2021 – The Year That Tested My Resolve
I sit here five years after the events of this story, revisiting them in their full form for the first time. This is not a year I ever enjoyed looking back on once I had survived it. Yet not every moment was terrible. There were small flashes of joy scattered between the difficult stretches. There was also a lot of music that I discovered during long winter walks, late nights, and periods where distraction became a form of survival. Music was always a reliable crutch.
Now, as I write this while listening to many of those same tracks, nostalgia quietly creeps in. Part of me almost misses those moments. At the same time, the rational side of my mind feels stunned by the audacity of wanting to relive a year that pushed me so close to the edge. Because 2021 was not simply difficult. It was the year that tested my resolve more than any other before or since.
Frozen Routine
The year began quietly. We were still trapped inside another strict lockdown rolling over from 2020. Apart from supermarkets and the restrictive university campus, nearly everything remained closed. Days moved slowly, stretched thin between routine and uncertainty.
At the time, I was still waiting on the final laboratory results for several rock samples. Something that should have taken weeks had already dragged on for nearly two months. Delays had become normal by then. Restricted work schedules and reduced access slowed nearly everything down. Once the results finally arrived, the next phase of my project began: data analysis. Hours disappeared into plotting graphs, comparing trends, searching for patterns and anomalies hidden inside datasets that I would later try to interpret.
Winter had settled fully over Saguenay by then. It had been there since November, and by my second year living in the region I understood that this was simply the rhythm of life in northern Quebec. Nearly half the year existed beneath a blanket of white, interrupted only by varying degrees of cold. Heavy storms would occasionally sweep through, dragging temperatures down toward -40°C, sometimes even lower when wind chill was particularly nasty. Most days, however, floated somewhere between -10 and -30.
By that point, Alexandre and I had adapted enough that -10 already felt like springtime. Anything warmer bordered on beach weather. We had integrated into the Canadian climate more than either of us probably expected.
Learning to Live With Winter
The most frustrating part of winter was not even the cold itself. It was the roads.
Chicoutimi sits within an ancient geological rift valley known as the Saguenay Graben. There is nearly a hundred-meter elevation difference between the lower ground near the Saguenay River where my apartment was located, and the upper plateau where the university, shops, and commercial areas sat.
When the roads froze solid beneath a glaze of ice, the steep streets became dangerous. Without fresh snow to provide grip, the pavement transformed into a slippery downhill slide. More than once, I chose to avoid the roads entirely. Instead, I would cut through deep snowbanks or take a longer path through Parc du Moulin. The route added time, but it also offered something the town itself often lacked during winter: silence.
Walking through the park meant escaping the repetitive landscape of parking lots, oversized roads, and rows of near-identical houses. It was quieter there, more natural, and easier to forget how repetitive lockdown life had become.
When Alexandre and I went shopping after work, we usually took the bus home. Nightfall came so early during winter that by the time errands were finished, darkness had already swallowed the streets. One particular evening remains especially memorable.
The Walmart Orogeny
A winter storm pushed through town that evening. Fine snow drifted across the asphalt in thin winding patterns, forming snaking shapes that looked almost like miniature sand dunes moving across the ground.
We had just finished a late-afternoon shopping trip at Walmart. Darkness had already settled outside. By that point in winter, snowbanks had grown enormous. While most of the surrounding landscape sat buried beneath at least half a meter of snow, the Walmart parking lot looked different.
Snowplows had spent months pushing snow into one corner of the lot, gradually building what resembled an artificial mountain range. The compressed snow hardened into towering icy ridges — five to ten meters high in places. Alexandre and I named it the Walmart Orogeny.
Where are we going, boys?
After leaving the store, we made our way toward the nearby bus stop, trying to shield ourselves from the freezing wind. The storm had emptied the streets. We seemed to be the only people outside. We waited there shivering while the bus ran late. Eventually, headlights emerged through the blowing snow.
An empty bus pulled up quickly, displaying the correct route number. The doors opened, and a young black guy with dreadlocks leaned toward us from the drivers seat with an unexpectedly cheerful grin. “So, where are we going, boys?” he asked in English, which itself was already shocking considering the limtied use of English in this part of the world. For a second I just stared at him, half laughing. “You tell us,” I replied. “You’re the bus driver.”
After some confused laughter and a bit of head scratching, he managed to get himself lost in some back streets due to various road closures. He was probably new on the job. It turned into one of the strangest bus rides I had experienced. Equal parts awkward, funny, and oddly memorable.
The Shattering
Winter carried on like that for weeks. Days blended together into a routine of snow, university work, grocery trips, and long stretches of quiet repetition. Then sometime near the end of January, Lucie called a meeting with the entire research group. Remote, of course. Face-to-face meetings between multiple people still felt discouraged, if not outright frowned upon.
