This First Person column is the experience of Shandean Reid, who lives in Regina. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
I knew something had to change when I saw my husband standing in our veranda after work, looking tired, stressed and broken-hearted, as if the world hung on his shoulders.
These days, laughter rarely reached his eyes. The fatigue was always there. It had become his natural state.
“I’m jealous,” he’d quietly said as our baby wobbled away from him, seeking comfort in my arms.
“I know why she does that, I understand. But I feel like I am missing everything I am working so hard for.”
It broke my heart to hear this from a man working his fingers to the bone.
My husband and I had done what we were supposed to as young adults from humble backgrounds in rural Jamaica: we moved to the capital, Kingston, to study, dated, got degrees, got married and had a baby.
My days unfolded just as I had imagined when my husband and I first started building our life together. The reality of that life, however, demanded a tradeoff we began to resent.
Our home buzzed to life before dawn daily, some days as early as 2.30 a.m. A rhythm shaped over the years out of necessity and a baby who defied sleep. If one of us was up, she would be too.
With my husband deep into his medical residency and working 100-plus hour weeks, his days welcomed dawn as he read from half a screen while the other half played YouTube nursery rhymes for her.
When our daughter started school, living in the city meant our otherwise 10-minute drives in opposite directions became hour-and-a-half commutes each way in rush-hour gridlocks.
Our discontent with our busy life just kept brewing. My husband expressed the weight of missing the milestones, the absence in our young daughter’s days, and the tiredness that felt like a noose on days he was present.
As he advanced in his medical career, I started blogging and doing content marketing to support my growing marketing and communications business. In 2021, I landed in the Greater Toronto Area, pursuing yet another dream — migrating to Canada and advancing my career in communications.
This city was even busier than Kingston, Jamaica. I hated the pace and the long commutes from one end of the region to the next.
Six months later, I received a job offer in the prairies. This place, Saskatchewan, was doubly farther from Jamaica than Toronto and several times colder. I knew nothing of it before this job offer.
My husband and I landed in Regina for the first time in May 2022 to scout the place out, before making the move permanent.
What we found was a small city, a lush green landscape and a slower pace of life. The drive from one end of the city to the next took 15 minutes. My husband and I giggled at what was considered a traffic jam — a hold-up of five minutes.
My new coworkers told me I lived “far out” because most of them could walk to work.
People’s friendly nature quickly offered comfort as we navigated culture shock. The first winter was a brutal contrast from Jamaica, giving us a lesson in nature and a new way of life after living in the tropics.
My husband shifted into tele-radiology, a fully remote option that allowed him to take over childcare happily.
We met other Jamaicans that had been here for decades and made the province their home. In fact, the first family friends we made were with someone I went to high school with in Jamaica, who was married to a local from Saskatchewan.
Now on a typical weekday, my husband sleeps in until 6.30 a.m. He makes us coffee, prepares my daughter’s lunch and drops our daughter off before beginning his six-hour workday. Evenings are ours for dinner, homework and maybe an activity just before we hang together on the couch until bedtime.
My nine-year-old told us she didn’t want any activities to be scheduled on the weekend; that was family time, she said. We could give her that—a good life shaped by accomplished parents who didn’t have to sacrifice their presence in her life.
Weekends are as slow and only as busy as we decide to make them.
And this? This feels like home — like the life we needed and wanted but couldn’t articulate. We’re happy and content with the soft slowness of our everyday life.
This is our life in Saskatchewan.
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