The other morning after I walked my daughter to school I went home and put hydrating drinks within arm’s reach of my son, who was sick on the couch, and threw a box of cold and flu medicine at my husband, who was sound asleep on top of two giant Squishmallows on the floor, also sick.
I had an hour to myself and needed to get a long walk in for my “rest day” exercise.
I’m not sure if you knew, but after too long of a time waiting, the giant washout on the Trans Canada Trail by the Sherman Road entrance has finally been fixed.
I took the opportunity to use that trail to walk a different route. Somehow, despite years of walking North Cowichan’s trails, I found myself in a completely new-to-me area of town. I passed creeks I’d never seen, neighbourhoods I didn’t know existed, and smiled and said good morning to at least a dozen other folks out for their morning fresh air and exercise as well.
(I always make a point of looking at walkers I pass and saying good morning because it makes me uncomfortable and it’s good to work on expanding your comfort zone. I mean, worst case, I’d get a really good look at my abductor, right?)
The new trails, the friendly passersby, the nature, and knowing how I was really not too far from my boys at home and my daughter at school, warmed my heart. It was the only part of me that was warm, mind you. It was cold and wet but that’s beside the point. It all got me thinking.
I am home.
For the first 17 years of my life, I grew up in a small suburb of Vancouver, surrounded, at that time anyway, by farmland and so near to the sea that I could hear the ferries sounding their horns upon each departure.
Ladner was home.
It was a great community to grow up in. My school was around the corner and when we were little, my mom used to send our golden lab Ginger to the end of our street to watch for us leaving the school grounds. My mom knew when we were safe and on the way home when Ginny wagged her tail because that meant she’d seen us.
It was a small town, so long after our beloved watchdog had passed, it was no big deal for my sister and I to walk or ride our bikes across town to the Grade 8-12 high school just 1.4 km away. In later years we drove, or got a ride from a friend because that was admittedly way cooler.
I moved away from Ladner a month or so before my 18th birthday to go to university. I didn’t move across the country or anything, I just went to SFU at the top of Burnaby Mountain, but as a student-athlete I needed to be much closer to the school and the nearly-hour long commute each way wasn’t really all that viable.
I spent five or six years in and around Burnaby but it never felt like home. During that time I finished up at SFU, and went on to do postgraduate certificate studies at both Capilano College in North Vancouver and Langara College in Vancouver proper and I didn’t feel compelled in either one of those communities to put down roots either.
At the end of 2003 I moved to Duncan to work at the Citizen. Save for a couple of years when I moved back to North Vancouver for a dream job I ended up hating, I’ve been here ever since.
I’ve lived on Dingwall Street and in Maple Bay. I’ve lived in the Cairnsmore area and now in the middle of North Cowichan. I met my partner here, got married, and have had two children here. We’ve had deaths in the family, we’ve bought a house and cars. We've got pets. We’ve been through a lot here. We’ve all grown up here in a way.
My family has explored all kinds of parks and trails and attended a lot of community events and we feel a connection to the community — its people and the land.
It occurred to me on my walk that I’ve actually lived in greater Duncan for longer than I have lived anywhere else in my life. I love Ladner and it will always be where I come from.
But this is home.
