Homes: France, Spain, Switzerland 2000

I went to Europe in May of 2000 to walk the Camino de Santiago. I landed in Paris and stayed a few days with a friend of mine before taking the train to Le Puy-en-Vélay to begin my pilgrimage. I spent the next 64 days walking 1,600 kilometres across southern France and northern Spain; my home was my backpack and the trail.

Along the way I met a Swiss guy. I told him that I was hoping to stay in Europe after completing the walk so that I could get the first draft of my book done before going back to Canada. He extended an open invitation that I could come and stay with him if I wanted. So I took him up on his offer.

I think my favourite address of the homes I’ve had was this place on Rue de Fleurs, La Chaux-de- Fonds, Switzerland. The street was not actually one of flowers, but rather a strip of three-story apartments that had been built for industry and industrial workers in this little Swiss town up in the Alps. The apartments were adjoining and different colours of exterior paint used to distinguish separate units – so the street had a colourful, almost whimsical feel as if it were made of flowers.

The apartment we lived in was at the end of row of these industrial buildings which seemed to have been built more for functionality than comfort – our little place was a living room, a small kitchen and a bedroom. The toilet was a in a closet-sized room out in the hall (unheated, I might add). Luckily my friend’s mother lived not too far away and she gave us an open invite to come over for showers.

I’d been living for months in my backpack and crowded hostels, so this place seemed pretty great to me. I spent much of my days writing, although I also learned to make some casseroles and earned a little bit of money by looking after a little baby. Some articles I wrote on the pilgrimage were picked up by papers back home (Montreal Gazette, Saskatoon StarPhoneix) which was encouraging.

Then I moved back to Canada to get a job.

Homes: Outlook, 2001

For the last couple months of 2000, I lived in Outlook, Saskatchewan. I’d been in Europe prior to this and had been applying from jobs from Switzerland. The only place that hired me was the weekly newspaper in Outlook, the town where I went to high school.

So I ended up back in the small town I’d left about 8 years prior. It was very far the opposite of good to be back.

I don’t remember much about the place I lived in other than that was a two-bedroom bungalow, a far bigger space than I needed. The rooms looked painfully bare since I had almost no furniture. I didn’t even bother trying to furnish one bedroom. I remember that I had one of those old televisions that come in a wooden box that weighs as much as a sofa. I didn’t mind the clunkiness of it – was rather glad that it filled the whole corner in which it stood.

As the only reporter at this paper, I wrote most of the articles, took several of the photos. I got to help with layout and learned a few things about production and sales. But being back where I did not want to be was not good. Within a few weeks I was applying for other jobs and luckily had some offers before my probation period was over.

What else to say about this place? Outlook is a small farming community about an hour south of Saskatoon, the city where I went to university. It’s built along a river and is the proud home of Canada’s longest pedestrian bridge - an old train bridge that’s been converted to a pedestrian walkway. It’s there so you can walk across the river to the bald prairie on the other side.

Perhaps when you get to the other side you will wonder why you came, what could have drawn you to a wind-tossed field of dust and grain where you stand in solitary foreignness. So you turn and gratefully find that the bridge leads you right back from whence you came. It’s a long walk, giving you enough time to determine that never will you cross the bridge again.

Homes: Aylmer, 2001

I moved from Saskatchewan to Ottawa in January of 2001 because I’d been offered a job here with a national arts organization. But when I started looking for a place to live in, I was shocked by how expensive everything was. There was no way I could afford even the smallest, ugliest place I saw that was reasonably close to my new office.

But since I needed to find something, for the first three months I lived with a couple in Aylmer - an anglo community just across the bridge from Ottawa.

We lived in a townhouse right beside the Ottawa River. The couple who owned the place were looking to bring in a renter to off-set their costs. The price was right, but otherwise it never fit.

They didn’t have a separate suite to rent out – I just had a bedroom on the same 2nd floor that they did. We shared the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen... well, actually it felt more like I was invading their privacy every time I used any of these rooms. The woman was a stressed and anxious type who didn’t really warm to me and with whom I had a hard time talking. The guy was easy-going and I could make conversation with him – but if I talked too long his wife would glare daggers at me.

So I spent most of my time in the house up in my room. I also tried to be away from the house as much as possible. I actually ended up getting to know Ottawa a lot better than I might have if I’d lived in a place I actually wanted to be in.

