CONNIE
Professional in the Public Sector, Resident for More than a Decade, Interprovincial Move, English Canadian, 50s
“I’ve been here almost thirty years. I came from Ontario, from Toronto. Actually there was an ad in the newspaper in Toronto for a health worker. Anyway, when I came out, I flew out here and I got engaged that weekend. My husband works at [an oil company] . . .I did a lot of work volunteering for community organizations. Any of the municipal boards that were available, I put my name forward. I was the president of a non-profit for awhile. And just…you know, got my child through school, basically. But we were always parents who were always there and always supportive. And you know, I always worked in town except for a stint of two years that I went out to the plant sites, but I couldn’t ride that bus every day. Like it started to get almost an hour. And I just felt that my time was best served in town. If one of us was working at the plant sites that was fine. No need of both of us being there. So one could be in town with our kid and one could be at the plant site. So I focused my careers, all my little careers in town.”
“So I mean you give up a lot when you come to a place like this because our families are not here. It’s only my husband, my child and myself. So in order for us to see our families we have to fly back. He’s from Newfoundland so it’s a fly back there or fly back to Ontario. So we did give up that to be in a place where we could work and we could venture out and do what we wanted to do.”
Contact
Mapping Life in Fort McMurray 