Small-Town
Girl to a City Slicker!
When I was
younger, I never dreamt that I would ever live in a big city, much less the
capital of Canada at that. I had my first real taste of city life when my
family took a vacation to Toronto when I was 12 years old. I remember being
VERY nervous to fly and then completely shocked when I saw how tall the
buildings were in Toronto from a bird’s eye view! It was so bizarre. To me, I
couldn’t
figure out why there were no potato fields, farmland and beaches.
Instead, all I could see were buildings upon buildings, skyscrapers upon skyscrapers
and I knew at that moment that I wasn’t in island territory anymore. No, this
was a whole new adventure.
If I had to describe
PEI in one word, I think I would choose “serene” because of how life moves on a
day to day basis. While some people are busy-bodies, for the most part, life on
the island is very slow-paced, relaxing and blissful (ignore everything I just
said during the winter months…but if anything, it just makes us appreciate the
other seasons dearly). In PEI there are approximately 145, 000 people and where
I grew up in Summerside, about 15, 000…hence you definitely had the
“small-town” feel.
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| Summerside, PEI |
I really enjoyed growing up in Summerside
because everyone was so friendly and families were extremely close to one
another. If you went out shopping, you’d probably run into at least one person
you knew and it was just a very tight-knit community atmosphere. We have the main
necessities like most cities, but not to the same extent. There is one high
school, one movie theatre, one main recreation center for sports, one main mall,
a couple grocery stores, some fast food joints, a few nice restaurants, small
businesses and then you have our local tourist attractions such as the Shipyard
market, Spinnakers Landing and the Loyalist hotel. (Although in the last few
years, we’ve gotten a lovely boardwalk, our recreation center has been redone,
we’ve gotten an A&W, a Sportchek and I’ve heard that we are patiently awaiting
a Starbucks to open!) So, I mean, we’re getting there. The speed limit around
town is 40 (except for the odd back roads which are 70 and then there is one
stretch of highway where you can get up to 90 and that was always a highlight!)
but basically it’s pretty “slow-going”. It’s no wonder why PEI has been such a
favorite vacation spot for years! It provides a very relaxing atmosphere and
you’re only 10 minutes from a beach in practically any direction. Finding a little
slice of paradise is always just a short drive away. My parents live by the
water and can kayak every day, that’s just amazing!
I was very lucky to be born with natural
athletic ability which allowed me to pick up any sport pretty quickly. I took
an interest in cross country, soccer, basketball, badminton and track &
field, but mostly focused on both basketball and track as my two main passions.
I was fortunate enough to transfer my work ethic for academics into my training
for sports and so this gave me an edge when trying out for teams. I am proud to
say that I made every team I ever tried out for (but not without hard work and
dedication before the tryouts). I didn’t want to just be picked for a team, I
wanted the team to need me and that was always my philosophy. My greatest
sporting achievement growing up as a high school athlete would have been
attending the 2009 Canada Summer Games as a dual sport athlete for both
basketball and track.
I never really
noticed a difference in living, or sports until I began to venture off-island
for team trips and tournaments. The way of life was different (much faster) and
the competition was incredibly harder. It was only then that I began to see the
differences between provinces and between cities. In junior high and high
school, most of the travelling I did for sports was within the Maritime
Provinces, with the exception of Newfoundland. I found that when competing within the Maritimes, the level of competition
was relatively similar, but it still wasn’t the same as playing back home. The
level of talent in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia was evident in the fact that
there were so many different club teams to play and compete against. There were
many more athletes to choose from, whereas on PEI we had only one team for each
age group. Therefore, on my U17 basketball team, there were only 12 of us and
if someone got hurt, we didn’t have any replacement options waiting around. For
track it much the same. The NB and NS track clubs were bigger and the talent
was incredible.
I still didn’t
really understand the essence of being from a big province until Canada Games
began. I then got a taste of the rest of Canada’s talent, Ontario, Quebec,
Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba and man, did I EVER notice
a difference then! I mean let’s just think about this for a second. Ontario’s
U17 girl’s Canada Games team was made up of only 12 players. The 12 BEST
players in all of Ontario, who travelled from numerous cities to attend
try-outs and then if they made the team, travelled even greater distances to
make practices. In the bigger cities, there is so
much talent to choose from
that as an athlete, you need to specialize in your sport early. The hard work
and dedication of these athletes was amazing and it’s no wonder why these teams
are successful. This is where being from a smaller province presents some
differences. Most athletes can play more than one sport, there are only a
certain percentage of us that will continuously try-out for sports teams and so
you have a good chance of making more than one squad. At first I thought that
maybe this was the reason why the level of talent was so much different than
from other provinces in Canada. However, I still thought that my teams trained,
practiced and competed just as much as these other teams so what was the issue?
In the end, I
narrowed it down to geographic location and funding. PEI is a very small
province; we unfortunately do not have the same amount of funding capacity that
can go towards sports compared to some of these bigger provinces such as
Ontario, Alberta and BC. Moreover, we also do not have the same level of
competition to play against on a regular basis. For us to even play a good team
we had to travel off-island to do so and that cost money. Money, which we had
to save up for bigger tournaments, National championships and Canada Games,
therefore it made a difference. I am by no means saying that I feel in any way
ashamed for competing for my province. If anything, I am proud to say that I
was one of the best from PEI and that’s something that I pride myself on and
will forever. It just made me realize, that sometimes, things are out of your
control, but that shouldn’t stop you from playing your best and giving it your
all in any sport you do. From coast to coast, each athlete has a certain level
of respect for the other. At the end of the day, yeah, maybe I didn’t win as
many medals as some other athletes, but I still felt a sense of accomplishment
and that’s what truly matters. J
