Moving house

When I said that my husband and I were moving house, I meant that we were selling our house in Hamilton and purchasing a new one in Newfoundland. But in Newfoundland, during the resettlement of small fishing outports to larger communities “down the bay” in the 1960s, houses were often moved via water or ice to their new locations, where their inhabitants picked up where they left off. Despite access to more community amenities, most of the resettled families fared poorly, having had their established ways of life so radically and abruptly changed.

In 2016, the town of Arnold’s Cove held a Resettlement Fest to commemorate the 50th anniversary of resettlement in Newfoundland, including the floating and towing of a modern house to a new location, using the old methods.

Our move was much less performative, having been conducted behind the opaque wall of pandemic social restrictions. But neighbours were treated to the sight of a 72-ft tractor trailer being partially filled with our possessions, and maybe a lucky someone witnessed the de-siding of a neighbour’s house as the truck became entangled with wires while departing. A small (and lovely) group of friends and neighbours saw us off in our airport taxi, drinking and distancing on the curb. Otherwise, the whole affair was conducted in private – weeks and weeks of packing and patching and painting, punctuated by zoom calls and short outdoor masked visits.

Weeks of worrying that our flight would be rescheduled due to low bookings were poorly spent, as our plane to Deer Lake was packed. We spent 2 1/2 hours cheek-to-jowl with strangers we would have crossed the street to avoid on the ground.

And now we wait in quarantine in a cozy wood cottage outside of Deer Lake, just within view of the mighty Humber River, hoping that we haven’t contracted COVID and looking forward to meeting our new home for the first time.