For our second Kitimat Story, we are featuring Adam Gray, a teacher at Nechako Elementary School.
Originally from the Waterloo-Kitchener-Cambridge area of Ontario, Adam and his wife Becca moved to Kitimat in 2021. “We wanted the change,” says Adam. “The city life wasn’t for us anymore and we wanted a fresh start, a fresh start in our careers.”
As Adam explains, when he and Becca first started teaching in Ontario after qualifying, they struggled to find consistent work. In order to find permanent positions that they could really commit to, they started to look further afield. Pretty soon, BC – and specifically Kitimat – became the obvious choice. “We’d already thought about moving out west, plus we’d visited BC many times,” says Adam. “We just started thinking about what we love, and we love to be outside, and so we wanted to go to a truly wild place.”
After visiting Kitimat in March 2021, Adam and Becca fell in love with the town, and decided to reach out to SD82: Coast Mountains School District. One thing led to another, and in July of the same year they moved to Kitimat. Unlike in Ontario, Adam and Becca could afford to buy their own home in Kitimat, and found a house that ended up being less than a minute’s walk away from their work. “We couldn’t have asked for a smoother transition to living here,” says Adam.
Becca and Adam are both now teachers at Nechako Elementary School – Becca teaches kindergarten, while Adam teaches Grade 6. As Adam explains, Nechako has been a perfect fit for him. “I really, really love working here as a teacher,” says Adam. “I feel welcome and wanted. The fact that it’s a small community, I work with the same kids that I see down at the grocery store and in the community. I see them at the hockey arena, I see them everywhere I go. It really makes me feel like I’m making a difference in these kids and these families’ lives.”
For Adam, Kitimat’s Indigenous community is hugely important to his teaching. “I’m learning so much from these kids. The students that I teach from Haisla First Nation have taught me more than I could ever imagine about their incredible culture. If I’m able to learn one thing from them and they’re able to learn one thing from me, I feel like I’m doing my job as a teacher.”
In particular, Adam has been able to follow his passion for outdoor education. “That’s been a big thing for me,” he says. “I feel like I’m able to try new things, I feel like I’m able to explore. I’ve made an outdoor classroom, and I’m passionate about teaching conservation. I feel like I have a voice in the School District, and that I can really make an impact in the community.”
But of course, life in Kitimat isn’t all work and no play. Moving to town has allowed Adam to fully explore his other passions – including fishing. “I love to fish, I love to tie my own flies, I love to explore new rivers.” Adam is also a keen wildlife photographer, another hobby that drew him to Kitimat. “All my hobbies go together very well,” says Adam. “So I could be on the river fishing and a grizzly bear comes out and provides me with a pretty cool opportunity to photograph them.”
Compared to living in Ontario, Adam says, in Kitimat his hobbies are now way more accessible. “Living in a bigger city, to do the things I loved, to be outside, to hike, to fish and canoe and stuff, it was more of an event. I would have to plan out a weekend, I would have to plan three or four days to drive three/four/five hours to do those things. Moving here, I can go five minutes down the road and I’m at the river, and I’m fishing a world-class river. I’ve put in a lot of time into exploring, and I’ve barely touched a sliver of it. Every day can be a completely new adventure.”
But most important of all, explains Adam, he and Becca feel truly welcomed by Kitimat. “I was nervous about coming to a new community, just the two of us. I didn’t know anybody, so I was nervous about making friends and meeting people.”
But in fact, says Adam, their actual experience was the total opposite of what he had worried about. “We made so many friends right away,” he says. “Everyone was so welcoming, so glad that we were here, so glad that we had moved to work in the schools with the kids. People opened their arms to us and we were really, really excited about that, which I think was one of the biggest things that we love about the town. We felt like we were part of it right away.”
To people considering also making the move to Kitimat, Adam suggests being open. “Lots of family and friends of ours who visit say ‘there’s nothing here, only one road in and out!’” he says. “But when you’ve got such a great community, you don’t feel secluded. Yes, there’s not much in the way of ‘city life’, but that’s what makes it special, and you don’t need that to be satisfied. For me, there’s not enough time to do all the activities I want to do, and I definitely don’t get bored.”
To Adam, Kitimat is the little sister to the bigger centres of Terrace and Prince Rupert, and often gets forgotten about. “It’s a bit of a secret,” he says, “and it’s different to anywhere else I’ve ever been. We absolutely love it and probably will never leave.”
To see Adam’s fishing and wildlife photography, check out his website and Instagram handles: @adam.gray and @agwildlifephotography.
For more information about working as an Educator in Kitimat, please visit Work in Kitimat – Education.
Photos by Darrin Rigo.
WRITTEN BY:
Jessie Levene
