I spent the bulk of the day with my aunt and uncle who live in Maillardville, a neighbourhood of Coquitlam. Maillardville is the largest French-Canadian enclave west of Winnipeg. It is not nearly as francophone as Saint-Boniface nowadays as it was in its heyday, but boy was it nice to see French street signs and to spend six whole hours speaking French! I don’t see this set of relatives very often as it’s rare for our trips to Montreal (theirs much, much rarer than mine!) to coincide. So, we had a lot of catching up to do! My aunt drove me around her neighbourhood a bit, showing off the sites including the location of the home she and my uncle lived in for forty-four years! I can’t imagine living that long in one place, but they’ve been in Maillardville just about all their life. My uncle came in 1941 and my aunt in 1962. There is a part of me that envies people who can firmly root themselves in one place and then there is the part of me that screams “But there’s so much out there to see!” The nomad always wins. 🙂 I forgot to bring my camera, so next time I go visit, I’ll take pictures as Maillardville is quite quaint.

It was confirmed that going into Vancouver is not a good idea until all this snow goes away, so I’m going to stop pressing the issue, enjoy life at home, and continue my job hunt. Thankfully, I don’t feel cooped up in Miranda in the least and I do make it a point to go out once a day for exercise, even if it’s ‘just’ to the pool. 🙂