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I have lived in Calgary for 6 years but only recently have I started calling Calgary home.  A year ago while working on the Junos, a volunteer asked me “So how long have you lived in Calgary?”  I responded,  “Oh, well I am new to Calgary, been here about 5 years” and she said “That really isn’t new anymore” and I realized that Calgary was now home. 

I love when people ask me what brought me to Calgary.  I smile coyly and say, Love.  I explain how my partner is an optometrist and wanted to practice in Alberta.   I don’t remember exactly what he said when he told me about his post graduation Western plan but I do remember that it wasn’t just about his professional ambitions that made Calgary attractive.  Jared had always pictured his lifestyle to be active and include activities like skiing, biking, hiking and camping.  He had decided to choose a place to live where the life he wanted could be found on his doorstep.  He chose Calgary.

Jared’s concept of choosing a place to have a life and then finding a way to make a living rather than just trying to make a life wherever you can find a job was a completely foreign but very refreshing concept to me.  It is probably the first thing that made me fall in love with him and I still speak about how I admire his clarity of what is really important in life.  Up to that point I had let my work define where I would spend my life and I had settled in to the Kitchener Waterloo (KW) area.  I was content.   I had a great job at the University of Waterloo (UW), I had started coaching and I had a large network of friends and family close by.  It was a good life.   Yet even before I met Jared I knew that at some point I needed to leave KW.  I had grown up in KW.  I completed my degree at UW and then started working at UW just before graduation.   Although KW is a great area and personally and professionally things were very good I felt that I needed to experience life outside KW. I just needed the right reason to leave.  What better reason than love.

My friends and family were nervous when I made the decision.  This was my first serious relationship and Jared and I had been dating just over a year when I officially packed up my life and moved out West.  I took a few steps backwards professionally to make the move and I had no friends or family in Calgary.  My friends and family in KW were nervous that I was giving up too much. That it would be too risky especially if it didn’t work out with Jared.  I wasn’t nervous and would respond to their concerns with “I can always come home.”     But their concern was still; would my life still be there for me to come home to?

When I moved to Calgary I didn’t want to lose touch with my KW life.   I am so blessed to have a large network of close friends and a large family that I would see regularly in KW.   I knew if I wanted to maintain those important relationships, I would have to invest more than just phone calls and email to bridge the gap between the Eastern and Mountain Time Zones.  

I made a commitment not miss any major event if possible.  That first year I flew back 4 times for weddings and once to surprise my parents for their 30^th anniversary.  I remember on one trip I went to a wedding in Toronto area on Saturday then flew to Montreal on Sunday morning to attend another wedding.  Monday morning I caught a flight back to Calgary to be at work for Tuesday.    On each trip home I would make an effort to see friends, have lunch or drinks with former colleagues, spend time with family and reconnect with the life I had when in KW.    I invested a lot of time coordinating plans and would often pack three weekends worth of visiting into two days.   Although I couldn’t spend as much time visiting as I would like, I felt people always appreciated that I at least made the effort to see them.  With each investment of time I felt the distance between Calgary and KW got smaller.  

My work to keep my KW life alive wouldn’t end when I came back to Calgary.   I would constantly look for creative ways invest in my relationships.  The first year I was in Calgary I sent digital scrapbooks back to my parents to highlight all the adventures I was having.    I would send birthday and anniversary cards to friends and family to let them know that I was thinking about them.   For weddings, showers or holiday parties I would miss I always sent a gift.  If I found out that a former friend or colleague had reached a milestone, like when a former professor became the Dean of AHS, I would send a note of congratulations and describe the impact that they had one me.  I was never expecting anything in return; I just genuinely wanted to keep in touch with my KW life.   I remember my financial planner looking at some of my costs for gifts and travel; he told me I could be investing those resources into RRSPs that would give me greater returns later on.  I explained to him that I was investing the resources into relationships that are too valuable for me to lose.  He countered telling me that I just flat out couldn’t afford it.   I stood firm and said “I can’t afford not to.”

