My story

Unlike my parents, I had no particular desire to get married or buy a house.  After obtaining a B.A. from McGill University - majoring in Latin American Affairs and minoring in French - in Montreal, I found it difficult to find a satisfying job.  Feeling restless, I decided to head south to Latin America, and lived in Caracas, Venezuela for a month, than spent a year working in Panama, and several years living and working in Guatemala in the early 1980s.  I worked at the Canadian Embassy in Guatemala City, but under contract and on a local wage scale - $600 per month.  I also got married and my first child was born there.  The marriage was short-lived, so at the age of 27 I returned to Canada with my 14-month old son – and approximately $1,000 in savings - to rebuild my life.

Feeling that quality of life and having time to spend with my son was more important than amassing a fortune, I worked first as a research assistant and later as a multilingual translator, but still was not making much money and lived for several years in an apartment and subsequently in a condominium owned by my parents, who partially subsidized my rent.  The prospect of buying a house – especially as I was self-employed and only working part-time – seemed very far away or impossible.

When I was 36, I met my husband and we found a dream home, a century old farmhouse with barn, pond and stream running through the property, and swimming pool on five beautiful acres in rural Kanata.  We got married, and within a few years our family had grown to four children – my son who my husband adopted, our two children, and my niece who we adopted when she was six.

At the time, our plan was plan was to pay off our mortgage in twelve years.  We both had well-paying professional jobs at solid organizations – him with Nortel as a chip design engineer and me as a senior multilingual translator with Export Development Corporation.

However, instead we decided to build a garage with a family room on top, which sadly became our downfall.  The planned addition grew to a huge and expensive project that more than doubled the size of our home.  We created a beautiful family room with cathedral ceilings, post and beams and wood burning fireplace, with a large picture window looking out over the stream, added two bedrooms, bathroom, office, and second family room above the garage, increasing the size of our home to about 3,000 square feet.  Although we endeavoured to do as much of the work as we could, it was an enormous project.  I remember installing all the insulation, which is not a fun job!

Suddently we found ourselves with a huge debt, and became “house-poor”.  My plans for frequent travel to exotic destinations with my family needed to be radically curbed.  And eventually the combined stress of never-ending renovations and heavy mortgage payments contributed to the end of our marriage as well.

Starting again, I cashed in my meager retirement savings of $20,000 and used it as a down payment to buy a small bungalow on half an acre in Dunrobin Shores. And now, eight years later,  I find myself unemployed and reluctant to return to the 9-5 grind, the lengthy commute to downtown Ottawa, and to the mind-numbing office work I was doing a few years ago.  With my children now finishing university and on their own, once again I am free to pursue a new life.