Life & Balance

Essay: I moved for love

Falling in love is one thing; moving thousands of kilometres away to be with the object of your affections is quite another. Here's how one woman made a journey of love from Montreal to the Northwest Territories -- and what she learned along the way.

Updated:: 2009-09-27 20:19

Published:: 2009-01-19 00:00

By: Hélèna Katz

Northern Canada was love at first sight

How far would you go to be with the one you love? In my case, the answer was more than 5,000 kilometres and into a totally different world, from busy streets to silent spaces. But the North had something Montreal didn't: Mike. I had to take the plunge.

Moving to a new town for love may seem romantic, but from cultural differences and getting to know each other to the challenges of making new friends, it was no candlelit dinner — at first. But love and commitment can deepen through such an emotional test in unfamiliar surroundings, and the challenges of learning about my new home also somehow became part of the rewards.

Falling in love with the North
Mike and I met in July 2004 when I went to Fort Smith, N.W.T., to research a travel story. He works in tourism development and guided me around the area. I called him a year later to fact-check my story before it was published. After I finished, he had a question for me: "When are you coming back?" I was momentarily speechless as my brain scrambled to find an answer to a question that wasn't in the travel writer's manual. Especially since the truth was that I had been drawn to him the first time we met.

What's more, I remembered something that had happened about 10 years earlier. I'd stood on the side of the Dempster Highway in the Yukon, admiring the vivid fall colours of the tundra framing the road like a woven tapestry. As I looked toward the spot where the land meets the sky, a powerful sensation suddenly rose up from the ground and travelled through my body. In that instant, I felt the force of nature and a deep connection with the land and the North.

Natural attraction
So, there I was — in love with the peace and serenity of the North, yes, but now, I realized, also in love with a northerner. And the answer to his question was: Sooner than we'd thought possible.

After more than five months of subsidizing the airline industry and the phone company, I moved to Fort Smith in July 2006. Being together in this pretty community of 2,400 people just north of the Alberta border would allow us to move from the intermittent visits of a long-distance relationship to a deeper level of intimacy. Since Mike works for the territorial government and I'm a freelance journalist, choosing who would move was a no-brainer.

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