This past June, my husband and I moved to Prince Edward Island, Canada from Lowell, Massachusetts, USA. We arrived here with our two younger children and three cats. This is the story of why and how we made the move.
The story began almost twenty years ago, when we first visited PEI on vacation. I answered a classified ad for a cottage rental in Argyle Shore, PEI. I had never been to the island, but I had always heard how beautiful it is. We packed the babies in the car and set off. The drive lasted nearly fourteen hours. Thankfully, since that time, the roads have improved greatly and the ferry was replaced with the Confederation Bridge, which cut nearly three hours off our drive time.
When we arrived, we fell in love with the island. The air was so pure and sweet; the colors so bright and beautiful. The fields are so many shades of green, and the soil is rich, red clay. For many years, we promised ourselves that we would live here some day. Each year, we returned to Lowell, never making the leap. I continued working as a lawyer and raising four children. My husband kept working as a software engineer at various companies. Still, we kept talking about moving here, but always had reasons why we needed to stay where we were. That changed with the recession. My husband was forced into early retirement from his job at IBM, though he was in no way ready for retirement. He applied to work in his field in PEI and was hired. He moved in May, and I was left to sell the house and move the family. The house sold within a week, and the week after school let out, we arrived in Canada. My eldest daughter, a pre-schooler when we first came here, graduated from McGill University and lives and works in Montreal, much farther from here than Lowell. My eldest son, a baby when we first visited PEI, stayed behind in Massachusetts. He is a junior in college, studying marine engineering. The younger children, a high school and junior high student, are adjusting very well and really like it here. We still find it hard to believe we finally made it.
I have been working as a fiber artist since 2004, when I had the good fortune to meet a group of extraordinary women who later formed the Lowell Fiber Studio, http://www.lowellfiberstudio.org/sharon.html.
Lowell has an amazing arts community, centered on the Arts League of Lowell, http://www.artsleagueoflowell.com and Western Avenue Studios, http://www.westernavenuestudios.com.
Look for future posts of my art and times in Prince Edward Island.
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