How It All Started - - - Mid-July 2010

Two and a half years ago (March 2008, specifically), I came out here to Edmonton, Alberta from my home province of Ontario for work with a coach company.  That's BUS coach, not sports.  Not the kind of work I had planned in my life, but it looked like an interesting break from my two main career courses thus far.  The work was challenging, eye-opening, steady and added a few more skills and credentials to the ol' résumé.

This spring, after much time away from home, I decided the time was right to start heading back.  Additionally, the company was experiencing downsizing and layoffs, due to diminishing demand from the company's clients.  We drove workers out to the huge refinery they are adding on to just outside of Fort Saskatchewan, and the project went for several years.  However, main construction was winding down, and workloads were getting much lighter.

Worse yet, I was seriously beginning to miss my family.  My sister and brother-in-law are still in Stayner, ON.  Mom died in 2001.  Up until last year, my father was in a retirement home, where he grew increasing dissatisfied with such living conditions.  My daughter, now 22, is still living in the Hamilton/Burlington area. 
Earlier this year, I'd scheduled a plane flight out to see Dad when I heard that his health had begun failing.  A couple weeks before the flight date, I got word from my sister that he had died.  So, now I was never going to see him again...    I came down later for the memorial service after his cremation.

I have a hundred-acre property in the Muskoka area that my wife and I had purchased about 24 years ago.  Sadly, she passed away unexpectedly about two years after we bought it.  I've held onto it ever since, envisioning a time I could finish a small cottage there, and live a helluva lot less expensively on a property that was bought for cash and requires only about $450 a year in taxes.

So, all of these factors have come together:  my work in Edmonton has wrapped up, I'm homesick for Ontario and family, there is little to keep me here (prices keep going up even as work opportunities are diminishing), and I am ready to go.

However...  just a few obstacles have to be overcome:
1) Renting a U-Haul truck to mid-Ontario is going to cost over $4500, plus about $1,000 in gas.
2) I have pets.  Two cats (Max and Tommy Jr.) and four birds (Jasper, Jimmy, Dixie & DeeJay).
3) This has gotta be done before the weather turns... preferably in August, no later than September.
4) I gotta do this all by myself.

Nothing like a challenge.
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