You can never, whatever you do Set foot in the same brook twice. All that you see is new, Another roll of the dice.
When I was a kid we spent every summer vacation in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Two dogs, four kids, Mum, Dad and all the gear we’d need for camping, packed into our Ford station wagon for three days on the road.
Until yesterday it had been more than five decades since I visited 99 South Bentick Street, the paternal seat of our branch of the Spence clan in North America. So I suppose it’s not surprising things have changed.
What did surprise me though was how much my memories of things that haven’t changed all that much in all that time were so distorted.
The scene of our childhood adventures, a brook that ran through a ravine where South Bentick dead ended, isn’t much more than a ditch. And all the ghosts have fled the cemetery farther up the ravine, the spooky setting of our horror stories.
Some of the change is real, however. The address of my grandparents’ house is no longer 99 South Bentick… to anyone but me that is, and probably my siblings. I won’t go into the complex details, but the ancestral mansion is now in the 400 block. And it’s no longer clad in green shingles with white trim; it’s siding is vinyl, like most other houses on the street.
Venturing farther afield I found myself in a town that mixes elements of things remembered with sights I never could have imagined. A gigantic cruise ship was docked in the harbour, where we sometimes ventured as children. And at the end of the boardwalk – which didn’t exist in our world – ‘the ‘world’s biggest fiddle’ awaits.
Diana and I took an immediate liking to our last stop in New Brunswick, Sackville. We have noticed at several points along the way – Sherbrooke QC for example, and more recently Wolfville, NS – that small university towns like Sackville make for a lively cultural mix.
The blend of academia and the day-to-day activities of the surrounding communities, plus the more youthful presence of students, adds to the town cores. Cafés, bookstores, and the choice of community events is influenced by a constant flow of newcomers to the scene, most of them young and looking for opportunities to gather and shop.
The tree lined streets of Sackville and it’s 19th and early 20th Century architecture made us feel very much at home. But the most amazing feature of the town for a tourist is its Wildfowl Sanctuary. Too bad we visited at the tail end of the season, when many birds had already passed through on their migrations. Even so, the kilometres of boardwalks and trails through this marshy habitat make for a marvellous, easygoing hike.
A fog horn, sounding from the north, warned that we would be socked in today, and when we awoke it was so thick we couldn’t see the houses across from Tim and Nadine’s cottage on Red Rock Road, where the Realta is parked. Grand Manan is a place I would love to live. About 30 km from tip to tip, the Island is a world unto itself and our hosts introduced us to some of its landmarks and attributes during our two day visit.
The first characteristic we noticed, Grand Manan shares with Mainland New Brunswick: friendliness. For example, when we were disembarking from the ferry one of the crew members tapped on the Realta’s window and returned my camera lens, which had popped off on the vehicle deck and got lost after we’d boarded. She’d gone up the line showing it to disembarking passengers until she found us.
We’ve encountered that kind of friendliness at just about every turn since entering New Brunswick. It’s a truly Maritime spirit.
But Tm and Nadine caution about another side to relations between born and bred Grand Mananers and those who come ‘from away’. They are slow to accept newcomers as true islanders, so their kindness is tempered somewhat. I can’t help believing though, that anyone who loves the place and gets involved in community activities, would be welcomed, even if as a foreigner.
Yesterday we hiked to Ashburton Head at the north end of the Island, a place named after one of the many shipwrecks that have occurred along Grand Manan’s coast. From there we marvelled at the prospect of the Bay of Fundy, looking down, way down on curious seals and gliding gulls.
Then we hiked a segment of Grand Manan’s west coast, which skirts the towering escarpments overlooking Grand Manan Channel and Dark Harbour, which we drove down to afterward. An isolated fishing enclave, its residents make do without power or running water, their cottages built on stilts, dories pulled up on the shore.
We ended up lounging on the beach at Long Pond Cove, absorbing the afternoon sunshine and the slow creep of a fog bank up the beach.
This morning we took a run down to Southwest Head, where once again we peered down at ocean, this time from towering basalt cliffs.
Now we’re aboard the Grand Manan Five, making for Blacks Harbour and St. John. Waiting for the boat, and embarking, we talked about the pros and cons of moving to Grand Manan Island. I’m tempted, inspired by the diversity and wonder so clearly defined by an island 30 x 7 kilometres in extent. Oddly, it exerts a sort of homing instinct on me, even though I’d never seen the Grand Manan before this visit!
Way back in June we had decided to postpone our Realta Road trip, feeling the COVID era was not quite over, and that we wanted to focus on a book we are publishing, Flibber T. Gibbet, A Chemainus Adventure on the Hermit’s Trail.