Since the previous fall, a new student had joined our group. Taylor, from Edmonton, had come to complete her Master’s at UQAC despite speaking almost no French. We hadn’t even gotten the chance to meet her yet with all the restrictions and busy schedules. She was about to receive an intense introduction to Quebec academic life.
Lucie appeared on screen smiling as always. She had an energetic warmth that rarely seemed to disappear. Unfortunately, her smile did not always signal good news. This was one of those moments.
She wanted to tell us personally before the information spread further. A major financial crisis had surfaced at Laurentian University, triggering a large-scale investigation. The consequences extended far beyond one institution. Research budgets stalled and funding channels froze. Including those of our sponsors, Metal Earth…
In simple terms, our primary research funds had just been paralyzed. And just like that, the atmosphere changed. What had previously felt like a slow, frustrating winter suddenly became something heavier. The uncertainty was no longer abstract. The stability of the project itself no longer felt guaranteed.
Funding Frozen Indefinitely
We were all stunned.
Lucie tried to reassure us in whatever way she could. At least for now, our contracts were secure until May. PhD funding worked on a yearly basis, even though the projects themselves were designed to last four years. On paper, nothing had changed yet. But the truth was that she knew as little as we did.
Nobody could tell us how long the situation would last, whether funding would return, or if the projects would survive in their original form at all. So for the moment, we carried on as if nothing had happened. Not an easy thing to do when financial uncertainty hangs over your head like a storm cloud.
Without additional funding, further laboratory work and fieldwork were effectively off the table. If we wanted to continue, we would need to reshape our projects around what already existed using previous results, existing samples, and literature reviews to construct something workable from increasingly limited resources.
The Truth Behind Truth
It’s difficult to describe what a complete clusterfuck this situation had become.
Both Alexandre and I had entered fully funded four-year PhD projects with clearly defined goals, timelines, and expectations. Then the pandemic arrived a year earlier, throwing everything into disarray. Lockdowns slowed research, delayed lab access, complicated logistics, and gradually wore away at morale.
Despite all of that, we had managed to recover. By the end of 2020, we were finally back on track. Through stubbornness, efficiency, and a willingness to work relentlessly whenever opportunities appeared, we had clawed our way back into progress.
Lucie also played a major role, often shielding us from the more rigid and overly cautious layers of academic bureaucracy whenever our enthusiasm pushed beyond acceptable protocol. But now this. Something completely outside our control.
Nothing like this had happened before at a Canadian university, and somehow we had become tangled in the fallout through the financial lifeline supporting our projects.
An Odd Balancing of Scales
But as the universe taketh, so too it occasionally giveth.
Some posts ago, I mentioned how I had slowly become interested in cryptocurrency investing before leaving Denmark. What started around 2018 as casual curiosity had gradually evolved into a side hobby.
Over the years, I learned to tolerate the volatility. I followed traders on TradingView, watched technical analysts on YouTube, and slowly developed an understanding of how cyclical markets behaved. Crypto, despite its chaos, seemed to follow recognizable emotional rhythms — waves of optimism, collapse, accumulation, and eventual resurgence.
For years, people talked about the elusive bull market phase of the four-year cycle. And by early 2021, it appeared to have arrived. The pandemic crash of 2020 had briefly crushed everything. Markets collapsed alongside global panic. But central banks responded by flooding economies with liquidity, printing money at historic levels to stabilize financial systems.
Everything rebounded. And risk assets, especially cryptocurrencies, surged. I had invested quite a lot by the end of 2020. Good timing, whether through foresight or luck. Suddenly, what had been a hobby was transforming into something far more serious.
Despite making several objectively terrible trades during early 2021, my portfolio grew rapidly. My crypto holdings began outpacing my actual academic income. For the first time, I wasn’t just saving money for a rainy day. I was making eyewatering profits. It felt unreal.
While uncertainty grew in university life, another parallel reality was unfolding quietly on my screen — one filled with charts, profits, optimism, and the dangerous illusion that perhaps financial freedom was not as far away as it once seemed.
Unravelling
While crypto helped keep my morale afloat, Alexandre was not doing well.
The lockdowns had hit him especially hard. Over time, his frustration with Chicoutimi, Quebec, and Canada itself became increasingly difficult to hide. The isolation weighed heavily on him. Now, with funding uncertainty threatening both his income and future, the pressure intensified. But academic stress was only part of the story.
He also had to live beside a deeply unstable neighbour. The guy regularly took drugs and experienced frequent mental breakdowns. Alexandre often complained about screaming late into the night, objects smashing against walls, and violent outbursts that made sleep nearly impossible. The landlord could do little because tenant protection laws complicated intervention. Then things escalated further.
At one point, the neighbour rammed a metal pipe, or something similar, directly through Alexandre’s wall. Police were called. Nothing meaningful happened. And so Alexandre remained trapped beside someone increasingly unpredictable.
We discussed moving him elsewhere, but realistically that would have to wait until summer. By then, though, the damage was already being done. He was exhausted. Mentally fried. And slowly approaching his limit.
