This single mom ran away from the daily grind — and she's happier for it
CBC
In the corner of her living room in an old biscuit box house in rural Newfoundland, Stephanie Moyst sits in a rocking chair beside the fire. She's reading a passage from The House of Wooden Santas, Kevin Major's perennially popular Christmas story.
She records a video of herself reading a new chapter every day — the book is structured like a literary Advent calendar, culimating on Christmas Eve — to send to her granddaughter, who lives on the Canadian mainland.
It's a priceless Christmas gift — and Major's story is one to which she can relate. The protagonist, after all, is a single mom who leaves the city in hopes of finding a good life in a small town.
Moyst, 52, says her three children have always been her priority.
"If I'm going to do a job, I'm going to do 150 per cent, because I can't lose a job," she said.
"I'm the one putting the roof up and the food on the table and all of that. So being slack at something, it was not in my wheelhouse."
Sipping on a cup of coffee, she explains that she has to bundle up to keep warm in the old, drafty home during the winter.
It's a heritage home in Bareneed, a small community close to Port de Grave on the Avalon Peninsula. A century-old house that's been in her family since the 1960s, it's now home for her and her 16-year-old son, Cole, the only one of her children now left at home.
Last year, Moyst was living in Mount Pearl, a city that neighbours St. John's, and she was working 70 hours a week.
Rising rent and soaring inflation forced her to decide between working herself sick or figuring out a cheaper solution.
Moyst is among a rising number of Canadians dealing with unaffordable housing and what Statistics Canada says is a 20 per cent increase in food prices in the last two years.
When she decided it was time for a new way of living, she started a desk job at an insurance company, taking a significant pay cut to save her mental and physical health. And she moved out of the metro St. John's area, where rent has spiked in recent years.
She thought the move would make life more affordable. But bringing in about $1,200 a paycheque, she couldn't afford the $1,500 monthly rent in Bay Roberts.
So mother and son packed up again and moved to nearby Bareneed — a befitting name for someone living off the necessities — and into the 112-year-old house, still plastered in original wallpaper and needing renovations.