By Lucy

I woke up at 5AM, still not adjusted to the time zone change I suppose. I tossed and turned a bit, feeling exhausted and wishing to go back to sleep, before giving up and heading downstairs so I didn’t disturb anyone else. My right hand had 2 bruises from gripping the wheel so hard during the long drive; along the meaty part of my thumb, and between my pinky and my wrist.

Hanuman was awake, as he always is, so we sat down at the high table and had tea together. It took him a few minutes to remember who I was; they get a lot of guests and I had my short, bright red hair before, which did a good job at making me anonymous. I still haven’t corrected him to my preferred name and was starting to get uncomfortable with how many people I’ll have to correct.

The hostel was both busy and quiet. They rent out the dorm rooms to a single person during the winter months, so both of them were fully occupied by a single person. There were three or four other people in my room, but only one was a tourist, the rest were just crashing for the night and moving on in the morning, so they just breezed past us without a word. An American man was staying in the queen suite, and he came down to chat with us for a bit before he took off to go hunting.

The weather was still minus 20 and I had decisions to make. I decided I didn’t want to drive around with my car crammed full of stuff, and I didn’t want to try and sort the storage locker in minus 20, so I wasn’t going to do anything that required driving today. I ordered breakfast by Uber and called my potential landlord at 8 to let him know I was in town. He was busy, so I called him back at 9 and arranged to come over at talk in person right away. It was a 15 minute walk, made brutal by the cold and the wind.

We talked for a couple of hours. He’s a local celebrity – I haven’t met a single person in Thunder Bay who doesn’t know him, by reputation if not in person, so he’ll just be the Landlord for now. His reservations about renting to me was mostly the hassle of everything when I could only commit to a month, not the least of which being that it costs 200$ to clean the room between tenants. I explained to him why I couldn’t commit to longer, why I might extend my stay, where I had been and why I preferred to stay here. I also offered to pay the 200$ cleaning fee up front. Eventually he agreed, and I walked back to the hostel.

I stopped by my car to grab a few things I hadn’t bothered with the night before, like my toiletries. The car was still covered in dirt and salt from the road and badly needed a bath. If you don’t drive in a place where it snows all the time, the salt is really bad for your car – it’ll eat the bottom of it off. Car washes are big business in Canada for that reason, it’s a regular part of maintenance.

The hostel was a flurry of activity – the owner, Holly, decided to put a bar in, and the locked fridge had arrived. I walked to the store and got some canned soup to last me until I was settled, and some instant oatmeal, then went back to the hostel and showered. Everyone had cleared out of the POD room except me, a new name scrawled on the bed next to mine. The room had a window with a lovely view of the train tracks and the waterfront, and I watched out it for a bit. I spent the rest of the evening on my laptop in the main room.

Friday morning had warmed to minus 4, so after breakfast with Hanuman I headed to the storage locker. It took me almost an hour to get everything in – the biggest issue was the tires. The storage locker company provided a pallet for me to put my belongings on, but it’s about 6 inches smaller than the floor of the locker, just small enough that the pile of tires wants to lean. I shuffled enough things around that I was confident the tires wouldn’t shift and called it good. Once it warms enough for me to put the summers on, I’m going to take everything out of the locker and put the winter tires at the back. I won’t be in Canada next winter, so I won’t need winters on my car, and they can stay in the back of the locker for a bit.

I stopped at the hostel to throw my bags back in the now-empty car and said goodbye to Hanuman, who offered me a hug and said he was going to miss me. I pointed out I was just going to be around the corner, so we exchanged numbers.

I went back to my new place. Me and the Landlord filled out the paperwork – he’s German like me and we both love being organized and having the paperwork done. Actually, he made journeyman before he even left Germany, so he is more German than me. He still speaks with a thick accent, while I hid mine behind the ‘Toronto’ accent, because my German has been lapsed while I’ve been practicing Italian, and I’m anxious of him asking me if I can speak fluently. Having just lost Oma in August, a lot of the little things about him remind me of her – his preference for fresh bread, the ribbons on the coat hangers. Hell, his accent is just like hers, and I wonder what part of Germany he’s originally from and if he might know my family.

Now that everything had been written out, he was much more relaxed and enthusiastic, taking me on a tour and knocking on the doors to introduce me to the other tenants. He also knocked 100 dollars off the cleaning fee, which was kind of him.

There’s 5 other apartments, 4 on this floor and 2 on the floor above, sharing a kitchen (upstairs has their own bathroom). All of them are men, although everyone hastened to tell me I’d be safe here but I have no concerns. I’ve spent most of my life being the only female in a crowd, and with the two shutdowns last year just being me and Adrianne, and the hostels being mixed occupancy, I’m pretty comfortable with it. It’s an old house with the original windows. It has the feel of an old bed and breakfast, that sort of warm homey smell, slightly mothballed. It’s warmed by radiators and the electrical is all run on the outside of the wall because the house was built before electricity.

