Head Tale

Friday turned into an even more emotional housing-news related day then we expected.

In addition to being the possession day of our old house for the new owners, we heard that the condo complex where we lived for a couple years during our time in Calgary was engulfed in flames displacing numerous residents only a few days before Christmas including a couple who were our neighbours at the time and still lived in the same complex nearly twenty years later.

I’ve written before about the condo we bought when we lived in Calgary.

It was a pretty iconic building – right on the busy 14th St, just a few blocks up from the infamous “Red Mile”, our condo building had a peaked blue roof that made it visible from numerous places downtown and around the city with its unique design which made it quite memorable for anyone who went by.

So you can imagine the horror Shea and I felt when we saw the news on Twitter (while randomly scrolling, from of all people, W. Brett Wilson who posted that he saw a fire from wherever he was in Lower Mount Royal along with a pic and I remember thinking “that looks close to where our old condo was.”  Then, when I did some further searching, realising that indeed our old blue-roofed castle was engulfed in flames!)

We immediately began scouring social media and turned to Calgary local networks for more info (including seeing that same former next-door neighbour I mentioned earlier as one of the people being interviewed in multiple media stories.)

Fortunately, it sounds like no humans were harmed but a few pets may not have made it.

It was already a day of mixed emotions but seeing this horrible news from Calgary put the sad feelings we had into perspective – yes, we were handing over the keys to what had been “our house” for fifteen years.  But compared to the reasons someone could be leaving their home, our reason wasn’t really that sad.

And if we focused on the fact that not only are we now living in a nicer, newer home but that we also suspect we’ve sold to a young couple who are likely buying their own first home, possibly as new or recent Canadians, that makes it even more special and something to celebrate instead of be sad about.