BACK TO BRITISH COLUMBIA

It is interesting how I still refer to Chatham, Ontario as my home.  That was where I was born and raised, but I have spent less than a quarter of my life there.  Doing a little math, I realize that almost half of my life has been spent in British Columbia.  Tallying up the years that I have lived in BC, Vernon, Kamloops and Abbotsford, they come to a  total of 41 years.  When we moved from Calgary back to Kamloops in 1985, I was 54 years old.  I dearly loved my eight years in Calgary at Rockyview Alliance Church, but I have to be honest, I certainly preferred Kamloops weather over Calgary's.  Three of the weekends in September, our last month in Calgary, we had snow.  Those three weekends were very wintry.  Arriving in Kamloops the 30th of September was like summer all over again.  The month of October was such a welcome treat.



This is not September.  It's winter 1985 / 1986

It was not a good time for us to leave Calgary, as far as real estate was concerned.  We had spent about $30,000.00 on our Calgary house.  I mentioned previously about fixing up the bottom two levels of our four level split.  When we left Calgary in 1985 the real estate market had dropped drastically.  Considering that we had paid principle and interest against our mortgage for five years, plus all of the money for the improvements, we walked away after the sale of our house with $900.00 in our pocket.  In addition we had to sell our travel trailer and our second car, the big Chrysler which we used to pull the RV.  It was a little depressing, to say the least.  We figured that we would never again be able to buy a house.  So, we rented a house in Kamloops.

The Kamloops Alliance Church congregation's average age was older than that of Rockyview.  Whereas I was one of the older men at Rockyview, in my late forties to early fifties, there were many folks at Kamloops that were our age and older.  There were more seniors at Kamloops and a good many in their fifties.  There were a few, our age, that we had known when we were in Vernon.  Those connections were mainly through the camp committee.  Also some of them served on staff at Maple Springs Bible Camp.  I was billeted in George and Hilda Konrad's home back in the 1960's when the district prayer retreat was held in Kamloops.  Arriving in Kamloops in 1985 I discovered that Hilda was the church secretary.  It was a pleasure to work with her.  Since she had been church secretary for several years, she became my source of information.

One big plus, which I welcomed was that the Kamloops church was debt free.  In Calgary the church had a big mortgage, having just built their facilities.  Kamloops church had been in existence for several years.  The congregation was in their third church building.  Somewhere back in the late 1960's they had built a new church building on the North Shore.  That was destroyed by fire, arson, so another building was erected on the same site.  This third building was the building in use when we arrived and it was fully paid.  So not having a mortgage was less stressful for me.

As with most moves, it takes a little time.  Each church becomes your family and moving on is somewhat akin, I would think, to getting a new family or a new spouse.  I'm thankful, I've never experienced that, but for sure there are still those strings attached to your previous church and it takes a little time to adjust.  It took a few months, but eventually, Kamloops Alliance Church was where I belonged.  It became family.

When we moved to Calgary in 1977 all three of our children were still living at home.  When we moved to Kamloops, Dan Jr. was serving a pastoral internship at an Alliance Church in Findlay,  Ohio.   Brian, who had been still living at home with us, had to find a home where he could have board and room.  Brian didn't leave home, like some his age, but we abandoned him.  Sharilyn was the only one that moved with us.  She was able to get employment in Kamloops after a few weeks.