Simply Spoken       

Your Hosts: Pamela Waygood and Robert Jacques

We are two retired teachers who have been having a love affair with France for over 31 years. Over the years, we shared this love with friends through visits and with our students through various school trips. In 1989 we bought our property in Parnay, in the Loire Valley. We settled on the Saumur area because of Pam’s love for horses and Robert’s love for wine. Pam has now taken up riding after a 30 year absence and Robert has fulfilled his end of the bargain by consuming oh so many bottles of wine and he is now into walking 20 km twice a week. In 1990 when Pam’s parents came to France to try and convince us of our folly, they (well, Pam's Mom anyway) immediately fell in love with the area and bought the small house next door. Since then we have offered both homes for weekly rental so that others could enjoy what we have experienced. We added the small Montparnasse studio in Paris in 2002. In the past few years, both homes in the Loire have undergone major renovations in preparation for our retirement. That event came in June 2007 after a wonderful life road which took us from our initial home in Winnipeg to graduate school in Oregon, then on to teaching in the lower mainland of British Columbia and finally teaching in the incredible Northwest Territories. In 2008, we added a small one bedroom apartment in Hastings, England, the place where all those French blokes came over to the Hastings beach and changed a few things in England (we eat pork or porc not pig). The English have since been paying back these Norman invaders by invading the French beaches every summer. This property has now come on the market for rentals. Hastings will become our main residence for the winter months.

While living in the Vancouver area, Pam taught French and Robert, Theatre and Film. After 22 years we set out on a new adventure in 2002 in the Northwest Territories where Pam was the Principal and Robert, the Union Rep. This made for an interesting situation in our first posting where we were the only two teachers. Our first posting was the small aboriginal (Dene) village called Nahanni Butte located on the South Nahanni River near the world renowned Nahanni National Park and its jewel, Virginia Falls. In 2004, we moved further north to Wrigley, a three teacher school where Pam continued as Principal and you guessed it, Robert was the Union Rep. Wrigley is also a First Nations community that is situated slightly north of the 63rd parallel along the beautiful Mackenzie River.

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