Posted on September 13, 2018 under Thursday Tidbits with one comment

6784 kilometres later

 

Some observations at the conclusion of our cross Canada trip:

Best coffee: Oso Negro in Nelson, B.C.

Worst restaurant meal: at a McDonald’s in Burlington, Ontario late at night

Most road construction: the number 20 from Montreal to Riviere du Loup. Construction every 20 kilometres for 423.4 kilometres. This is NOT an exaggeration.

Best restaurant meal: Cantina del Centro in Nelson, B.C. Do you see a pattern emerging?

Worst stretch of highway: for a combination of poor conditions and bleakness: Kenora to Ignace, Ontario. No contest.

Best breakfast: JC’s Hot Bagels in Burlington, Ontario.

Most expensive gas: $1.56 a litre in Northern Ontario.

Best sunset: Swift Current, Saskatchewan. You can’t beat  a prairie sunset.

Best sunrise: Nelson, B.C.

Longest day traveled: Swift Current, Saskatchewan to Ignace, Ontario: 1300 kilometres.

Best hotel: Auberge de la Pointe in Riviere du Loup.

Worst hotel: Swift Current, Saskatchewan. A swift current must have passed through the room before our arrival. The carpet was wet in spots and filthy all over. After 1300 kilometres, you’ll sleep anywhere.

Most scenic part of the drive: anywhere in B.C. and from Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie.

Best road tunes: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Best surprise: a free round of golf with our room in Nelson. Because we had to stay two nights with car problems, we got two rounds of free golf.

Best hospitality: Friends along the way who fed us and put us up (put up with us!).

Best place to have car problems: Nelson, B.C.

Highlight of the trip: an unscheduled meal with my daughter and granddaughter in Montreal.

Notwithstanding (!) some gruelling hours of driving, traveling across our great country is always an adventure.

Thursday Tidbits is brought to you today by the Chamber of Commerce of Nelson, B.C.!

Have a great week.

Posted on September 10, 2018 under Monday Morning Musings with one comment

Sunset in Nelson, B.C.

 

Oh Canada, our home and native land.

We crossed the mountains and the prairies and traveled dark roads through Northern Ontario late at night. We saw wild fires in the hills and pristine rivers. We witnessed the majesty of towering Douglas firs and the vastness of wheat fields. We zipped along country roads where we felt we were the only people on the planet only to be brought back to earth by heavy traffic when he hit the 400 near Parry Sound.

True patriot love, in all of us command.

If you want to try and understand why Canada is so hard to govern, hop in a car someday and drive from coast to coast to coast. You will quickly realize the enormity of this landmass and the complexity of its makeup. You will come to know why so many of us cherish it and feel that it is the best country in which to live. So much of the population live in a handful of big cities and sometimes you can travel a hundred kilometres without seeing a single human being, such is the vastness.

With glowing hearts, we see thee rise, the true north strong and free.

Despite all the attention that cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal receive, it is often the smaller towns and cities that produce some of Canada’s most recognizable names. We drove past Shaunovan, Saskatchewan, a village of 1750 souls that produced quite possibly the greatest female hockey player of all time, Hayley Wickenheiser. It’s hard to escape the image of Bobby Orr in Parry Sound. I’m no expert on hockey but I always felt that Orr was the greatest player to lace them up. Sault Ste. Marie is home to Dr.Roberta Bondar, Canada’s first female astronaut and the first neurologist in space during the flight of Discovery in 1992.

From far and wide, oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

By and large, Canadians are pretty decent folk. You end up inadvertently striking up conversations with complete strangers on a long road trip in restaurants, gas stations and rest areas. Canadians don’t have a monopoly on kindness and decency but as a collective we don’t seem to be as driven and competitive as some countries. We enjoyed spending a few nights with friends and friends of friends. The hospitality was extraordinary. I have come to the conclusion that Canadians laugh, joke and poke fun at each other more frequently than most other nations. We take things seriously but not ourselves.

God keep our land, glorious and free, Oh Canada we stand on guard for thee.

We can’t be complacent. We mustn’t take our good fortune for granted. Our country is clean and safe. We enjoy an abundance of riches: our forests, minerals, and plenty of water. We live in a democratic country where governments change hands peacefully and orderly. In a seemingly hostile world, we must maintain our civility and decorum.

We’re in the home stretch. Two more days and we’ll be back in Nova Scotia, the home of Keith’s beer and Wheel pizza. By the way, on a short whistle stop in Lethbridge, Alberta, I met up with two former colleagues from the teaching fraternity. We taught together in Fairview, Alberta in the late seventies and I hadn’t seen them in 39 years. We did our best to cram in as much information as 40 minutes would allow. As we got up to leave, one of them mentioned The Wheel. They had been in Antigonish years ago and had a few memorable slices!

