Have you ever gone through a period in your life when everything was going wrong and it seemed like nothing would ever go right again? Have you ever noticed that over time things usually change ... and most often for the better?

Joy Hunter has had that experience more than once but the circumstances that forced her and her husband to mover from Ontario to Vancouver Island make an extraordinary teaching story.

Often in life it seems as if a higher power has to slap us upside the head to get us to move on in a better direction.

When Joy and her husband married nearly 25 years ago, he had, over the previous 20 years, built a thriving business north of Toronto on 5 acres of land he rented from a farmer with the promise that he could buy it as soon as the farm could be subdivided, a promise that was reaffirmed on several occasions.

Given this assurance he had built a go cart track and developed a racing and rental business as well as a lawn and garden business. To support these businesses he also built a two-story structure. The first floor housed an office as well as a workshop and show room for new carts and equipment. The second story featured a three-bedroom apartment. He also built a second structure that housed a snack bar and a garage for the rental and racing carts.

As an additional sideline source of income, they both also drove school buses

Then 7 years after they were married, they received a lawyer's letter telling them that the entire farm had been sold and that both the buildings and the track now belonged to the landowner. They were also told that they owed $22,000 in back taxes - Thirty years of work and tens of thousands of dollars down the drain.

After five lawyers simply asked them how fast they could pack their bags, the sixth agreed to work with them and eventually won a precedent setting judgment that erased the $22,000 supposed debt and declared that they at least owned the buildings on the land they had rented.

Still they had to move and by 1989 the price of property in that area had skyrocketed to they point they simply couldn't afford to buy.

Two years earlier, as their troubles had just begun, they visited this part of Vancouver Island for the second or third time and before they left bought a duplex, which they rented out.

After their two year struggle was over, they bought a used school bus, removed all the seats and the back doors and packed in their furniture, a large air compressor and a small car. Joy's horse followed in its trailer pulled by their pick up truck, which sported a "BC or bust" sign.

That's how they arrived at their 6.5 acre Jinglepot farm in 1989, at the ages of 47 and 57, with no jobs and no idea how they were going to pay their mortgage.

Ten days later Joy was offered a job driving a school bus and soon after that her husband got a job repairing lawn and garden equipment.

Then a couple of years after that, one of their tenants asked if he could buy their duplex and when it sold, even thought they gave him a good price, they had enough profit to pay off the mortgage on their farm.

Joy is going to retire this year and her plans for the future sound like they will lead her to an even more exiting and rewarding life than the one she has had since moving here 14 years ago.

If you are going through a really rough time right now, think of Joy and know that things really will get better for you too.