MEET YOUR HOST: Sault newcomer excited to welcome others to a special space

When Shelly Bazil-Smith and her family moved from the Caribbean to Sault Ste. Marie, they took a leap into the unknown — and it paid off. 

In early 2022, her husband was working in Grenada and she was based on another Caribbean island, Tobago, with their daughter, Nevaeh. 

“Sault Ste. Marie was really the catalyst that brought our family back together because we were living on two separate islands and we needed to find a way to be back together,” Bazil-Smith said from her home in the Sault. “So we moved to Canada so that we could be together in the same space, in the same country as a family.”

She now works as an employment counsellor (currently on maternity leave) at the Sault Community Career Centre, runs a consulting business, Smith & Smith Education Consultancy, with her husband, Aaron Smith, is mom to two kids, Nevaeh, 10 and Noah, who’s one. And — she’s a newcomers host in SPACES, Sault Ste. Marie’s very own social network, where she helps others make smooth transitions into the area. 

Among the many hurdles the family faced while immigrating to the Great White North, getting acclimatized to the reality of winter was top of mind. 

“I thought that Boston winters were terrible until I met a Sault Ste. Marie winter,” she said. “So, my first impression was, how am I going to survive this?”

It was her daughter’s willingness to embrace Canadian winters that made Bazil-Smith’s adjustment that much easier. 

“When she came home and she was like, ‘mom, we played in the snow today,’ I told myself as long as she's OK, then I'll be OK. So she reassured me, ‘mom, I'm fine, I'm having fun at school, the cold is not that bad,’” Bazil-Smith said.

Check out Bazil-Smith’s winter survival guide, in SPACES. 

She also credits the friendly spirit of Saultites with making her transition that much more enjoyable. 

“When you go to the grocery store or if you're walking on the street, people stop and say hi, they ask you where you're from. They are genuinely interested in you; they're not just asking you for the sake of asking.” 

They landed here in May after her husband got accepted into Sault College’s health informatics program. He’s now an adjunct professor, and hopes to be a physician in the area soon.

They hit the ground running, attending every concert, every community activity, flag raising, fair, block barbecue, carnival, park hangout, and didn’t miss an event at the Roberta Bondar Pavilion. She has also made many new Canadian friends as an active volunteer with the United Baptist Church.

SEE: Talented local carpenter helps us build the Sault’s new social network

The vibrant lifestyle of the Sault reminds Bazil-Smith of her home country, Dominica. 

Growing up on the island between Martinique and Guadeloupe, she says she had a typical childhood, and lived with her mother and maternal grandmother, where they spoke French Creole at home, revelled in every chance they could to go whale watching, eat fresh fruit and see the ocean. She added Dominica is also known as the island of 365 rivers — one for every day of the year. 

In her hometown, Saint Joseph, she found inspiration to write a children’s book, Praying for Coconuts, which came about because of her experience living in the path of hurricanes. 

“It talks about a little girl that had an experience of her first hurricane, Hurricane Maria, and how she prayed to God to send back the coconuts because, you know, after the hurricane goes through the island, it takes away everything from the trees,” Bazil-Smith said of her book, which is available on Amazon.

“There's no food, there's nothing on the trees. And so she's basically asking God to send back the coconuts.”

At age 17, Bazil-Smith earned a scholarship to Andrew’s University, and attended a satellite campus in Trinidad and Tobago. She set down roots there, worked as a guidance counsellor, met her now husband and started a family. 

Their ties to the Caribbean started to fray once the pandemic hit. While her husband worked as an emergency room doctor in the early days of COVID, the stress and despair eventually became too much to handle. 

“He just came home one day and said, ‘that's it.’ Like many doctors and many frontline workers who went to their spouses and said, ‘I’ve had enough of seeing death. I've seen enough people passing out and I can't assist,’” she said. 

He took a job as a clinical instructor at St. George’s University in Grenada, from mid-2021 to May 2022. 

“And so we needed to find a way to unite our family,” Bazil-Smith said. After finding the medical informatics program at Sault College in a quick Google search, their new life awaited.

Now, in SPACES, Bazil-Smith helps others make similar journeys. 

SEE: SooToday wants you — to host one of our new SPACES

“I have two dreams, two goals for SPACES. One, I want to create an environment where Canadians and newcomers can unite. I think that the media and the news outlets sometimes only portray the bad when it comes to immigration and newcomers.”

In her conversations with a newcomer segment, she highlights the valuable contributions by newcomers. 

Her second aim is to provide newcomers with much-needed information to help them get set up in Canada. Where to go to enroll your kids in school, where to find a doctor and how to get health insurance are a few tasks that she found surprisingly challenging when her family first immigrated to Canada. 

Ultimately she hopes to connect newcomers, help them celebrate their cultures, and feel a sense of normalcy while being hundreds of kilometres from home.  

Check out her space, say hi, and help welcome newcomers to the Sault!