They would sleep in on weekends so I’d get up early and have my breakfast and coffee. As soon I heard them stirring, I’d grab my keys and get in my car. Often I‘d drive just to explore, not sure where I was going till I got there.

I don’t think they were too surprised when I gave notice that I was leaving. And as far as I know they didn’t take in another tenant – so likely the experience wasn’t all that great for them either.

Homes: Hull, 2001-2003

Before going to Mali, I lived for 2 ½ years in Hull – the Quebec city just over the bridge from Ottawa which has since been amalgamated into Gatineau. I lived in what you could describe as a working class part of town (although that would include the girls who sometimes worked the street corner nearby).

I actually liked the neighbourhood, for, not despite, its rough edges. I liked its sharp contrast to the clean-cut, middle-class city across the river.

I’d also received a bit of sticker shock when I moved to Ottawa and found that the cost of renting a whole house in Saskatoon wouldn’t get me a bachelor apartment anywhere close to the city centre on the Ontario side. It was much more affordable across the bridge – even though my place in Hull was less than a half hour walk to Parliament Hill.

The place I found was advertised as a bachelor apartment – which usually means that the bedroom is not separate from the living room. I’ve lived in several such apartments before and while I don’t mind the coziness, it can be a little uncomfortable having people over who you don’t know well as they may have to sit on your bed.

But while this apartment was small – just a corner of a house – it was split on two levels. A flight of stairs led from the main floor room (in which was a kitchen and table) to a sort of loft-style bedroom (my mattress on the floor) and a bathroom off to the side. There was no door separating the floors, but having guests over didn’t have to feel like inviting people into my bedroom either.

The place was cold in the winter – I hammered rag rugs to the walls to try to cut down the drafts – but it suited my needs well enough. It’s one of my old homes that I look back on fondly – not as the kind of place I will likely ever live in again, but as sort of emblematic of a certain time in my life. It’s interesting looking back at my old homes in this series and thinking about what these places represent to me now...

Homes: Bamako, Mali, 2004

I just realized that in my backwards chronology of homes, yesterday’s blog should be for today since I wrote about the place I lived in during the first 3 months of my Malian internship. Anyway…

My placement in the village of Markala was not ideal. The project that I had been sent to do did not really exist. And while I was there to help with IT development, we had only 3 sometimes-functioning computers (after I cleaned out the ants nest) and no internet. These and other reasons lead me to move to Bamako, Mali’s capital city.

I found an organization that was working to help youth and community development – and volunteered to develop their website and help with some computer stuff. They happily accepted and I was relieved to be able to move into their compound where I had some more personal freedom and space.

I lived in one of three adjoining rooms on one side of the organization’s compound. Each room had a door and window facing the courtyard. The offices were in another building in the courtyard.

My room was quite small – a single bed, some shelves, a table and a fan. Cooking was done over a single burner – although I quickly picked up the bachelor habit of going out in the evenings and buying my dinner for the equivalent of about 25 cents from one of the many women who would set up stands where they served traditional Malian food.

I was still a white foreigner who stood out like a sore thumb, but I was relieved to no longer have the close, constant scrutiny of living within a family in a small village. There was a young British couple living in room adjoining mine, and another British woman who worked with the organization. I made friends with other foreigners as well as with Malians who could see past my skin colour and engage with me as a person.

While I certainly learned a lot about Malian culture and rural life while living in Markala, in Bamako I was able to explore and interact with my surroundings much more. The overall experience was very enriching, but was certainly very challenging too.

Homes: Makala, Mali, 2003

In October 2003 I went to Mali for a 6-month internship with Canadian NetCorps. After spending a few days in the capital city of Bamako doing things like getting my visa and some local currency, I went out to Markala, a small village of mud houses and dusty dirt roads.

I lived with the family of the director of the organization which had applied to have me as their volunteer. Typical of Malian family-compound dwellings, this family lived in and around a small, rectangular yard which contained a well and two trees. Several metal chairs with nylon-strung backing and seating were moved around the courtyard as needed. The vast majority of waking hours were spent in the courtyard

Two sides of the courtyard were lined with small, banco buildings and the cooking hut. Along the third length of the courtyard was an unfinished stone building, half of which was used to store chairs, dishes, tools etc. Along the fourth side was a wall and the ‘bathroom’ – which was actually a small enclosure with no roof and a cement floor with a hole cut in it.

