My wife’s name is Alysha Dominico and we’ve got two boys — Bailey, he’s eight, and Jasper, he’s five. When Alysha and I first got married nearly sixteen years ago, we moved to Australia. We met at Queen’s [University], so we went from Kingston to Australia for five years. Then we came back to Canada to have children and we moved to Bancroft and lived there for seven years. And then we moved to the Westboro area in 2018.
We love how welcoming everyone is. It’s just so neighbourly. We looked for houses in neighbourhoods with lots of Christmas lights and Halloween decorations because we figured that they would have kids and be spirited, and it’s totally like that. You can’t go down the street without chatting with a couple of families. We love that everything’s within walking distance. We’re a three minute walk to Shoppers, Starbucks, everywhere —so it’s really walkable. It’s a really nice community.
I would love to see the area more diversified. Unfortunately, I think it’s so expensive that it’s hard to get in as a young couple or a young family. We moved to Ottawa for two reasons: One, to get our kids into French immersion early and, two, with the hopes that we would be around more different types of families. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. But we have found lots of great families that are super loving and welcoming. It’s a non-issue, but we were hoping that there was going to be a little bit more diversity, so that maybe somebody else had two moms or two dads. There aren’t any other same sex parents that we know of — a lot of people are happy that we’re the example, which we’ve always been. We got married early, in 2006, right when Canada legalized same sex marriage, so we were one of the first [couples] to be married and to have kids. So we’re sort of used to pioneering. We both used to be teachers so we don’t mind that either.
When our boys have their friends over, it’s a non-issue. They say, “you’re so lucky that you have two parents that are still together, that’s awesome,” because, obviously, there’s a lot of divorce and stuff. Sometimes we get the question of, “oh, you have two moms?” Or “you’re one of Bailey’s moms?” And that’s it. It’s never been a thing for that age group. They do ask, “what do you call both your moms?” So that conversation happens. I hope that continues with that generation, that it doesn’t matter — skin colour, who you love. They just want to be friends.
Collected by Hollie Grace James.