The Life of Jane continued

                       Coming Home and then Leaving continued
   



      Jane could see the passage of time right before her eyes. Her father's blonde hair was thinning and turning grey. So was her mother's. Her sister lived in Baltimore and worked for a big drug company. Her brother was on his way to getting a medical degree at the University of Toronto. "He's going to come back to here or maybe Nova Scotia," Jane's mother said. "Plenty of people  need a doctor."
     Jane's father faced new challenges. The new premier of New Brunswick Louis Robichaud was making sweeping changes to the health and education systems.  "I'm all in favour of equality," Doctor Sinclair told Jane one  afternoon after he came home from work. "But Robichaud's going too fast. He's trying to give  the Acadians in New Brunswick all the chances we English speaking people already have."
      But the doctor told Jane that it would take years to do this. "He's  trying to do it in one fell swoop. And it's making my job a lot more difficult."
     There were no jobs for Jane in Fredericton  unless she wanted to be a substitute teacher in the local high school. Jane didn't want to do that sort of job. So after a few weeks Jane was bored to tears.She'd had enough of her home town but where could she go to? Then it came to her. First she'd go off to Halifax. It wasn't far away, that's for sure. And if things didn't work out there, there was always Montreal or even Toronto.
     And so on one mild September day Jane Sinclair got back on a bus and headed down the road again to Halifax, Nova Scotia. "Fredericton's too small for me mum," she told her mother just before leaving. There's no jobs for me here. And besides, I've seen the big wide world. I can't live here anymore. I got to go."
      Then gripping one big suitcase and a small brown handbag she got on a intercity bus and was gone. Once again she was headed into another world of adventure. As the bus headed away from Fredericton, Jane felt anxious about what might lie ahead. But she felt happy too.
 She was leaving her home town which she sure couldn't live in anymore.