I figure that I’ve made three dramatic moves away from home in my entire 37 years of existence.
The first time was when I was 18. I had recently graduated from high school and got accepted to Saint Mary’s University. My parents helped me move into a two-bedroom apartment in west end Halifax a week before I was to begin classes.
Even though I only lived an hour’s drive from my home community of Indian Brook First Nation, it was pretty scary because it was the very first time I was on my own.
For the next four years, I learned the hard way how to pay bills on time, cook for myself and balance my academic and social life (sometimes I spent more time on my social life than I should have). I shared that apartment with Yvette, who is also from my home community. We never hung around much before then. But we became the best of friends during the four years we shared that apartment on Cork Street. It’s a friendship that continues to this day.
The second time I moved was to Toronto to attend journalism school at Ryerson University. Five years of living in Halifax could not prepare me for daily living in Canada’s largest city. All the frantic crowds and streetcars and the noise made my head spin as I arrived at the residence building on my first day. But Yvette calmed me down and helped me get settled in for my first week there.
I lived in a co-op residence located across the street from the Ryerson campus in downtown Toronto. It was a co-ed unit with five other roommates.
I learned tolerance and patience from those five people I cohabitated with for those two years. But during that time, I was incredibly homesick and longed for the days when I was only an hour’s drive from my parents’ home. As soon as classes were over, I hopped on a plane and moved back home.
The last time I moved was to take a full-time reporting job in La Ronge, Saskatchewan. While I loved the job and the people I worked with, I could not adjust to living in semi-isolation where the winter temperatures can drop down past -40 C or -50 C. Not only that, but I felt that I no longer had a sense of belonging. For the first time, I realized that my sense of identity as a Mi’kmaq person was missing because I was no longer living in the homeland of my people, where I could hear the language and feel the connection to the land. And my own sense of self was slipping away with each month I remained away from my people’s homeland – Nova Scotia.
So, after 15 months and one harsh winter, I handed in my resignation and moved back to Nova Scotia. That was back in 1996.
Since then, I’ve managed to remain in one place for the past 10 years. And I’ve been able to make a decent living being a journalist while living close to family and friends.
The only dramatic change I’ve made in that time was moving in with my spouse, Stephen Brake, in Halifax about a year and a half ago.
But by next week, I’ll be making the fourth dramatic move of my life. Stephen and I are packing up our belongings and driving down to New York City. I’ve been awarded a full tuition scholarship to earn my Master’s in Journalism at Columbia University.
Classes begin there in mid-August. Stephen is accompanying me to provide moral (and financial) support. So, we’ll be calling New York City home for the next 10 months.
My employer has granted me an unpaid leave of absence from work so I can pursue graduate studies in journalism.
I’m not quite sure what to expect when I arrive there. As I write this, we still don’t have an apartment lined up. I’m relying on some of my savings and funds from a donation drive the Canadian Media Guild is conducting on my behalf to help defray some of my living costs for the first two months I’m there.
It’s an exciting and scary step for me. But a full tuition scholarship from an Ivy League university for graduate studies is an opportunity I cannot pass up. I know I would be kicking myself forever if I let this opportunity pass me by. So, it’s back to being a starving student for a little while, but in the end, it’ll be worth it.
So having said all that, this will be my last column for now. It’s been really fun writing about the people I’ve met and the issues I’ve covered in aboriginal communities in Atlantic Canada. I’m glad I was given the opportunity to share those stories with readers.
Maureen Googoo is a Mi’kmaq journalist based in Halifax.
