Well, it’s been a while. It’s been almost 2 whole years since I posted anything on this site. And a heck of a lot can happen in 2 years.

I moved to Banff, Alberta, Canada for a job at the Banff Centre for Art and Creativity. And then I lost said job amid the COVID-19 pandemic that is currently sweeping the globe. To say the last 8 weeks have been a whirlwind of emotion is an understatement. But more on that, unemployment, and being in a long-distance international relationship in coming blog posts.

Today, I will talk about my time in Banff, Canada – heart of the Rockies and really a spectacular place to live. I moved in June 2018. I packed up my newly financed Hyundai Elantra with what belongings I could fit into the 4-door sedan, and along with my father, hightailed it across the country (from Southern Ontario) to the mountains of Alberta in about a day and a half. The drive is 39 hours total. It was awful and I will never commit to a road trip like that ever again. We made it to Banff on July 1st, Canada Day.

My new job was a maternity leave contract of 18 months within the Performing Arts Department. I received 2 weeks of onsite training before I was thrust into the work that I came to understand and love. I’m not a performer and I’m not a technician, but production teams within arts institutions will always need administrators to cover the rest of the practical day-to-day running of theatres and that is where I fit in. I’m an administrator, scheduler, organizer, and coordinator of all things nitty-gritty. With an eye for detail, I undertook this role and found it rewarding and fulfilling and the people around me were warm and welcoming. It really was great fun and I enjoyed it immensely.

The Town of Banff is nestled into the Bow Valley just inside Banff National Park. It’s on the side of Sleeping Buffalo Mountain, surrounded by a host of other mountainous peaks such as Sulphur, Cascade, Rundle, and Norquay. It’s a picturesque place to visit, very reminiscent of other tourist towns on the west coast like Whistler, Big White, and Lake Louise, which explode with skiers as the snow falls in late October and throughout the winter months. In the summer, Banff is for avid hikers and mountain bikers. At an elevation of 1,383 m, the landscapes and stunning views can quite literally take your breath away.

Now, I’m a Canadian and am no stranger to snow. But having worked a year and a half on cruise ships, cruising the Caribbean and Mediterranean, which are in significantly warmer climates,  I was both excited and nervous about spending my first winter in two years in the mountains. And, for those of us who have no interest in winter sports (I do not ski or snowboard and therefore don’t feel the pull of the slopes like most residents of Banff) the winters in the Rocky Mountains are really cold. It was magical at the beginning, but towards the end of March and then end of April, I longed for the heat and humidity of summer, which never came. Banff saw snow into May and June. And I knew that snow would be coming again in late September to start the cycle over again. After an altogether lackluster summer of 2019, I knew that Winter #2 was going to be rough. Little did I know how rough it would be…enter COVID-19.

My 18-month contract was coming to a close and there were discussions about staying at the Banff Centre in another role, which did come to pass through a series of events that were too frustrating to mention in detail. I was looking forward to continuing working at the Centre, despite my frustrations, but the world had other plans. In March I was temporarily laid off, as were many of my other friends and colleagues. Rather than pay the exorbitant accommodation rates and grocery prices in the Bow Valley, coupled with the uncertainty of when exactly work would resume, I made the decision to pack up and move back in with my parents in Southern Ontario.

And that is where you find me now, at my parents’ dining room table, trying to relay the events of the last two years without being bogged down in nostalgia as I face the daunting task of reentering the job market in such uncertain times.

Despite the outcome and the speed with which I had to uproot my life in order to leave Banff, I will forever be grateful for the experiences and opportunities that living there provided me. I met so many wonderful people. Like most jobs I pursue, it is undeniably the people that made the position worthwhile. I will forever promote those within the performing arts and entertainment industries as the most kindhearted, compassionate, and truly amazing people I have ever met. It may just be the shared experiences, likes and dislikes, that connect us, but those I meet in performing arts are honestly my all-time favourite.

Well, there you have it. Two years in 1000 words. I will attempt to post more frequently now, but I have said that before so who knows? These days, I hope to fill my free time with crafty things like sewing projects and watercolour painting, along with spending time doing all the summer water sports I have missed in the last two years. But I think I can make time for a blog post here and there to populate my website. I can’t say what the future will hold for me. The arts and entertainment industries have been hard hit by the pandemic and will be the last to open back up on the other side of the tunnel, so I may need to transition into another line of work in the meantime. But the beauty of living in Canada is that I am not overly concerned with finding a new job just yet. I can’t live in my parents’ basement forever, but it has been a safe place to land amidst the chaos. I will emerge into a brand new world, where my adolescent notions of “normal” will be a thing of the past. Hopefully we can all find a way to thrive in these uncertain times.