Page 15 - SAFFER 07

Canada

new home area and also start looking for a place to settle.
Our rental is for two years only. North Vancouver is beautiful Slowly but surely the little family are settling in. Annie and
but busy and the traffic is always difficult to navigate. I stop I drive around the Lower Mainland to search for houses
off from work in Richmond at a Nissan Dealer and negotiate for sale. We have to take the work locations for both into
a second hand Nissan Pathfinder. consideration to ensure that it does not affect the limited
funds available. The total savings brought from South Africa,
I opt for all wheel drive as the city does get snow and if our life, has been expended and now we are living from pay
we want to travel safely, we will need a decent vehicle. The cheque to pay cheque.
Pathfinder opens up new adventures and we plan to complete
monthly weekend trips to further investigate beautiful Brit- On one of these home seeking drives; Annie is navigating
ish Columbia. The furniture from South Africa arrives and with me driving. I look across at the map she is holding and
makes the house much more liveable.

Winter arrives and as in Cape Town, it’s a lot of rain. It rains
for days on end. Annie, missing David and dealing with the
challenges of settling into a new strange world is depressed,
sad and struggling to keep it together. I bundle Annie and
the dogs into the Pathfinder and we make our way up Sey-
mour Mountain. The constant rain is depressing and while
we climb up the steep twisting mountain road the rain turns
to sleet and all of a sudden, the trees are covered in snow and
huge white snowflakes are falling in place of rain. Annie is
driven to tears with the beauty that surrounds us.

Mount Seymour becomes the go-to place to recharge bat-
teries and view the beauty of Vancouver below. The whole
family thoroughly enjoys the day trips up the mountain,
including the dogs. The snow is a new experience for Nicole,
Annie and the dogs, Cuddles and Gizmo.

ask her to turn it upright in the direction we are driving. I
want to see the next road that I must look out for. Annie has
a sense of humour failure and throws the map at me and
says, here you navigate then. Juggling the map while trying
to drive and handle an angry Annie at the same time is pretty
challenging but very amusing. Fortunately, the area we head
to is not a prospective home area. Relieved I drive back to
North Vancouver with a seething Annie glaring at me. Boy
what an interesting drive. A lesson I still struggle with, hap-
py wife, happy life. Oh - I am going to suffer!

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