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.
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