In my last blog (click here to read it) I shared that I felt woefully inadequate as a mother and daughter as I said goodbye to my son and mother respectively as we continued to make our way out east.
On our second-to-last day of travel, we enjoyed our glimpses of Ontario’s pastoral countryside and the rolling hills of Quebec dairy farms as we continued our trek across the country to the east coast. Nonetheless, I spent most of the day on the phone dealing with more legal, financial, and other issues associated with our move, trip, house sale, and house purchase.
I was shocked to find out that I would have to go into a Quebec bank to wire the down payment for our new house to our lawyer because my bank wouldn’t do it wirelessly. I was more than a little worried because Quebec has consistently had the highest number of cases of COVID in the country and we had been advised to drive straight through the province as much as possible.
I had to remind myself of the Scriptures we had found to help us through our journey to keep my confidence up that the Lord would keep us safe.
The transaction took longer than I anticipated: besides the language barrier compounded by our mask-muffled voices, the teller was unfamiliar with this kind of transaction. A more senior staff member had to be called in to help. After almost an hour, I was relieved to get everything sorted out and be able to resume our trip.
When I received a confirmation reminder about the hotel room at our final destination—we had to stay in a hotel for a few days in our new community while waiting for our house purchase to close—I realized that I had booked a room without a stove top for our meals. I called around to see if I could find a better fit for our needs.
Some hotels were refusing to take out-of-province travellers, and one manager told me that she knew of people who were being escorted out of hotels and/or out of the province because they were either lacking adequate documentation and/or had violated the lockdown rules. I was advised to contact the government to make sure I had everything I needed to be able to enter our new province legally, safely, and without hassle.
I found out we needed to register to enter the province, otherwise we could be delayed at the border for hours, or worse, denied entry. I quickly registered us and hoped that our application would be processed in time for our arrival.
We also made the decision to cancel our Ste-Foy hotel room, just outside of Quebec City where cases were surging, and power through to Riviere-du-Loup instead, which was closer to the New Brunswick border. That would make it yet another long day of travel, but ultimately would result in us arriving at our destination one day in advance of our original plan.
I already knew that we would have to self-isolate for 14 days once we arrived at our destination. I did not know that we could not leave the hotel grounds under any circumstances until we moved into our house.
That left us in a big quandary. If we weren’t allowed to leave the hotel grounds, how were we going to do the final walk through of our new house on closing day? How were we going to let the cleaners, who I had booked weeks ago to thoroughly clean and disinfect our new home, in advance of our moving in? How were we going to sign legal papers with our lawyer, which ostensibly had to be done in person? How were we going to return our rental car on time? How would we get groceries?
And most concerning of all: would we even be allowed to cross the border?
Click here for the next instalment in "Prairie Girl Goes Coastal."