Life in La Loche, in terms of simply setting up a home and day to day living, can definitely have its challenges. I have to preface everything I'm about to say by saying that I was born and raised in Winnipeg and lived in Brandon for five years, and never once have I ever had a problem in terms of vandalism, in either city.

During the four years that I was in La Loche my truck was vandalized four times (once a year). In all cases windows were smashed and in one case they actually tried to steal the truck, although they were unable to get it started before I heard them and chased them off. Now I know vandalism happens in Winnipeg, and maybe I have been fortunate, but I find four times in four years on the extreme end and would not wish that on anyone. The nearest place to get the vehicle fixed was five and a half hours away. Thank goodness the cost of the tow truck was covered.

Vandalism and related crimes aside, La Loche is just generally remote. The closest Walmart is five and a half hours away. There is one road in and one road out and don't forget to drive right down the center of the road either! That's the easy way to avoid the ever present potholes on either side of the road. Because La Loche sits beside a lake, a winter road is built during the winter between La Loche and Fort MacMurray, Alberta. This cuts the journey down to approximately 2 hours from the eight or nine hours it would take if you had to go "down and around" (south and then north again).

There is one grocery store in town and the pawn shop. At the pawn shop they sell the Safeway brand of grocery items, which is often cheaper than the Northern Grocery Store which carries name brand items. Both stores simply carry basics. There are no fancy delis and olive carts or even a meat counter for that matter. Things are simply packaged and put on shelves. Certain items are cheaper there than here as well. Wieners, for example, are considerably cheaper in La Loche than they are in Winnipeg. However, if you try to buy shampoo in La Loche you'll pay approximately $10 per bottle. Gas is also much more expensive, however milk is reasonably priced.

During my time there the hydro grid was poor and the power would go out frequently. Everybody had flashlights and little gas stoves for those times when we were without power. We also had to have bottled water because the pump that provided water to the town (from the lake) was run by electricity. We lost many hours of school because of power failures but it did provide for some much needed preparation time. None of the teachers ever complained about losing power!

Essentially every six to eight weeks there would be a week off of school. We had weeks off in October, December, February and April. This was shopping time for the teachers! All of the teachers would get into their vehicles and either head home or to Saskatoon to shop. The trick was to get all of the cleaning and bathing supplies and as many non-perishable food items as you possible could in order to make it through until the next trip down.

We all had fully furnished houses that we rented from the school division. Rent ranged from approximately $100 per month to just over $300 per month depending on where you lived. They had bachelor to three bedroom houses available for the teachers and rent was taken directly off of our pay cheques. It was definitely cheap living. Living expenses were very low, and teachers often kept homes in their home provinces as well as maintaining their home in La Loche. Water was free because it was pumped from the lake and nobody had natural gas. So essentially the only expenses were hydro, oil and the standard cable, telephone and internet through the phone company, SaskTel. Outside of trips to Saskatoon or to wherever home was, we used very little gas in our vehicles. I was able to go a full month before needing to fill up the tank.

The heat for most of the houses was supplied by oil. Every three months or so the oil truck would come into town. The teachers would sign up at the office to let the driver know that they wanted their oil tank filled. The truck would go by the houses and fill the oil tanks and the teachers would write cheques for what it cost to fill the tank. This is not a cheap endeavor and was not subsidized by the school division, unlike electricity which was subsidized. Some of the teachers, depending on where they lived, were lucky enough to have electric heat, this meant they got a nice discount. However those of us with oil had to simply pay it out and try not to complain too much that some of us were getting discounts and some weren't.

The biggest hurdle to living in La Loche is getting over the remoteness of it and learning to live with the idea that a vandalized vehicle is not just something that may happen one day, it's something that will happen to everybody, at least once, during their time in La Loche.

The second biggest hurdle is the poverty and sadness that is visible at every turn. I often compare it to living in the core area of Winnipeg and then teaching at the schools there as well. There is never really a break from the hardship that the people in La Loche face. The kids you see playing in the street in front of the house are the same ones that are in your classroom the next day. The kids that vandalized your vehicle the night before come to school the next day and avoid you because they know it was your vehicle they smashed up. This was the part that drove me away. After four years and with a four year old daughter, it was time to go. I knew eventually she would start to understand some of the things that were going on around her and I didn't want her to see those things. So I came back to Winnipeg to put her in a good school, in a good community, without all the vandalism, sadness and poverty that the people in La Loche deal with on a daily basis.