IWANUS: The call of home and moving to N.B. (Part 1)

Free Press columnist introduces new column by reflecting on move to Maritimes

Jerry Iwanus and his wife, Michele, have lived in this house in Pointe-Sapin since 2019. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)

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Close your eyes, dream a dream, and maybe

‘Till you wake tomorrow morn’, you’ll be home again.

From “You’ll Be Home Again” by Allister MacGillivray

Home

My East Coast-born and raised wife, Michele, lived in Alberta for 37 years but never wavered from calling the Maritimes “home.”

Family in various parts of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were the ties that bound her. Like many East Coasters (not all), she always dreamed of being back in the midst of “the green and the woods and streams” that the iconic Stan Rogers sang about in “The Idiot.”

As for myself, the Prairie boy, I discovered that the Maritimes had inexplicably always been home for me, too, well before I ever even set foot in the place. It appears that the fact that I grew up on Atlantic Avenue in Winnipeg was more than a coincidence.

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First visit

The first time I visited the Maritimes, at Christmas of the year 2000 – just my wife-to-be, Michele, and I, a year after I’d met her – I was absolutely enthralled. I loved seeing the places I’d learned about as I studied for my history degree; I loved the bilingual signage with all sorts of interesting names I’d never heard before, and I loved the fact that the three Maritime provinces were so close that you could visit them all in a single day.

I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store (or Michele in a chocolate or yarn store).

But most of all, I loved the people and how welcome they all made me feel, although every cheery greeting was quickly followed by, “You should be here in the summer!”

Well, of course, I should, but this was a darn good way to experience this often-overlooked part of Canada. I fell even more in love with my fiancée and the Maritimes, and I couldn’t wait to return to the people, including her family, and the places that shaped her into who she is.

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The big visit in 2004

Alas, income in a new career being what it was, the next opportunity to visit wouldn’t come around until almost four years later, in 2004, but it turned out to be well worth the wait. This time, there were four of us: Michele and me, plus my daughter, Jill, who was almost eight, and my wife’s son, Joel, who was almost 18. It was a three-week adventure that would literally change my life.

Yes, we came in the summer.

We packed so very much into those three weeks. Our adventure covered an area from Halifax to Charlottetown and even as far as Québec (so grateful for unlimited mileage on our rental). I figured that, since we were that close, we might as well cover as many of those bases as we could. I’d been to Montréal and Québec City before, but doing all this in one fell swoop with our new blended family was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.