As long-time blog readers will know, I was based in Yukon for two years and traveled all over the territory and parts of the Northwest Territories. What some of you may not know is that I spent time shopping for a home base up there, but any decent land meeting my criteria wasn’t affordable. I was looking for a frontier experience but not a deep bush one, something I could easily drive to and that would have basic services.

I eventually decided I didn’t want to be that far north as it would limit my mobility. To my surprise, I discovered that I wanted to live where the vast majority of other Canadians live, within about 100KM of the US border.

And then I found an anomaly along that densely populate strip, southern Saskatchewan, which promised the wide open space and frontier experience I wanted right in the heart of the continent. I had my pick of affordable lots and I settled on the perfect compromise between deep rural living and suburbia, a charming little hamlet with most services. It didn’t have internet at the time of purchase, but was slated for improvements that would be cellular connectivity in the next year. No one cared if I used it as an RV home base and never developed it (an issue I faced when I was looking at properties 10 times the cost in southern Alberta). And incredibly, I could pay cash. It was perfect.

Sure enough, when I arrived the following year to spend my first summer on my very own land, we were on the coverage map! But surprise, the telecom company had made a huge mistake in locating the new tower and we still didn’t have service. As those of you who have been following the saga know, I’m now able to prove that SaskTel made a mistake. They are a Crown corporation and accountable for how they spend their money, so with a little help from the NDP in pushing the ‘this is a waste of public resources’ angle, I just might get this resolved within my lifetime…

Something else has come up that makes life here difficult and which will be next summer’s fight, our lack of civic addresses. Even though we have a post office, I frequently can’t get things delivered to it because ordering systems now have a database of valid civic addresses and I can’t just make one up and put my PO box number in the next row. I’m figuring out how to work around that. I have a neighbour who works in town who says that as long as it’s not 10 parcels a day, I can have things sent care of him and he’ll drop them off when he passes by my place in the evening.

Today, I saw how absurd the civic address thing is when I couldn’t confirm on the Elections Canada website that I am registered to vote. I called and the front line person I spoke to couldn’t find where I lived. I’m waiting for someone higher up to get back to me.

A reader who probably isn’t reading anymore actually came through the hamlet recently, although she didn’t look me up. She has the same attitude as others that I live ‘in the middle of nowhere’ or ‘at the end of the world’ and therefore I don’t deserve basic services. Having lived and traveled through the far north, where I never had major connectivity issues (a shortage of bandwidth, yes) or difficulty getting parcels or proving where I lived, I still don’t think that I was that naive in believing that I could get such services here in southern Saskatchewan even in a rural community.

I’m figuring out how to make my life here work and I’ve been asked by more than one person why I don’t cut my losses and just go.

It’s easy to lose sight of the positives when I’m so consumed by an issue like the lack of connectivity. But believe me, there is more positive here than anywhere else I’ve ever tried to make a life.

Most especially, once upon a time in Quebec, I faced many of the same challenges (especially lack of connectivity) even though I lived just 50KM from the capital of the country. It was impossible to get anything done there because of the entrenched corruption and apathy at every level of government. I saw that in most of the rest of Canada, how traditions and procedures are deeply rooted and unchangeable.

There’s something delightfully rustic about this part of Saskatchewan in that it never quite figured out how it fit into the 20th century and so is still struggling to fit into the 21st. The population basin here is older, coming from a generation that doesn’t understand the need for internet or cellular phones. We still write cheques here and call each other rather than email.

It’s the frontier I was looking for and I am part of the first wave of young pioneers flocking to the area in search of some of the last affordable real estate in this country. Since moving to my hamlet, two couples of my generation and another gal my age have moved here. More are going to come as they get squeezed out of Assiniboia, whose prices are steadily rising to Moose Jaw levels.

So the services we want are going to come because the market will eventually force it, but we can shape how those services will look. None of my neighbours today appear to really care about my fight for connectivity, but I am keeping records so that I will be remembered as the one who brought broadband internet to the St. Victor valley, much like people are lauded for bringing the railroad. The metaphor sounds silly, I know, but that’s what the government is actually using when it talks about increasing broadband internet across Canada!

Another thing is that big oil is coming in the near future. There is going to be money to be made here and our cheap property values are going to skyrocket. This is something that the economists on Bay Street are talking about, not just our belief. They say that Saskatchewan is the only Canadian real estate market that hasn’t exploded yet and when it does, people are going to make a killing on their investments, like some Manitobans did.

I know I have to be patient because this is an unshaped world I’m living in. It is so bright with promise and I want to be involved in shaping the future of the area I have decided to make my home. I refuse to sit and wait for other people to make the changes I need to be able to thrive here. Wanting to make things better and actually doing something about them is very different from bellyaching.

I love it here. This is Home.