On September 26^th, 2009, I hosted my first official fundraising event for the Alberta Cancer Foundation (ACF) and it was fitting that it happened at UW Homecoming.   Initiated by a former student leader Brenda Slomka, my faculty Applied Health Sciences (AHS) dedicated their Fun Run to me and allowed me to fundraise for ACF.   Over 200 people participated in the race, a record for the annual event, and we raised over $6000 for Brain Cancer Research.    All this was achieved with barely 2 hours of work on my part to promote and organize the event.   It was a truly huge return for the very little investment that I felt I put in. 

Although these metrics are incredible what is more powerful are the people who participated, either through attendance at the event or through a donation.  Professors, senior public school classmates, floor mates from first year, high school student council members, colleagues I barely worked with, varsity athletes, res life staff, orientation leaders and of course close friends and family.    Many of these participants I hadn’t seen in over a decade and yet they came; and at the risk of sounding arrogant, they came for me.  Even as I write this over a week after the event has ended, this demonstration of overwhelming support from my former life still brings tears of joy to my face.

I have 5 Basic Principles of Leadership that I try personify day in, day out.   I learned these principles from a mentor Catharine Scott at UW.  One of the principles is “Build and Maintain Constructive Relationships.”  At a party that was held for me in May my friend Nicole who I have known since Grade 1 said “Alyson is a master at making and keeping friends.  She is great at making an effort to get to know everyone who crosses her path, then does a fantastic job at staying in touch.”  It was one of the nicest compliments I have ever received and the first time I ever really acknowledged that I had this strength.   It’s rare that I give myself credit for accomplishments but I think that the huge success we had on September 26^th, as well as the outpouring of support I have been so blessed to receive, is definitely a reflection of the effort I put into building and maintaining my relationships.  

Maintaining relationships takes consistent effort.  It doesn’t have to be hard but it does have to be genuine.    When you build a relationship purely motivated by what the other person can do for you, you lose sight of what you can personally gain by doing for that other person.   Stephen Covey describes this concept as the “Emotional Bank Account”[i] using the analogy that a relationship is like a bank account.  You can’t withdraw funds from a bank account until you make a deposit.  Likewise you can’t expect people to support you unless you support them first. Moreover that making emotional deposits can also act like a savings account giving you investments of support that you can withdraw to use in a time where you may make a big mistake or for something unexpected, like finding out you have incurable brain cancer.   

Now by no means am I so arrogant to think that the unbelievable support I receive can solely be credited to the trips home, cards, gifts or other investments I make to maintain my relationships.  I believe that you are the personification of the company you keep and I have done a very good job of surrounding myself with the best company.  However I do believe that all the actions I have taken to keep in touch with my KW life, especially since I have moved to Calgary, created a huge emotional savings account which allowed me to make an equally huge withdrawal on September 26^th and will continue to provide support I can withdraw when I need it. 

My life is now in Calgary.  The lifestyle Jared wanted when we moved here 6 years ago I am proud to say we are living.   I can honestly say I love living in Calgary, even on this October 4^th morning when I woke up to snow falling.  We have a great network of friends here who have come together to help us through this very difficult period.   I know that these Western friendships will only get stronger over this journey and I know there is no shortage of emotional savings in our Calgary network.    I am very comfortable and happy to call Calgary home.

What I realized recently is that through maintaining such strong relationships I have been able to keep my home alive in KW.  Moreover I have realized that home does not have to be an exclusive term that a person uses to refer only to the physical location in which you chose to make a life.    Home can really be anywhere you have invested into a relationship that is ready to support you.  Home is simply where there are people who will stand up for you when you need them.   I am proud of the life I have spent investing into the relationships which has resulted into homes all over the world that I can always come home to. 

 

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[i] Covey, Stephen. “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”,1989.  p 188 – 199