First off, I miss the hell out of you my beloved Squamish town! Nobody said a giant move to a new town would be easy in the not so middle of life, ( 51 is the new 31 right?).
I miss the beauty of your landscape and your mountain views but mostly I miss your wonderful support system that you provided through raising a family, a fulfilling career and recreation for many years.
The Squamish Public Library staff and its wonderful patrons can attest to the copious amounts of tears that were shed starting a good month before I left. Ugh! The Band-Aid came off and hard! I couldn’t imagine a life or a town where I strolled down the street and didn’t know everybody or be able to have a good jaw over the latest bestsellers.
Life moves on though and I had to along with it. Fast-forward to a small community outside of Vernon called Coldstream. After the initial shock and transition were over, I’ve started to settle into the refreshing peace and quiet here. Everything has slowed down.
Coldstream offers rural living at its best, providing an exceptional quality of life with a mix of urban amenities and world-class recreational activities in a natural setting. I’m lucky enough to have the ever-popular Rail Trail right at my back door and the stunning Kalamalka lake out my front door.
Biking and kayaking start and end my day here. I’m also lucky enough to pick up some on-call shifts in the Okanagan Regional Library system and have enjoyed being surrounded by books again. I’ll enjoy seeing the patrons soon too! In the fall I will be taking the certified education assistant course at Okanagan College to focus on working with special-needs students. I’m really looking forward to that.
My move to Coldstream came right before the world flew into a pandemic crisis and that too completely changed my life forever. You see, my family lost one of our young people in this pandemic and we were not only paralyzed with grief but also geographically paralyzed. We were trapped behind borders and also not able to travel to other provinces to comfort each other.
I needed you more than ever at this difficult time Squamish, and from afar many of you have wrapped your love and support around me and helped me through this.
Beginning a new life in a new town is never easy, especially during a pandemic, but I know I’ve made the right choice for the second part of my life. There’s room to breathe here and a strong sense of community and I’m ever so slowly, ever so tentatively becoming a part of that.
Nancy Mohamed recently moved to Coldstream after working at the Squamish Public Library for nearly 20 years.
