Friday, September 09, 2011

Homes: Wakefield, 2005

Before my crazy housing experiences on Carleton Street in Ottawa, I temporarily lived in Wakefield, Quebec – a picturesque little town about 40 minutes outside Ottawa.

The place I lived in was completely lovely, my situation not quite so much. I had been living in Ottawa prior to going out to Wakefield – and as I will describe in tomorrow’s blog, that situation was not ideal. So when I saw an ad for a reporter at the weekly paper in cute little Wakefield, I borrowed a friend’s car to drive out and drop off my application.

The editor was in the office when I came by and she invited me to have coffee with her next door. We had a lovely chat and it wasn’t too long afterward that she contacted me to tell me I had the job. Since living in Wakefield was required if I was going to be covering local events, and since I didn’t like my place much in Ottawa, I moved.

I found a lovely little place – it was a small, ground-level suite attached to a little house in the woods. It was surrounded by trees and had a spacious interior with lots of windows. I painted the walls sage-green and hung light-weight white curtains. There was a cardinal that would sing from the tall pine tree just outside my front window.

But when I sent an email to the newspaper editor to let her know my new contact details and that I was now living in Wakefield. She replied with this vague email, “Sorry, who are you? Are you looking for an internship? We don’t have any internships right now, but thank you for your interest.”

When I relayed this story to a local resident at the local pub, he was not surprised. Apparently she was known for being a bit of a flake. And apparently even my landlord knew that the guy I was supposedly replacing at the paper had decided not to move away after all and was living just up the road.

I stayed for 3 months because the place was so nice and I thought I might be able to work something out. Then I moved. Again.

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