Put this on your bucket list. Drive across Canada before you get too old. May I suggest that you don’t try a non- stop 54 hour drive from Edmonton to Antigonish with four children, as one of my faithful readers has done on more than one occasion, unless this is your idea of penance for some transgression?

Canada. What a country.

Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Have a great week.

P.S. Why don’t you regale us with your favourite Canadian travel story? Best story gets the first copy of my fourth book about my travels in India which will be published in November.

 

Posted on September 6, 2018 under Thursday Tidbits with no comments yet

The trip got off to a perfect start

 

Thems are the brakes.

Traveling is always an adventure. At least it seems that way to me. Rarely does everything go exactly as planned. When you’re on a road trip with a young family, invariably there’s someone who gets car sick or a diaper needs to be changed on the 401. I must admit that I don’t miss those days. I remember the time I was traveling to Vermont with one of my daughters and we left a stuffed animal in a Burger King restaurant on the I-95. The discovery of the loss was noticed about a half an hour further south along the way. There was no option. I found the next off ramp, called the restaurant, asked them to put the animal aside, got back on the north bound lane and retrieved the stuffy.

Day 1 of the trip across Canada with my son and the morning dawned gray and rainy in Hope, B.C. It didn’t take long for the skies to clear as we zipped across southern B.C. When the weather improved, we noticed a lot of smoke in the mountains, the residue of the wild fires.

If you love fresh fruit, you would love Keremeos. There are dozens of fruit and vegetable stands in this agricultural area of the province along with plenty of wineries. We stopped to pick up some succulent peaches and cherries (stop drooling). The smoke in the mountains was very thick and when we looked up, we saw helicopter carrying water to a nearby fire. Make that a quartet of helicopters. They were using a nearby river to gather up water. A lady at the fruit stand said that this fire had been burning since June.

We stopped for lunch in Osoyoos, a picturesque town nestled in the mountains on Lake Osoyoos. We sat on the balcony of a lovely café overlooking a park and the lake. Our waitress informed us that the wildfires had killed their tourist traffic this summer. She said that the smoke was so thick by times that you couldn’t see the cars in the parking lot directly below the balcony.

We pulled into Nelson around 5:00 p.m. About a half an hour prior to this, Peter said something to the effect that the brakes didn’t feel quite right. After checking in to our motel, we headed straight for the golf course so that Peter could get in a quick nine holes before dark. A complimentary round of golf came with our room. Although dusk was settling in, we noticed a trail of brake fluid under the car as we were about to exit the golf club parking lot.

Back at the hotel, a quick call to a backyard mechanic back home came with explicit instructions. DO NOT DRIVE THE CAR ONE MORE FOOT.

We walked downtown for supper.  We ate at a taco restaurant.  At the table next to us were five firefighters with gritty, darkened faces. Their camaraderie was obvious as they laughed and joked easily while slaking several large jugs of water. No alcohol when you’re fighting fires.

 

Did I mention that my sister in law Catherine is brilliant? She is a very capable lawyer and an amazing cook. Her taste in men leaves something to be desired! Only joking, Catherine! When I was in Victoria for a few days before hitting the road back east, she asked me if I was a CAA member. I was for years but in retirement, cancelled my plan. She thought it might be wise to purchase a new membership with a long trip ahead. The plan had a stipulation that you couldn’t take advantage of the free towing until 48 hours after the plan was in effect. It only took 72 hours to recoup the membership fee as the car was towed to a nearby garage.

You can imagine what most businesses are like after a long weekend. We started calling on Tuesday morning as soon as the brake shops opened. The first one said that they could schedule an appointment in 5-7 days. Knowing we had to be home before Christmas, we respectfully declined. It took a few calls but we finally got an appointment.

If it is your bad fortune to have car problems, there are good places and not so good places for this to happen. Try to time your next mechanical misfortune in Nelson, B.C.  While waiting for your repairs, you can visit one of 59 restaurants, go for a hike or a round of golf or possibly hitch a ride on a pleasure craft on Kootenay Lake. When your biggest concern (besides the car repair bill )is getting too much sun or your fresh peaches going bad, then things aren’t so bad.

Peter posted a picture holding a glass of craft beer while gazing at the lake and nibbling on calamari. He posted it on Facebook and within minutes, received an invitation for a free beer from a friend from back east who now lives in Nelson and is part owner of a microbrewery. The beer that he was holding in the picture came from that microbrewery!

We pulled out of Nelson yesterday morning. We have some hard miles to make up but that goes with the territory.

There are good breaks and there are bad breaks. When you have bad brakes, turn them into good breaks. Just make sure it happens in Nelson.

Have a great weekend.