A Career from the Crib: Tudor Udroiu

One of the pandemic’s biggest losses, to both life and work, included the end of person-to-person interaction with our co-workers.

But one of its biggest positives turns out, for hundreds of millions of workers and businesses alike, was the opportunity for an employee to work from wherever they saw fit — whether it was the confines of the couch, or an altogether brand-new home base.

The number of people who worked from home in the East Kootenays nearly doubled between 2016 and 2021 — from 1,955 of 29,685 residents then, to 4,040 of 31,530 people now living here.

Of all towns in the region, Kimberley saw the largest increase in home-based toilers, growing from 7.1 per cent in 2016, to 16.2 per cent in 2021. That’s 245 workers in 2016, compared to 600 people in 2021.

Cranbrook also saw a big rise in the number of people working from home since the last census — from 445 people in 2016 to 885 or 9.2 percent of the population.

Further, the pandemic allowed those who didn’t live and work here, but wanted to, to pack up and head out.

Such was the case for Tudor Udroiu. Now a Kimberley resident, Udroiu left a job in greater Toronto’s information technologies sector.

“Living in suburbia really didn’t do it for me,” said Udroiu, who wasn’t a fan of the cookie cutter housing and lack of activity and social settings.

Population. Identification. Reconciliation.

From the voices of Canada’s 600 First Nations to Gord Downey to The Pope, never before in the country’s comparatively short history, or for that matter, the western world’s, has the vast ancestry of this land’s first people held such priority our national dialogue and the ubiquitous news cycle.

The aim to impart awareness of original Indigenous presence and land rights in the everyday life of Canadians, including those who live here in the East Kootenay, seems here to stay. And many would say, rightfully so.

Canada’s First Nation’s comprise about five percent of our population. But stats that might provide more insight into where our own region’s First Nations are at, are tough to discern.

What we can tell you is that amongst the East Kootenay’s Metis and Indigenous populations, the Ktanaxa Nation is comprised of four individual First Nations communities — Akisq’nuk, St. Mary's (ʔaq̓am) , Tobacco Plains (ʔakink̓umǂasnuqǂiʔit), and Creston’s Lower Kootenay (yaqan nuykiy).

Prior to the pandemic, Udroiu said his job would have consisted of long days in a cubicle, somewhere in a box-shaped building in Mississauga or Toronto.

Now he gets a view of the ski hill.

“The transition meant that I could take up the job I planned on having for a career, while still doing the things I love that weren’t available in the same magnitude or capacity in Ontario,” said Udroiu.

In his time in the Kootenays, Udriou has fallen in love with the community and plans on keeping it as his home for the foreseeable future.

“I came for the skiing, but I’m staying for the people and the environment,” he said.

The population of the Columbia Valley’s Akisqnuk First Nation jumped to 150, up by 6.4 percent, while the Shuswap Indian Band population bumped up by 1.6 percent to 320 residents.

There was a telling notation in the latest census, marked as “Footnote 39”.

It read: “users should be aware that estimates associated with Indigenous languages are more affected than most by the incomplete enumeration of certain reserves and settlements in the Census of Population.”

The Ktanaxa’s traditional territory — including southeast BC and historically parts of Alberta, Montana, Washington and Idaho — measures about 70,000 square kilometres.

Most importantly, and for now perhaps all we need to recognize and not forget, is that explorer David Thompson established Fort Kootenai below Columbia Lake about 215 years ago. The Ktanaxa have been here for 10,000 years.