If it wasn’t for bad luck…

By Heather Killen

Spectator

NovaNewsNow.com

When Catherine Tolbart built her new deck, she never dreamed she’d one day see it sitting behind her neighbour’s house.

These days her luck is running foul enough to raise a house from its foundation. Earlier this year her oil tank developed a leak that contaminated the ground under her house.

Last week, contractors were getting ready to raise her North St. house to clean up the spill underneath. The good news is the insurance company will pick up the bill.

The bad news is her cherished red rose bushes will be dug up and destroyed. And the finished rooms Tolbart carefully decorated will have to be redone.

“I’ve been asking, why me?” she said. No one can blame her if she’s feeling a little discouraged. About a month before Christmas, Tolbart’s world began to unwind.

On November 10, her daughter Gwen was seriously injured in a car crash. Gwen Tolbart, a weather anchor and reporter for WTTG Fox 5, in Washington DC, was returning home from a dinner when a bus collided into her Honda.

“A Metrobus hit her, came right across the highway,” she said. “They still don’t know how she got through that.”

Before Tolbart could catch a plane to Washington, she had a second setback at home in Middleton.

Her brother, who’d been ailing with Alzheimer’s, suffered a stroke and needed to be placed in a nursing home. Talbot then had to find a place for her nephew, who couldn’t live alone.

Her nephew was diagnosed with a brain tumour and needed surgery. “He had that since he was a little kid,” she said.

Fortunately, all three family members are now recovering, she said. But with all the chaos, Tolbart wasn’t able to leave for Washington until shortly before Christmas.

Just before she left, the oil company came and filled up her tank. When Tolbart returned home on January 27, the house was cold.

“I was out of oil,” she said. “So they came and filled me up again, but by 7 p.m. I was out of oil again.”

That was when the leak was discovered. Tolbart was told that she couldn’t remain in the house, so she packed a few bags and went to stay with her brother in Wilmot.

It will be April, or May, before Tolbart can return to her house. She said the hardest part is being so far away from town.

“I get mail every day,” she said. “I can’t just walk to the Post Office anymore.”

But not all of Tolbart’s luck is bad. Her bright spot is a good neighbour who watches the house, and is always willing to help.

“She takes me to church in Kentville when she goes,” she said. “And she’ll call me and say, ‘I see lights on in your basement, I’m just wondering if everything’s okay.’”