There was no running water – we drew from the well. Bathing involved crouching naked the unfinished building and splashing myself with water from a bucket while mice, birds, lizards and bugs observed me.

I was grateful to have the luxury of a small room to myself, within which was a bed, a small mirror, a little bench-like table and some hooks for clothes. A dusty lace curtain hung in the doorway, upon which crickets would cling and call out.

I lived with the family for 3 months and while we grew accustomed to each other, I never felt like I really integrated. The women in the family did not speak much French and so it was difficult to talk with them. While I could converse with the men, the clear gender lines made it awkward to spend too much time with them.

So I would spend much of my time in Markala sitting in a chair without speaking much or being spoken to, watching what was going on around me, often being studied by small children or eaten by mosquitoes.

Homes: Hull 1/2 apartment 2004

From October 2003 to March 2004 I lived in Mali, West Africa. When I came back to cold Canada in the dreary last days of winter, I wasn’t really sure what my next steps were going to be.

After spending a few weeks sleeping on couches in friends’ apartments, I found a little place in Hull just over the river from Ottawa.

Like many places on the Quebec side, this one was part of a house that had been divided into individual apartments. It was even one of those places with the ½ on the address. It was sort of like a half apartment, an afterthought.

The entrance was on the side of the building and led right into a narrow kitchen not much wider than a hallway. There was a flight of stairs to the right, leading up to a much nicer 2nd floor – two rooms (living and bedroom) and a little balcony. The previous tenants had been kicked out because they let their little dog out on the balcony to pee. The pee would drip down and, of course, the family living below with the 2 year-old daughter complained.

I moved my paltry belongings in, painted the living room sage green and hung up art from Mali. I got a contract putting together an arts directory, but I don’t think I had a desk since I remember a lot of time being spent crouched over my laptop on the floor.

A lot of time was also spent figuring out what to do next. Since this accounting of homes is backwards in time, you already know what I did – which was to pick up and head off to Europe to be a pilgrim and a writer.

Amazingly the landlord let me out of the lease even though I only had the place for 2 months. I think he figured with the new paint job he could up the rent. I actually kind of lied to him and told him that I had been accepted into the translation program at McGill in Montreal and had to move there. I had been accepted into the program, but had already decided to do the pilgrimage/writer thing instead.

Homes: France and Spain, 2004

Before coming back to Canada in the early fall of 2004, I lived for awhile in what had always been my dream – a 6th floor walk-up in Paris.

I’d come to Europe in June to re-walk part of the Santiago pilgrimage. I started at the French/Spanish border and walked to Santiago de Compostela in the north-west corner of Spain. Part of motivation for doing this was to further research the book I’d been working on since first walking pilgrimage in 2000. And I was able to make this return trip to Europe due to the incredible generosity of my dear, late great-uncle.

I first spent a few wonderful weeks living with my backpack in hostels and pilgrim accommodations along the magical trail of St. Jacques. Then I took the train to Barcelona and went a little farther north to stay with a friend I’d met on the trail in her small village not far from the Costa Brava.

Toward the end of July I came to Paris to spend several weeks working on my book. I’d left my computer and some things with a friend there – in fact it was into her place that I moved since she was returning to her home in Switzerland. I had one room in a little three-bedroom apartment shared with two guys, a German and a Canadian.

My room was sparse – a small single bed, a desk, a chair, a drying rack for clothes. The common area was pantry-sized kitchen (two-burner counter-top stove, some shelves for food) and another room with a table, a sink and a shower. To take a shower I’d pull across a folding dividing wall and loop it to the wall to make sort of a triangle between the shower and the rest of the room. Sometimes the clasp would slip and I would have to hope that no one came through the front door just as I was stepping out of the shower.

I spent my days writing, reading and wandering the streets of a city I loved before I knew it. Paris in August is quite deserted, and I knew few people, which only added to my abstract sense of my writer’s solitude.

Homes: Ottawa, Churchill Ave, 2004-05

When I came back to Canada after walking and living in Europe for a few months I found an apartment on Churchill Avenue in Ottawa – one of 3 suites in a house.

The location was pretty good – once again, not far from this Westboro neighbourhood I am so fond of. The house was in decent shape, although it could have used some general repairs and TLC. My apartment was on the 2nd and 3rd floors. The kitchen was on the 2nd floor – and then up the flight of stairs was a low-ceiling attic room where I had my bed, books and hanging-out space. I spent most of my time working on a book.

