We do have our memories to sustain us!

We will miss you forever Bailey... RIP.

Bailey... 1997-2008

What Have I Taken On?

I have often thought about starting a blog, after reading other people's blogs on the internet. I have mostly read about people with illnesses, mostly terminal, because they had something important to share with the world. Their perspective on life.. and death. And their experiences with the illness and treatments they received. I suppose I am a curious person, one who feels the need to know what it is like to go through that... something I hope to never have to go through myself.

But why am I actually doing this now? I was inspired to. One of my good friends from childhood in Brampton led me to her blog just yesterday, and after reading hers, I felt like maybe I do have something worthwhile to say. You see, I never felt like I had anything to offer the world. Least of all my thoughts and feelings. I never had a strong sense of self. Never had any idea of what I wanted to do when I grew up. I still don't and now I am retired. But I realized I do not have to "save the world". I can just exist in it and share a small part of myself with those I love and that is good enough.

So this is a blog of my thoughts, feelings, dreams and most importantly... my life!

Thank you Catharine :-)