It was sixty years ago today my family moved from one Montreal suburb to another, a move that changed my life.

That tree wasn’t there, neither were the bushes. Come to think of it, the grass hadn’t been put in yet either.

My parents didn’t say so at the time, but it was a sign they were moving up: from a smaller house to a larger one, from an area close to the city core to the suburbs. Today I’d rather live closer to the core, but things were different in the 1960s.

My father also said the move would save him time on his daily commute. Which it did – until he changed jobs a few months later.

I remember moving day. The streets weren’t paved and there was some question as to how close the moving van could get to the house. My brother and i had been parked with friends so we wouldn’t be underfoot, so I didn’t actually see the furniture being unloaded.

It was a couple of weeks before the streets were paved and anyone else moved into the neighborhood. Getting to school, by bus, was a whole new adventure.

It wasn’t the first time my family had moved, but it was the first move I remember. I think I have moved another ten times or so in the subsequent years but probably none was as significant, not even the moves to Liberia and Germany.

That move across town on April 17, 1964, shaped who I was to become. A new school and new friends molded me quite differently than if I had grown up closer to the centre of town.

For example, I already loved to read, but it was new friends in the new location who introduced me to science fiction, a genre I consumed vociferously for decades. My elementary school friends became my high school friends and together we faced the turbulent late 1960s together. (I had thought those friendships would never end, but in those pre-internet days it was easy to grow apart when you moved.)

Until today I hadn’t considered what my life would have been like if my family hadn’t moved to the suburbs. Even now I’m not going to spend the time wondering. As Aslan says in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, “no-one is ever told what might have been.”

We lived in that house for a little more than eight years. If my father hadn’t had to move for work, I might be there still.

I didn’t want to move, and it took me years to come to terms with it. I understood God had a plan for my life, but Ottawa seemed like a mistake on His part. My understanding is better now.

They were formative years, and very happy ones. That probably explains why I remember moving day, even after sixty years.

What about you? Any moves in your life stand out, for good or bad? Leave a comment – I’m curious.