Interview with a nomad programmer
Today I decided to interview someone we could describe as a “digital nomad.” Victor works remotely, as a programmer, while travelling the world with his mobile HotSpot. I was curious to know how he ended up in the Yukon …
Please introduce yourself
My name is Victor. I am a computer programmer who works remotely for companies based in the United Kingdom. I come from France. I grew up in [a] suburb of Paris. Then, with my partner, we lived in different countries and travelled a bit worldwide.
How did you end up in the Yukon?
“With my spouse. We used to live in the United Kingdom, in London, and we were looking for more wilderness and nature. We applied for permanent residency in Canada, which we luckily got. That brought us to British Columbia. We first lived for nine months in the Cowichan Valley, north of Victoria, on Vancouver Island. At some point, we were looking for more wilderness.
In our imagination, before moving to Canada, we had these pictures of pretty high mountains, open fields [and] wild animals such as grizzly bears. My partner, one day, told me, “Well, I think we have seen what we wanted to see on Vancouver Island. Let’s try something new.” And that’s how she brought up the idea of moving to the Yukon. She looked for farms where she could work for, as a woofer; first, sixty kilometres away from Dawson City; and then more south, closer to Whitehorse. We packed everything up in our car and left Vancouver Island to drive up north to the Yukon.”
How did you decide to work remotely in the Yukon?
So, at first, when I moved to Canada, I kept my old job. It was during the pandemic. So everyone in my company was forced to work remotely. That’s how I started to work remotely, really, for my original U.K. employer. And then, with a colleague of mine working for this company, we decided to leave and start our own thing. We could call it a consultancy shop for programming. He was still based in the United Kingdom and I was in Canada. It happened naturally, really.
What do you like about working remotely?
There are things I like, and there are things I don’t like, obviously. What’s pretty nice when I was working with my colleague and started our own thing is that I was really the master of my own time. I could decide when to start and when to finish work. What was pretty fantastic when we lived on farms, especially on the one next to Dawson, was that during lunch time I could go fishing. I could take an hour-and-a-half break and fish Arctic graylings. That was pretty fantastic.
I could pretty much organize myself as I wanted. That gave us the opportunity to spend a lot of time outdoors, go to Tombstone, spend even more time on the Dempster Highway, go to the Arctic Circle and do lots of fun stuff which I wouldn’t have been able to do if I had programmer work in some big company elsewhere. I would have had to be in Vancouver or some other big city, and be in an office, with a lot less flexibility to organize my own time.
Another good point is that my partner was working as a woofer on farms; meaning, we got to meet farmers who introduced us to a bunch of people as well. I did not feel loneliness with this set-up. But it’s after we left the Yukon, to go on different adventures, that I had this feeling of loneliness, which was starting to kick in a little more, and I was looking for a more social life.
What’s special about the Yukon for you?
I think it’s pretty amazing. It’s one of those frontier territories where humans have not completely destroyed everything yet. And it gives me a taste of what the world was like before we colonized and damaged the Earth. To me, I still remember, vividly, this feeling of being very small there. When I went hiking, I was not the apex predator anymore.
It was the first time in my life I had this feeling of symbiosis with the environment surrounding me. I was feeling part of nature, and nature was not just something contained in a park, surrounded by humans or by infrastructure. I have never in my life seen that elsewhere.
And also a very strong sense of support and community, because the conditions are harsh. If you are parked on the side of the road, people will just stop and ask if you need anything or if you are in distress.
Why did you decide to leave?
It was getting pretty cold! To put some context, we were living on isolated farms away from commodities, in pretty basic wood cabins with a bed and a wood stove. Dry toilet was outside. The shower was outside and the pipe had exploded so we had to wash ourselves with water bottles for quite a while. The living conditions were pretty fun when the weather was relatively okay, but when it gets to minus 25 F or less, on a daily basis, it gets more complicated. I was looking for more accommodating weather and a bit more sunlight.
We knew we would not stay for the whole winter; we had a trip planned for the United States. We left the Yukon in the middle of winter.
Have you thought of going back to the Yukon?
The question has been on my mind for quite a while. It is a place which I love. But it is far from where I come from—from my friends and family. On top of that, I have a deep respect for people living in small communities, who spend the whole year there, because the conditions are pretty harsh. I find that mentally it is not easy to go through six or seven months of winter, with little sunlight. But still, it is on my mind and I have not found it an easy question to answer.
Thank you Victor!