Then we got an email inviting us to the wedding of my brother Stewart and (now) sister-in-law Miao. The scale tipped, the wire was tripped, we loaded up and pointed the Realta east.
You have to know Stewart and Miao to know what greeted us in Knowlton QC August 19, the day before the BIG day. Chaos, improv, laughter, good food, great companionship, and a whole lot of wonderful experiences that proved our decision to have been of sound mind, even if it didn’t make sense.
Then came the wedding. It was a great day that blended humour with ceremony and too many memorable moments to describe here. Believe me, the video only tells a minuscule part of the story!
We’re trying to catch up to ourselves with posts from many of the places we have visited over the last couple of weeks, but with limited access to the internet, we’re falling behind. Right now we’re in Bangor Maine, cutting through the States to get to Grande Manan Island in New Brunswick, where we are looking forward to a visit with our friends – Islanders on two of Canada’s three coasts – Nadine and Tim.
It seem a long time ago we were paddling on Eagle Lake in Ontario with our niece Sarah and nephew Rowan. The memory is still with us, though. We had a wonderful time at their cottage and out on the water.
We’re parked in Jessie and Eric’s drive on L’ile Parrot near Montreal. We arrived here yesterday, and plan to leave this afternoon, heading for Knowlton and the wedding celebration of Stewart and Miao. Part of our trip will take us through the State of Maine in the US. We hadn’t planned on crossing the boarder, but would have to take a northward detour adding hundreds of kilometres to our trip otherwise.
We will be heading out from Snow Road this morning, saying goodbye to Jo and Peter and setting off for Montreal, where we will spend a day with Jessie and Eric. It’s been a pleasant couple of days. Jo has spoiled us with her fine cooking, we’ve spent a lot of time lounging on their deck or sitting down on Pete’s Beach by the river, or hiking.
Yesterday we walked the Palmerston Canonto Conservation Area Recreational Hiking Trail. Evidence of last May’s Derecho was everywhere to be seen, trees uprooted and blown over at every turn. The cataclysmic weather event is described in Wikipedia as:
…a high-impact derecho[5] event that affected the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor, Canada’s most densely populated region, on May 21, 2022. Described by meteorologists as an historic derecho and one of the most impactful thunderstorms in Canadian history,[6][7] winds up to 190 km/h (120 mph) as well as several tornadoes caused widespread and extensive damage along a path that extended for 1,000 kilometres (620 mi).
Eleven people were killed and an estimated $875 million was caused by the storm, rated as the sixth costliest disaster in Canadian history in terms of insurance claims. These kinds of events are becoming more and more frequent. The prairie provinces are bracing for a heat wave; BC is still coping with extremely hight temperatures; a forest fire is raging in Newfoundland.
Viewing Canonto and Palmerston lakes and the surrounding forest from the rocky, humped lookouts along the trails we were reminded yet again of the beauty of Ontario’s wilderness and rural areas. The landscape here is rolling and softened by its canopy deciduous trees, compared to the steep, spiny and somewhat darker profiles of our West Coast. I can see why people are attached to this region. But coastal Vancouver Island is my homeland and I don’t see myself living anywhere else.
We were docked in an unofficial pullover near Keys Provincial Park, east of Thunder Bay. All was calm, except for the muffled sound of traffic passing by on Highway 17, until one utility truck, then another and another, passed by the Realta, heading for a bigger cleared area behind us, where they parked in a row. At first we thought they might be workers preparing to do some maintenance on the nearby bridge, then – because of the methodical way they went about their business – that they might be a rescue crew, looking for some poor soul who had fallen into the adjacent ravine. We were confirmed in this guess by the sudden whump, whump, whump of a helicopter that landed in the clearing, one that had a basket on the side used for carrying stretchers.
Ever the reporter, I grabbed my camera, jumped out of the Realta, and started taking pictures.
Turns out the operation was not search and rescue, but a maintenance crew doing work on the nearby transmission lines. Fascinated, I recorded as best I could, as the chopper ferried workers and equipment up to the tower, edged up to the metal arms so the men could climb off, then lowered the materials and equipment they needed to effect repairs. It was an amazing operation, carried out with military teamwork and precision, and an exciting event on our Realta Road.
What a beautiful city! That was the reaction of both Diana and I to Thunder Bay, almost from the moment we rolled into town.
