There Is A Town In North Ontario

My husband's grandfather is quite the guy. He lives two hours and change from us, and we go see him a few times a year in his small house lined with wooden bowls that he's made, the walls covered in clocks that he's fixing. And like clockwork, he's always the same, bald and impish and apparently immune to age, 90 years ticking by without altering him in any substantial way.

My grandfather-in-law lives in a village - and it's barely a village, really - and in this village, there is a general store which is now closed, I believe, but which used to sell basic groceries and candy and booze and hunting and fishing licenses and fireworks.  This store is part of a larger house, with a tire swing hanging from the ancient tree in the yard and a white picket fence and to say that we wanted to buy it would be an understatement. And even sitting here, I can easily imagine that being shopkeeper in a general store in a village full of old people would be QUITE the life.

But we didn't buy it.

All of the young people - anyone young enough not to be retired, really - have left Great-Grandpa's village long ago for the work down south or in the Alberta oil fields, and all that's left is a town full of the very old, who play endless games of euchre in a hall with framed pictures of a black and white time when the town was full of children. And I can't quite imagine my children playing on that silent tire swing, left there from the ghostly childhood of children who moved away dozens of years ago, can't imagine being shopkeeper in a town that in a few short years will be emptied of people.

How to keep our young people here is the question, and the answer is that we can't. The mines are dying, the mills are dying, farms were rendered heart-breakingly unprofitable generations ago and my town is full of empty buildings, our schools emptier every year. Great-Grandpa's town is in its final throes, but my town isn't far behind.

We don't plan on staying here.

Ten years has always been our goal - a decade, enough time to raise our children in a quiet town, enough time to immerse them in their grandparent's love and then away with us, away to places that will keep our children closer to us when they grow up. And there's eight years down as of this month, and still it's impossible to imagine us leaving.

When I close my eyes, I can imagine the white walls of the general store, the broad planks of the floor, the jingling bells whenever the door would open, the jars of multicoloured candy and children running across the floor, copper coins clutched in their warm, soft hands. But great-grandpa is in a hospital in Toronto while I write, and his house sits empty in his quiet village, while his ancient friends laugh over their cards, their children smiling down from fading pictures on the walls and night falling gently everywhere.

Original to Canada Moms Blog. Beck also posts at her personal blog, Frog and Toad Are Still Friends, and every Thrusday at 5 Minutes for Parenting.