Madawaska Valley Sunrise

'a few acres of our own to enjoy'....wonderful and for a UK resident, a distant dream only available to the very wealthy! Still, you never know, my numbers may come up tonight! lol

Very often, since we've moved here, I've paused to take in the general natural splendour... pinch me...I'm really here??? Our house is quite small...but the land we can call our own is large enough to keep me busy from dawn to dark...lol. I probably sound witless but I really am in love with this place. It's been a long time since my ancestors left Great Britain..and the years in between were filled with toil and great good luck, and also catastrophe...but they lived their lives in this wonderful place and their descendants (me???) are now reaping the rewards of the country they built. We are a proud lot...Canadians. We are also modest too and don't shout about it...but we are so lucky to live here! I wish you the best of luck, Karen, with those numbers of yours... It would be wonderful to have you as a neighbour. (in fact the second house down the road from us is going up for sale...don't know what the price will be yet..) So if you win... ;-)

I found you!! I'm so glad you are enjoying your new place Lori. And lucky you to have some acreage. What zone are you in now? Are you going to be able to grow any plants that you couldn't before?

Karen....Ontario is lovely too but don't forget about BC. There's a house around the corner from us with a For Sale notice up. LOL.... Sorry Lori, just had to throw that in!!! :oD

Hi Gilli! I'm in Zone 3! Yeah...brrrr. It's a pocket over the highlands. Soil is sandy and acidic. I have just planted my rhodo..which I refused to leave behind. It's hardy to zone 4 so I'm going to have to give it a special tuck in next fall and pray that it makes it thro the winter.
Other that that it's going to be a sort-out winter coming up...I'll find out next spring what goes and what doesn't.
Can't dispute the many wonderful aspects of B.C. Lived there for a short time, myself. The one difference between your area (interior BC) and ours (interior Ontario) is the mountains...and the list prices for land and houses!

Zone 3!!! Oh Lori, it's going to be a long, cold winter. I hope your rhodo makes it and your other plants too. Some plants may surprise you!

Land and house prices seem to be skyrocketing everywhere. We would like to move up to Barnhartvale which is still in Kamloops but is more rural but the prices are out of reach...maybe we'll win the lottery one of these days.

Have an aunt-in-law (?) who lives in Sorrento. She has a view across Shuswap lake and a beautiful home. I gather that things are becoming monied around her place too...
I grew up in Muskoka, and it has become an enclave for the wealthy. Won't be long til there will be caps on income...you can't live here unless you make x$ per year?
A building permit costs $10K.

Anything around the Shuswap is astronomical these days. And if you have lakefront...well, might as well just put in the ad "millionaires only". If you were lucky enough to buy in the '70's or early '80's lakefront was dirt cheap. Murray missed out...he almost bought an acre right on the Shuswap just outside Sorrento back in 1981. It was about $3500 then. He thought it would be a waste of money as he wouldn't get any use out of it!! 20/20 hindsight.

Ouch X-(.... ! Adoons was saying that they actually had a place on Shuswap Lake and moved because of the influx of Alberta money...and general vacationers mayhem. Trick is to find the areas that have remained well kept secrets...as long as the locals don't get money hungry the place keeps it's authenticity. Muskoka is a classic example of how fast new money can change things. (and not for the better!)

That's true out here too. The whole of the Shuswap, down into the Okanagan, the West Kootneys and the East Kootneys are being bought up by Albertans as 'holiday homes'. Pricing the locals right out of the area.

Money talks... that's really sad. I wish I had pics I could show you of the area that my great grandad received from the Crown...The area today is worth millions! Of course at that time there were no roads...they had to build a barge at the lower end of Muskoka Lake and barge with all their supplies and building materials up the length of Muskoka Lake to Tondern Island. Tondern Island and the islands to the western lea of it...were known, in their heyday, as Millionaires Row because the islands housed some of the most elite cottages (!!) on the Lake....(and that's from a time when a million meant something.) Great Grandad and my two great uncles arrived in the spring of 1863 and six months later the first winter almost sent them back to England.

How hard life must have been back then. I can well imagine their first winter would have been a big shock. I don't have any pioneers in my direct ancestry, being an immigrant myself.
My Mum's side of the family lived a hard life working in the woollen mills of Batley and Dewsbury for a pittance while my Dad's side farmed in the East and North Ridings of Yorkshire for 100's of years.

You're a Yorkshire lass, then! I've often thought that should I be fortunate enough to get to England, I would love to see the area in East Sussex where my family came from...my great grandfather Sawyer came from Lewes...my great grandmother brought him to Canada to the place in Muskoka that her father and brothers had cleared and settled. They came with their three young children (under 10 years of age) and he got work on the railway about 30 miles south of Muskoka...caught pneumonia the first winter and died four months before my grandfather was born in 1875. It must have been a bit of a nightmare for my great-great grandmother as she returned to England after the accidental death of my great-greatgrandfather and the emigration of my great uncles to the United States. We number more than ten generations in Canada now and last winter I found a distant cousin, descendant of my great grandfather's brother in Australia!