My name is Colleen Baker and I’m from Caledonia, Ontario. I actually work with the Williamson group in Brantford and we are the benefit consultant for McKeil Marine. I’ve been doing it for almost 8 years.
My Watermark story is my husband. I met him Newfoundland, the Atlantic Ocean. When I first heard the reference to watermark, I thought about my husband. A number of years ago, the biggest story would be how I met him here. I moved from Saskatchewan, that would’ve been almost 28 years ago and we’re married 25. I met him here I guess on the Atlantic Ocean. He was from Topsail. I was living and working in the Topsail area. The rest was history. Water is important to me because you know when I heard them talk about your watermark story I thought right away that it would be my husband. Every time I look at the Atlantic Ocean, I think about him.
As I say to a lot of people, I’m not the most romantic person but when I think about Newfoundland and the Atlantic Ocean I think about meeting him here and we just have a lifetime of memories whether it was the first time I saw an iceberg or the first time we hung out on Topsail beach or the first time we took the kids down capelin fishing. So lots of great times spent, a lot of summer time in the Kingman’s Cove looking at icebergs and just hanging out. My first memory of water, well I don’t want to say it was my first ride in a dory in Kingman’s Cove, but probably. Can’t really remember my first memory. I guess one of the most significant ones was when we first went down to Topsail Beach and we were going out together. We ended up spending a lot of time down there, but kind of that first time when I figured out this is probably the guy I am going to end up with. I kind of think back to Topsail Beach. Great place, I miss it.
My husband now, he says you can take the boy from the Rock but you can’t take the Rock from the boy, so he reminds of that every once in a while. It’s funny now, because I come here often for business and he doesn’t and it’s kind of funny him being from here and saying see you in a few days. But we do get out once in a while. Probably not as much as he’d like to be here, it’s just the way the economy was years ago that we made our home in Ontario. But this is home, lots of good family traditions. We love the water here, it’s just a great place. Water is a necessity. Think about even the sound of water. I’ve seen water in the Caribbean. Just about everywhere you go, there are beautiful bodies of water I just think it’s an important part of life. My favorite body of water is the Atlantic Ocean.
