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..........................................