Leaving the Six for the Sticks - Part 2

You know when you’re walking your kids to school and you have to stop and let the elk cross the road?? WHAT? Yup…that’s right. You know you are in Canmore when this happens! There was literally a heard of elk crossing 7th Avenue on our way to the bus stop for the girls and to drop my son off at school. Welcome to Canmore, Alberta!

Looking back at our drive out to Canmore, it was well worth the five day journey across the country to this beautiful mecca in the mountains. We made the best of our drive stopping in Windsor, then spending a day and night in Chicago to show our kids the “Windy City” and visit some of Jeremy’s family, followed by stops in Fargo and Moose Jaw before landing in Canmore. Who knew the U.S. had so many small town hotels with the most elaborate water slide systems?? Needless to say the kids were in heaven at every pit stop. We started off the drive with a strict rule of one hour of screen time each morning and one hour every afternoon. By day five, I think the kids were on screens for the entire drive from Moose Jaw to Canmore to keep everyone sane – a good 8 hours! The day we left Toronto, there was a wicked snow storm sending us off. After Windsor the roads were clear, the weather was ideal, but upon arriving in Calgary, we were welcomed by an equal if not more treacherous snowstorm for the final stretch into Canmore. It was so bad that the locals told us it was the only day in decades where they had turned around on the highway from Canmore to Calgary cancelling all city plans. Let’s just say the first stop in town was the liquor store to celebrate our safe arrival!

As I sit here writing this blog today, it is 11 degrees Celsius, a bluebird sky day and the mountain vistas make this town feel like something out of a fairy-tale. Before coming here, a good friend told me that when you land in Canmore, fairy dust is sprinkled on you and everything looks and feels magical. This description could not be any closer to the truth! Our experiences here have been nothing short of pure bliss. From the experiential learning in the schools, to the peaceful energy not to mention the maximum five minute commutes to just about anything and everything you could possibly need. For someone who has experienced anxiety in the past, this place was exactly what my soul craved.

Our main driver for coming out to the mountains was to allow our kids to ski and snowboard as much as possible! On top of our ski days, my husband was able to work remotely and I was able to continue to grow my online health and wellness business as well as start up a branch of Happy Healthy Women here in Canmore – an amazing community of women who come together to inspire, connect, support and rise together. As a bonus, we were incredibly blessed to have landed next door to some amazing Canadian-Norwegian neighbours who quickly became great friends of ours.

The mountain life is indeed not for everyone. We did have some wickedly cold days reaching downwards of -30 degrees Celsius where even the door handles inside the house were covered in frost! We went skiing on some of these cold days, and had to break after every single run, but the hills were emptier than normal and we were taking advantage of every day we could get out here. The locals thought we were nuts. The Alberta air is also extremely dry so not only was my skin crawling at times, but being a contact wearer, my eyes were so dry and tired every single night. Lastly, the cost of living is ridiculously high in Canmore. The real estate, the rental rates, groceries, eating out - all comparable and sometimes even more than living in Toronto. It makes it difficult for many people who work in this town to be able to afford the lifestyle.

Canmore has been incredibly healing and inspiring for us all. Before coming out here, I met an intuitive coach at a women’s networking event who read my tarot cards. She quickly saw that I was going away somewhere and started to ask questions about it, without me having told her anything. I told her we were moving out to Canmore, Alberta for five months in December and would be returning home to Toronto in April 2018. She looked me straight in the eye and said “You are not coming back in April, my dear, you are going HOME to Canmore”. Instinctively I thought she was dead right and I started to cry. They were tears of being seen and understood. So you can imagine that coming out here, there were definitely thoughts of “What if we decide to stay? How could we make living in Canmore work?” and so many more questions. Turns out that while in Canmore, I found a new passion for yoga and during multiple yoga classes, I kept hearing whispers of “In yoga you come closer to who you are. It centres you. Yoga brings you home to you.” One day the message hit me like a ton of bricks and I started to cry quiet tears in a yoga class as I realized that what my intuitive friend felt that day was not me moving to Canmore permanently, but that I was going to come home to "me" in Canmore. What is so beautiful too is that home is wherever you are, so you will always be home with yourself no matter where you live. This is a lesson I will take home with me to Toronto. I am so incredibly grateful to the yogis at Wildheart who helped lead me home to me. I now have such a better understanding that yoga is not just about the postures. It is about the kindness, the softness and the breadth. It is a way of life and one that centres me.

Both my husband and I are heading back to Toronto with new career opportunities – my husband as a new Director at a large Canadian bank and myself as a newly contracted coach for the students at a business development fellowship program out of Silicon Valley. This adventure made us look at the world differently. I recently heard Deepak Chopra say “Take the time and look at something you always see and find five new things. This is how children look at the world”. This is what Canmore has done for our family. Our perspectives were changed, our minds were opened, and those glimmers of light in the periphery were seen, acknowledged and explored.

We leave this Thursday, for our big drive home. It will be interesting to see how everyone settles back into our city life. A month ago none of us wanted to leave this paradise, but as the reality of our future settled in we have all adapted and are excited to go back to our home to be near our family and friends again. We are all so proud of the accommodations and adaptations we have all made and already we are thinking “Where shall we go on our next adventure?”