My room is smaller than my place in Barrie, 8 by 8 instead of 10 by 10, and that’s even before we get into the fact I had two rooms. It’s nice though. I don’t need as much space because I wasn’t planning on unpacking most of my crafting stuff, although I might take out some of it – my sketchbooks, for example. The bed and the desk are small, but then I am petite, so they’re me-sized. The dresser annoys me because the drawers aren’t on rollers, but that’s the price I pay for the lifestyle I’ve chosen.

There’s a grocery store around the corner, an LCBO around the other corner, and the waterfront is visible from the sidewalk. My room gets the afternoon sun, which is nice now in the winter but will be absolutely melting come June.

I was in the middle of unpacking when I realized I couldn’t find my phone charger. I got a text from Hanuman just then – it had been dropped somewhere in my room and he had it. I was short a few things I was sure I had packed – I couldn’t find my soap and shampoo, for one. Oh sure, I still had the little bottles from my carryon, but they were finally empty. The bag of clothes I had packed was bereft of certain things that I would want more of, because there’s no laundry facilities here, so I’ll be trying to delay laundry day as long as I can. On the plus side, my new bed is so high my laundry hamper fits neatly under it.

So I walked back to the hostel for my charger. When I got there, Hanuman asked if I’d be interested in hanging out, so we arranged to go for dinner the next day. It’s really great, I had two friends within walking distance and I had literally been in town for two days! Stopped at the grocery store for a few things on the way back.

The last task for the day was the most important one; changing my address, the whole reason for this rigmarole. There are no Service Ontario offices within walking distance, so I had to take my poor battle-scarred car out for a drive. After I got everything changed over, I stopped by the nearest touchless car wash, but the line-up was spilling out of the parking lot onto the road, so I kept driving. On to the union hall!

The union hall is a nice place, I actually like this one better than the one in Toronto. The one in Toronto is grand, but it’s all art deco concrete curves and glass. This one has exposed beams built into the design, kinda modern log cabin feel.

The lady at the desk also has a hyphen in her legal name and we lamented over our shared pain for a bit. She took my union card and went to the back to confirm I was allowed to transfer in, before asking for my address. This is where her eyes popped out of her head – my Landlord also works for the union and everyone knows his address. I smiled and nodded – yup, I live there. He’s a nice guy, just eccentric. Tap tap tap on the keyboard, and just like that, I live in Thunder Bay and work for the local union. Bam!

Five months of stress and worry, resolved. I was also done for the day, so I called it a night and headed back to my new home.

So, Port Arthur.

I’ve written it elsewhere, but Thunder Bay is actually a merger of two smaller cities, Port Arthur and Fort William. For about a hundred years they used to fight over jurisdiction and resources, neither gaining enough clout over the other, until they were merged in 1970. There’s still a sort of uptown vs downtown vibe, and the line between the two of them is very noticeable in the ‘Intercity’ no man’s land. The Vagabond lives in Fort William, so I didn’t spend much time in Port Arthur, and it’s funny to mull on which one is more ‘me’. Fort William is very ‘small town’, grimy, old houses and dimly-lit bars, back alleys and of course the original fur trading fort. Port Arthur is hip and bohemian, new concrete buildings and little craft breweries.

I expected to feel happy when I got here, and I do. But I feel less ecstatic than in August. It might be Thunder Bay, but it’s still unfamiliar because I didn’t spend a lot of time in Port Arthur. There’s possibly also something to be said for last time, knowing I could go back to Barrie, whereas this time I’m here for good and this is what I’ve got.

I noticed this movie trailer just because Norman Reedus posted it on his Instagram. I’m kinda annoyed he isn’t in more of the marketing – why are they selling that Darryl is in their movie? Not that that’s even why I like Norman Reedus, I’ve never watched the Walking Dead, but it’s so weird to me that they’re leaning heavily on Tom Hardy to sell a biker movie when I couldn’t even tell you if Tom Hardy owns his own bike. I’m super excited, gonna see if I can drag the Vagabond to see it with me on release day!

I prefer the second trailer to the first one cuz Jodie Comer’s character annoys me to no end. Admits to marrying a biker after knowing him for five weeks, then tries to tell the club that he’s hers? Trying to change him? Sweetheart, you married a ‘bad boy’, what did you think you were getting? Men always do the same thing to me. I’m wild, that’s why you liked me. Don’t try to change me.