SHARON
Professional In Education, Resident for More than a Decade, Intraprovincial Move, English Canadian, 40s
“I mean it’s grown on me. It was never somewhere where I thought I was choosing to live. I always was here with a plan of going somewhere else. But it has become home and I don’t like that it’s far from everywhere else but I liked a lot of things about it until. . . Well it’s changed a lot. Fort McMurray has grown so fast and my neighbourhood has changed a lot. It’s more stressful living here now in the past year. The traffic and the number of people and– There’s a lot of pressure on the city. So I don’t like it as much in the last year.”
“Yeah, well with my family, my parents moved here from Newfoundland. And I mean I followed and now I’m raising a family here. . . For me, I’m really fortunate that my mother lives in Fort McMurray, because my son is getting to know his grandmother. It actually is fabulous and it’s so rare in Fort McMurray. That’s the other thing that is a sacrifice when you live here is that you don’t have extended family. The family unit is broken up by being here usually. When people find out that my mother lives in town, they just are in shock. They can’t believe that I’m so lucky to have my mom here because it’s so rare. Most people are away from their family unit. They don’t have extended family of cousins and aunts and grandparents to draw upon.”
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Mapping Life in Fort McMurray 