Told she had cancer, the 13-year-old said: ‘Do you know how busy I am? I don't have the time’

Nova Johnstone was sitting in the hospital waiting area when she saw her mother step outside the doctor's office looking visibly upset. The young dancer from Nova Scotia immediately knew it was bad news. A few minutes later Johnstone discovered she was suffering from a rare form of cancer called adrenal carcinoma.

Instead of breaking down into tears, the 13-year-old explained to the doctor that she just did not have the time to be sick. ‘Do you know how busy I am?’ the precocious teen asked the doctor. ‘I don’t have the time. I’ll have to be fine by the time February rolls around because I have performances next year’.

Johnstone's career as a dancer began when she auditioned for the National Ballet School of Canada summer programme. Aged 11, she left her home in the town of Westville, Nova Scotia, to embark on a dance career in Toronto. She was subsequently selected as one of the 40 students from around the world to study full time at the school. Two years later she sustained a knee injury while dancing, returned home to recover and after undergoing some tests discovered she had cancer.

“I had chemo and surgery and we practically lived in the hospital. My mom stayed with me and I was there for five months straight, not going home.”

After two rounds of chemotherapy, the doctors asked Johnstone if she felt ready for a final round before the surgery. “I was 75 pounds, I could no longer walk, I could no longer eat, I could no longer sleep, and I just told them I’ll die of the chemo so please do the surgery instead, and they listened.”

Celebrated

Shortly before the 14th birthday, Johnstone was told her cancer was completely gone. She celebrated by dancing in a ballet performance in a 600+ seat auditorium in Halifax. Now that the cancer was gone, she was set on making her dream of becoming a ballerina a reality.

Johnstone spent every weekend through her teen years dancing eight hours a day in a ballet school in Halifax. After secondary school she moved to Montreal to dance with a professional dance company for a short period, but ended up returning to Halifax to train with her former teacher.

In 2003, she auditioned to join the ballet company in the German State Opera Theatre in Berlin. She was offered an apprenticeship but refused in favour of spending another year training in Canada before reapplying to join the company. It was then doctors discovered she had a spinal tumour.

“It wasn’t cancerous but that’s what stopped my dance career. I had spinal surgery and they replaced part of my spine with my hip bone. In ballet, it’s about alignment and mobility and I never really fully recovered from that.”

Johnstone returned to college, where she trained as a counsellor specialising in early childhood development. However, she was unable to ignore her passion for dance and returned to Nova Scotia to open her own school.

In May 2015, she decided to visit a friend in Dublin for a week. The dancer, who had never been to Ireland before, was immediately drawn to a place that offered the sea, the mountains and the bustle of a capital city, and on her return applied for an EU passport (her mother is British).

She booked to fly back to Dublin in October and arranged to stay with an Irish friend for the first few months. However, on the day of her departure she received a phone call from the friend telling her the spare room was no longer available.

Her friend suggested she stay with a woman in Blackrock who charged her €250 a week to sleep on a fold-out bed in her dining room.

Ripped off

“He was like ‘it’s Blackrock, that’s the average price of rent’. So I’m thinking, well I don’t know anyone here, I can’t stay in a hotel. What choice did I have?”

Johnstone quickly discovered she was being ripped off and after a month moved out. She ended up moving in with her new boyfriend as a temporary arrangement while she searched for a more affordable option.

“We’d only been dating three weeks and he was like ‘it’s not ideal but just come stay with me until you get yourself sorted’. I stayed with him nine months.”

Life in Dublin wasn’t quite as easy as Johnstone had envisioned and when a friend from Canada came to visit she fell to pieces. “She just reminded me of home and I completely broke down when I saw her. But a friend told me to give it six months. She said ‘I promise you will see some light’. And then little tiny things started happening.”

Having researched Irish ballet schools before leaving Canada, Johnstone decided to set up her own classes. She now runs the Destination Dance school in Dalkey, while also working full time with a tech start-up called Intercom. In September she finally moved into her own apartment in Dún Laoghaire.

In the long term, she hopes to develop her school into an institution like the ballet schools in Toronto or New York, where young dancers can train, study at school and live on campus. “There isn’t a place like that in Ireland. With the passion and the talent that I see here, there’s no reason why dancers should have to leave Ireland.

“I love my students and I take my job as mentoring them and guiding them into their career very seriously. I’m both business attached to my school but I’m emotionally attached to it as well.”

Johnstone recently celebrated her one-year anniversary with her Irish boyfriend, who she says was hugely supportive through the turbulent initial months in Dublin. The time she spent in hospital as a teenager also equipped her with the resolve and willpower to overcome the obstacles of moving abroad.

“That period definitely gave me the ability to persevere. No matter how bad my day is, I’m not in a hospital hooked up to an IV with bad news. Dublin has become my home and despite some of the ongoing struggles I have here, I also have a lot that fills me with joy.”

We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past five years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com. @newtotheparish