We came in via route 102, passing by a cluster of heritage buildings and churches, which give the place an immediate sense of history and solidity. Then we rolled into the ‘Kingsway zone’ as we call it, that long nondescript stretch of car dealerships, gas stations, motels that you’ll find in almost every town. But even that zone was tidy and – in sharp contrast to our experience in other places – had people on its sidewalks.
We headed back along the waterfront, past gigantic grain terminals, and ended up in a park that took up much of the city’s foreshore. The park is filled with activities, sculptures, and viewpoints – an inspiring stroll that demonstrates what planning can do to draw citizens to a place for recreation and leisure. Skateboarding, exercising, dog walking, splashing around in a water fountain, the park bustled happily
It’s almost like being on the ocean, Lake Superior is so big. And everywhere you go there’s the sounds of gulls squabbling and crying. One feature that amazed us was the huge breakwater that encloses the Thunder Bay waterfront. Can’t imagine the amount of work it took to build it!
After a boondock farther down the rail line but still on the foreshore, we went for a walkabout in the town, breakfasting at a place called Roosters. Great food, friendly service and relaxing ambiance.
Thunder Bay is a definite stop if you’re heading west to Lake of the Woods, or east into Great Lakes territory.
It was like stepping into a time tunnel and heading back more than 50 years, walking down that long corridor; passing students chatting, laughing, hurrying heads-down between classes; then up the stairs and into Room 215, where he was expected to share his observations as an author and sometime poet.
He stepped over the threshold with a sense of foreboding. An eerie premonition that, despite the sameness of it all, everything had changed in the half century since he’d celebrated his graduation from St. Laurent High School back in 1969… and awakened the next morning to a splitting hangover.
My hair has greyed, skin wrinkled, reflexes slowed and primal urges waned, he thought. My kids have grown up, and I’ve become a grandfather… I’m history.
While the students settled in and Ms. Drury introduced him, he realized there’s nothing like making a presentation to a Grade 12 English class to remind you just how ancient you have become. How irrelevant!
Unlike indigenous peoples, North Americans of European extraction – the majority in Room 215 – don’t really have a tradition of cherishing the wisdom of their ‘elders’. To them senior citizens are alien creatures, apparitions from the world of rotary phones, black and white TV, Underwood typewriters, cursive script and cheap gasoline.
Generation Pre, he figured. As in ‘pre anything digital or online’.
A Google reference had informed him that he’d be addressing students of Generation Z, ‘our first true generation of digital natives,’ according to the write up. ‘Born into a technological world, information has been placed at their fingertips and social media use has become the norm.’ The article was titled ‘Gen Z and Gen Alpha in the Classroom: The Importance of Digital Learning’. It ran under a photo of a girl wearing a pair of virtual reality goggles, her hands reaching out to touch something he couldn’t see or even imagine.
He considered it an iconic portrayal, troubling with its certainty that two beings can exist in the same space, at the same time, and yet be on entirely different planets. My version of Room 215 might just as well be off Platform 2153/4, he thought. An utterly alternate reality.
Buck up! he rallied. Don’t be pathetic.
And so began his laboriously prepared presentation. Later, he would describe the episode to Maria as, Sort of like being a fly, droning around in a room, looking for a place to land. “I’m still laughing at myself.”
When she consoled him, he shook his head. “They were being honest, hon, not rude. And I learned more in that hour or so than I care to admit.”
“Like what?”
“That even when kids are smiling and nodding at my rambling, for them it’s like talking to someone who’s dialled the wrong number, long distance, from another world.”
“I’m with them on that one,” she joked, and they had a good laugh.
Thankfully the session had ended on a high note, he remembered. They had a brief conversation about how authors deal with rejection, which he morphed into an oblique commentary on his then-and-there. “I referred back to comments I’d made earlier about the writers’ vocation of ‘experiencing and expressing life’, and his belief in the personal importance of the literary cycle… “How that gives you the strength to push through and carry on,” he explained.
“Then, when Ms. Drury said thanks as I was packing up my books and papers, the students gave me a fulsome applause!”
“You’re sure it wasn’t just because you were leaving?”
He ignored the quip.
“I suspect it was in recognition of a determined effort by someone hopelessly out of his depth. Appreciation for his refusal to give up – like cheering on a water buffalo who’s blundered in a pit of quicksand.
“I do believe they were telling me to keep trying.”
Not that they’d want me to book another performance before the end of their last year in high school, he thought. But perhaps to inflict myself on the Generation Alphas, who will soon be occupying their seats in Room 215… or is it 2153/4?
“I have to say, daunting as it remains, the thought of having another go appeals to me,” he admitted to Maria. “And I sort of hope I’m invited!”
They hugged, then got on with the business of preparing dinner.