The Decision to Leave
As April approached — still winter in Saguenay, despite what the calendar claimed — Alexandre had reached a turning point. He told me he was done. Fed up with the uncertainty, the isolation, with the absurdity of the place and his situation. He wanted to quit and move back to France.
The final piece pushing him toward that decision was family. Through video calls, he watched his parents age from afar. What had once felt temporary began to feel irreversible. Time suddenly seemed more fragile than before. He realized he no longer wanted to spend years feeling miserable in another country while missing precious time with people he loved. And honestly? I could not argue against it anymore.
toward the sea… and for some, toward home
I understood. By then, I had also lived abroad for nearly seven years and had watched distance slowly reshape relationships with home and family. But I had committed to a different path. I had accepted long ago that I would keep moving until I found somewhere stable… somewhere that finally felt like home.
Alexandre already had that. He loved France and missed it more every day. He had something waiting for him. I didn’t.
Eventually, he told Lucie he wanted to downgrade his PhD into an MSc and finish within the year. His real goal, one he mostly kept between the two of us, was simple. He wanted to go home.
A Hollow Escape to Tadoussac
Sometime during what should have been spring, Alexandre, Pedro, and I decided to escape Chicoutimi for a day. We needed air. A change of scenery. Anything.
I can’t remember who suggested it first, but we drove east toward Tadoussac. Located where the Saguenay River meets the much larger St. Lawrence, Tadoussac is normally known for whale watching and summer tourism.
At that moment, we needed no excuse to go. We were simply happy to leave Chicoutimi behind for a few hours. That town had begun to feel heavy. Like a lead cloud permanently hanging overhead.
Driving through Saguenay Fjord National Park, I found myself unexpectedly struck by the scenery. The road wound between steep rocky cliffs and narrow valleys carved by ancient geological forces. For the first time, I fully appreciated the beauty of the landscape. And it frustrated me. Because my experience there had been so dominated by struggle that I had grown resentful toward the place itself. Yet the land remained beautiful regardless.
Tadoussac, however, felt lifeless. Late winter had stripped it of charm. The village sat somewhere between seasons. Neither winter nor spring. Dirty snow lingered in patches while mud surfaced through thawing ground. Everything seemed grey.
The sky remained mostly overcast, allowing only faint pale sunlight to break through. Cold wind moved through empty streets. The occasional masked pedestrian only reinforced the atmosphere. A reminder, as if any of us needed one, of how everything had changed since the pandemic began. The place felt abandoned. And somehow perfectly aligned with the emotional tone of that year.
The Ice Begins to Melt
On the return trip, we crossed the Saguenay by ferry and stopped near La Baie. There, we walked onto the final remnants of ice still covering the river.
During peak winter, the Saguenay froze into a thick surface strong enough to support ice fishing camps and even vehicles. Locals built temporary communities directly on the frozen water. This was the first time we had seen it ourselves. I had been there for over a year, yet somehow remained a stranger to the place. I lived within the landscape, but never quite within the life of it.
This late in the season the ice was already deteriorating. People packed up tents and equipment as slush formed across the surface. It was surreal watching full-sized pickup trucks still driving over what looked increasingly unstable. In the pale yellow light of a sunset I watched winter losing its grip on the river. Reflecting on how I… would soon lose my only close friend there.
The thought of continuing alone, in a place that still felt alien due to the language barrier, especially under uncertain funding and growing instability, was not comforting. Things were changing. And I would have to change with them.
The Path Forward
Not long after Alexandre officially decided to leave the PhD program, I began seriously considering the same path. Not because I wanted to leave Canada or return to Europe, but because I wanted out of the academic system, and out of the depressive spiral that Chicoutimi had slowly become.
My goal had never truly been academia itself. From the moment I chose Canada over opportunities elsewhere, the objective had always been to build a future there. I needed a Canadian degree to qualify for a post-graduation work permit, but it did not need to be a PhD. What I really wanted was stability — a path into the mining industry, a career, and eventually a place that felt permanent. Alexandre was trying to return home. I was still searching for mine.
I sat down with Lucie for an honest conversation. She encouraged me not to rush my decision, but she also said something important. As valuable as research was, mental health mattered more.
I have to give her enormous credit here. Many supervisors might have pushed harder to keep students tied to projects out of pride, reputation, or convenience. She did the opposite. Lucie understood what the previous year had done to us. She had seen how hard we worked whenever opportunities existed. She had also lived through the same endless restrictions, bureaucracy, and funding collapse herself. Most of it was beyond her control.
A few days later, I made my decision. I wanted out of the PhD program as well.
I would downgrade my study program, finish sooner, and leave the academic life with a second Masters degree rather than risk losing everything.
Approval came quickly. No resistance from supervisors. No objections from Metal Earth.
And so, two foreign PhD students prepared to do something that had apparently never happened before at that university. We asked to have our status changed from PhD students to Master’s students.