As I usually did when I would move into a new place, I painted the walls. The kitchen I painted a sunny yellow, the attic two shades of slate blue.

Landlords usually loved me as a tenant. I would paint the walls (often at my own expense, although with this place the landlord reimbursed me for the paint). I paid my rent on time and didn’t cause any ruckus. But in this case, the landlord and I ended up in court.

Not long after I moved in, I noticed that my kitchen would often smell strongly of cigarette smoke. This got worse at the weather turned colder. I discovered that my neighbor across the hall, a scruffy, skinny, older guy with greasy blond hair, would stand just inside the doorway to smoke. There was an air vent right above him that basically fed directly into my kitchen. On top of this, he played his music so loud that my dishes would rattle in the cupboard.

I tried talking to him – he cussed at me. I tried talking to the landlord. He said it wasn’t his problem. I asked to end my lease and find a new tenant. He refused to let me out of the one-year lease, even after I found a new tenant. So I ended up going to the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Housing to file a complaint.

I was given the option of mediation, which I accepted. I won the case – a personal victory. But an unpleasant situation overall.

Homes: Wakefield, 2005

Before my crazy housing experiences on Carleton Street in Ottawa, I temporarily lived in Wakefield, Quebec – a picturesque little town about 40 minutes outside Ottawa.

The place I lived in was completely lovely, my situation not quite so much. I had been living in Ottawa prior to going out to Wakefield – and as I will describe in tomorrow’s blog, that situation was not ideal. So when I saw an ad for a reporter at the weekly paper in cute little Wakefield, I borrowed a friend’s car to drive out and drop off my application.

The editor was in the office when I came by and she invited me to have coffee with her next door. We had a lovely chat and it wasn’t too long afterward that she contacted me to tell me I had the job. Since living in Wakefield was required if I was going to be covering local events, and since I didn’t like my place much in Ottawa, I moved.

I found a lovely little place – it was a small, ground-level suite attached to a little house in the woods. It was surrounded by trees and had a spacious interior with lots of windows. I painted the walls sage-green and hung light-weight white curtains. There was a cardinal that would sing from the tall pine tree just outside my front window.

But when I sent an email to the newspaper editor to let her know my new contact details and that I was now living in Wakefield. She replied with this vague email, “Sorry, who are you? Are you looking for an internship? We don’t have any internships right now, but thank you for your interest.”

When I relayed this story to a local resident at the local pub, he was not surprised. Apparently she was known for being a bit of a flake. And apparently even my landlord knew that the guy I was supposedly replacing at the paper had decided not to move away after all and was living just up the road.

I stayed for 3 months because the place was so nice and I thought I might be able to work something out. Then I moved. Again.

Homes: Ottawa attic, 2005

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I moved far too often in 2005 and the place I’m writing about today I lived in only for 2 months one summer. Shortly after I moved in, my housemate and I received notice that the owners were going to renovate and sell the house.

It had seemed a good deal at first. I had found an ad for an affordable place in Ottawa’s Westboro neighbourhood (the part of the city we live in and love). V came with me to check it out and it turned out he’d played on an ultimate team with the guy who was looking for a housemate – so he could vouch for him as a nice guy and likely a good roommate.

The space I rented was the little attic level of a small bungalow. The ceilings were low and sloped – but I’ve always had a thing for little garret places, so I was fine with that. One small room had a mattress on the floor beside a window looking over the front yard. The other room held my books, a small tv and my papasan chair. It all seemed fine – although poor insulation and lack of a/c made the attic quite hot and stuffy, driving me to sleep on a cot in the basement a few times.

The first bad break was the news that we were being kicked out. Then my housemate invited a girl he knew to stay with us while she was in between places. She wasn’t his girlfriend yet – that would happen just before we all moved out – but she definitely was into him and definitely was possessive – of him and his house.

I didn’t care about her possessiveness of my housemate – nice guy and all, but I wasn’t interested – but I would tell V that the two of us in the house were like two dogs pissing on everything to mark territory. I resented having an extra roommate in an already small place – and someone I hadn’t chosen at that. She seemed to resent my general presence. So we stomped around, the two of us, staking our petty claims and biding time till the lease ended. What a life.

Homes: Ottawa basement suite, 2005

It’s kind of odd writing my list of homes in reverse order since often the reason for moving into a place was determined at the previous residence.

