Moving

I haven't moved house that much in my life.  I've lived at our Toronto house for almost 30 years! (They say that the writer Eudora Welty lived in the same house for almost all of her long life, and this this is conducive to writing.) Before that, my family mostly lived in a ranch house in Sackville, New Brunswick.

But my father was a university professor who had several sabbaticals, when we'd go away from Sackville for a year.  In 1965-6 we spent a year in Brighton, England, just when it was the big mod centre. (My parents noticed nothing of this, let alone me.) In 1974-5 we were in Mississauga.  We rented out our house to someone who needed it in July while the Mississauga town house we'd rented only came available in September, so we had to spend the summer of 1974 at our New Brunswick cottage.  In 1981-2, we spent the first part in rural England and the second part in Toronto.  In 1988-9, we were in Glasgow, Scotland. (But that time I was the only one still living with the parents.

I remember that just before leaving our Sackville house in 1974, we'd emptied the rooms completely, and when you walked into one and closed the door you'd hear an echo!

I moved to Toronto in 1990. (One of the first things I noticed was all the Chinese people!) For the first three years my sister and I rented a triplex apartment, then we bought our present house.  I remember the first time we visited the latter place, I thought "What are we doing here?  We'll never be able to afford this place!"

I should add that in 1995 I moved to London, England, for eight months to research my Ph.D. thesis.  It was the best eight months of my life!  If I could be anywhere in the world right now, I think I'd choose the National Gallery in London, in the section with the 18th-century paintings...