This is especially true in the case of the basement apartment I lived in September through December, 2005. This was the fourth out of five places I lived in over the span of one year and I chose this place completely for its convenience – it was on the other side of the driveway from the place I lived in the two previous months.

Just after I moved into that place, I was informed that the owners were going to renovate the house so I had to move out. Luckily, I heard that our neighbours were thinking about renting out their basement suite. I approached them and said I would love to rent the place, sight unseen. A friend helped me carry my things across the driveway and down into a little basement.

It was a nice enough suite – L shaped so that my bed and a closet were in the short part of the L and there was a small sitting area, a table, a decent sized kitchen and then the bathroom. I shared laundry with the family upstairs, but had my own entrance.

Like I said, I’d been very tired of moving at that point, so having a clean and comfortable place to move into that wasn’t too much of a hassle was a very good thing. And by that point I’d been dating V for a few months so I was at his condo quite often. I also had a great-uncle in the States that I was visiting quite often – so I wasn’t too attached to my own home. Home has often been a very loose concept to me. I would say it’s where my hat is, but I don’t usually wear one.

One of the nice things about this little basement suite was that it was on a street I’d already grown to like. It’s actually not too far from where we live now, in this neighbourhood I love. Sometimes we pass by it when taking Miya to a great park not too far away.

Homes: Ottawa condo, 2006

Before V and I moved into our current home, we lived in his condo in the south end of Ottawa. It was a 2-bedroom place on the 8th floor of a tall tower. We weren’t far from the airport, but far enough from most other things that we both had cars and used them daily.

The tower we lived in was one out of a pair of identical condo towers. Nearby were other similar stacks. In the grounds around us was a small pool, a duck pond, lot of parking spaces and a path leading to a strip mall. There were condo rules such as ones forbidding us to dry laundry in our solarium (a rule I violated repeatedly).

I’d never lived in a condo before moving in with him – and never as high up as the 8th floor either. I found it an interesting perspective, to look down on trees and buildings below – or directly below to asphalt and parking garages. But while the view could be pretty – and watching storms rolling in quite spectacular – I didn’t like being so far off the ground, so far removed.

I moved in with V in January of 2006 – and we were there until we moved to our house in the fall. I’d been moving so often before this that I brought very little stuff of my own – basically just several boxes of books, my clothes, some pots and dishes and various random things. So while we were there it felt very much like living in someone else’s space.

I don’t know when we started talking about getting a house together, but it must have been fairly soon because I remember that condo as always feeling like a stop-over place. Or maybe that was just hangover feeling from the very many stop-over places I’d lived in before.

V had painted the condo in some strange fit of inspiration – rooms bright red, blue or yellow. He’d tried patterns with tape and borders for a rather, um, interesting effect. When we decided to sell the place I repainted all the rooms in subtle tones of beige, mushroom and grey – and we both agreed we should have painted much earlier.

Homes: Ottawa house 2006-present

So I thought of a new series to blog about: I’m going to write about the places I have lived in, moving from the present to as far back as I can remember.

It was September, 2006 when V and I bought the house we now live in. Five years in one place, definitely a record for my adult life.

Our house is a little, 2-bedroom brick bungalow that was built in the 1940s. It has a brick exterior, hardwood floors throughout and a basement with potential that could be realized if time and money grew on trees.

Our house is great, but what makes it even better is the neighbourhood which surrounds it. As I’ve written about before, we live in a community filled with families, a neighbourhood sprinkled with parks and bike paths and a part of town quickly becoming one of the trendiest places to live in Ottawa.

The downside of this trendiness is all the development and construction, but the upside is that we keep getting more little cafés, restaurants, bakeries and specialty shops. We can walk to do almost all our shopping and both V and I can bike to work from home (admittedly he does it much more often than I do).

Having lived here now for 5 years, I definitely feel more of a sense of community and even ownership than I did with any other place I lived. I’m fighting alongside my community for public say in large-scale development projects; I’ve organized family-friendly events in local parks and schools and hung up knit-graffiti at my favourite haunts. I don’t think I’d be doing these things, at least not to the level I am, if this community and home didn’t feel increasingly like an extension of myself and my family.

We have a great back yard, a garden, a crab apple tree that we planted in the front a couple years ago. And although sometimes I wish we had some more space, or an extra room I could turn into my home office, I like the size of our house. It’s cozy and unpretentious. It’s filled with books and things we’ve collected over the years, including our memories.