Oh, The Joy of Digging Postholes

At Sackville NB I reaped a reward for the archival efforts I display on Flickr. We enjoyed a lively alfresco lunch with third cousin Lori MacKinnon, who found me a few months ago via Google whilst looking for family history nuggets. It is best to suppress expectations in such circumstances – a first-time meeting with someone you know only through email – but I took to my new-found cousin like a Tea-Party zealot to Rick Santorum.

We reached a land where roadside stands offered baskets of picture-perfect strawberries; bouquets of peonies at no cost; chickens, either ready for the pot or alive and feathered. For a moment I considered taking a live one to Garth and Carole, then thought better of it. The land in question: Nova Scotia’s blithe Northumberland Shore.

Garth left Tom Sawyer in the dust. Tom managed to inveigle his neighbourhood pals into paying to whitewash Aunt Sally’s fence. Garth accomplished a greater feat: welcoming me with shovel in hand and somehow persuading me to dig a posthole. There is no chore – not even cleaning toilets or shoveling out the poophouse at Big Bras d’Or – I hate more than digging postholes. I know this from long, hard experience. Yet there I was, at the side of the road digging a two and a half foot hole to accommodate the new rural mailbox. The man is a magician.

The posthole dug and mailbox erected, the get-together reverted to a typically rich blend of food, wine and conviviality. It was hard to tear ourselves away from the Amherst Shore Shangri-la.

We drove on to Truro in rain so torrential Leo’s wipers were hard-pressed to keep up. We felt right at home. Doris looked splendid – fit and happy – when we landed at Edinburgh Hall. We’ll see more of the old girl today. Currently we’re shacked up at one of my favourite sanctuaries, Don and Nancy’s palace overlooking Cobequid Bay at the mouth of the Shubenacadie River.

Tomorrow we’ll ask Leo to do faithful duty one more time: carry us across the Canso Causeway to Cape Breton. We’ll open the cabin, ready it for the Friday arrival of great-nieces Hannah and Sara and their mom and dad. The nieces are my kind of kids: they like to look for salamanders under half- rotted logs, aren’t afraid of snakes and think kite-flying is a blast. I just hope the rain gives it a rest.

A Warm, Wet Maritime Welcome

A deluge of precipitation welcomed us to the Maritimes, providing cooling relief from the hideous sunshine and warmth that afflicted us in Ontario and Quebec. I get to practice the trick of photographing memorials in heavy rain without permitting the cameras to drown in the downpour.

Before departing Edmunston we checked out the town’s display of chainsaw public art and the Saturday craft market. Typical of open-air Maritime markets, we liked both the quality of the wares on offer and the prices; we walked away with a bagful of prizes to dispense to kith and kin.

A royal welcome awaited us at Nackawic. Cousin Carole and Herb provided their usual generous measure of hospitality and good conversation. And an after-dinner floor show too: daughter Leanne came by with 11-year-old Corey. Corey is a carrot-topped boy’s-boy who perfectly fits the character you’d imagine if Lucy Maud Montgomery’s famed book was not about Ann, but Andy of Green Gables. Leanne showed us her own just-published kids’ book, Snoops and the Red-tailed Shark. Corey entertained us with stories of life on the farm, accounts featuring a one-eyed dog, a one-eared cat and a goat well loved despite its occasional practice of peeing on the living-room couch.

The rain continued as we rumbled though Harvey NB, birthplace of Don Messer. If you remember the name you are of a certain age. A half century ago, in a simpler, perhaps happier time Don Messer’s Jubilee was a down-home, beloved staple of Canadian television. Nowadays Little Mosque on the Prairie seems more to Canadian tastes. I wondered what that says about the cultural evolution the nation has undergone.

St Andrews NB is a Loyalist town, established in 1783 by refugees from New England confident of feeling more at home as continuing members of the Empire than as citizens of the new American republic. In the persistent rain we gawked at 200-year-old buildings, checked the names in the Loyalist burial ground and took shelter in yet another national historic site, the St Andrews Blockhouse.

Nova Scotia beckons. Tomorrow we expect to reach my native province at some point of the mid-afternoon. We anticipate another red-carpet welcome at Amherst Shore, from pals Garth and Carole. Garth says I’m not a perfect friend – I’d have to be a golfer to reach that echelon – but otherwise good enough. We expect an outbreak of the usual merriment.

Toronto the Good and Hot

Toronto the Good lived up to its moniker. Good in so many ways. With the humidex in the 40 range the city was good at impersonating Calcutta at the start of monsoon season. Jammed into a subway car at rush hour it was good at reminding me how grateful I am for Big Bras d’Or. But it was good in good ways too. It was Michael who introduced me to unclehood a long time ago. He delivered many a happy hour in his tender years and he continues to do so today. The lad exemplified the good samaritan on a sweltering day, ferrying us all over downtown Toronto in the air-conditioned Subaru so I could see and photograph war memorials and the works of Emanuel Hahn. Mike joined us for a ballgame at Christie Pits and told me how to make the most of a visit to Toronto Islands.

On the ferry to the Islands I exchanged pleasantries with Cito Gaston, long-time manager of the Toronto Blue Jays. Cito looked as trim and fit as ever. At Mike’s morning coffee hangout I recognized musician-writer Dave Bidini and told him how much I’d liked his Tropic of Baseball.

We were history tramps. Earlier in this trip we immersed ourselves in the Northwest Resistance of 1885; in Ontario we were keen to delve into the War of 1812 and the 1838 Upper Canada Rebellion. At Prescott ON we got to do both at Fort Wellington and the Windmill battlefield. At Saint-Lin QC we visited the Wilfrid Laurier National Historic Site and learned about Laurier’s youth at Saint-Lin.

We drove north of the St Lawrence to see war memorials, at Lachute and the remarkable one at Trois Rivieres. We’d planned to stay at the national capital but it was Jean Baptiste weekend and Quebec City was a zoo so we drove all the way to Acadia, arriving late at Edmunston.

There is more history on the agenda but now that we’re in the Maritimes there are also kin and kith to see. There’ll be no time to squander on daytime television or even a trip to the local bowladrome.

Kirtland’s Warbler, Oscar Judd, a Surfeit of Serendipity

We drove hard for two days to get to the jack pine forests of northern Michigan, the only place in the world to see Kirtland’s warbler.

Sixty years ago the world’s population of this rare bird had dwindled to just a couple of hundred pairs. Throughout the eons, fire was the Kirtland’s friend: fire regenerated the jack pine forests, delivering the young trees the bird demands in breeding season. When humans began to control fire young jack pine forest dwindled – and so did the Kirtland’s warbler.

There are bad-news ecological stories wherever we look; it is a delight when a good-news one turns up. Nowadays, thanks to intensive human management young jack pine forests are back and Kirtland’s populations in northern Michigan have increased almost tenfold. We arranged to go out to prime habitat with a Huron National Forest ranger. Almost immediately we heard the distinctive song. Then saw one, and a second and third singing male. Eureka.

The quest for war memorials produces serendipity: bonus ancillaries, one after another. We went to Petrolia ON to look at an Emanuel Hahn war memorial. The memorial was in a sorry state but the town was a charmer; we found a friendly B & B, explored the historic downtown and saw an over-the-top production of Godspell at the town’s beautifully refurbished Victoria Hall.

At Alvinston we arranged to cross paths with John Sargeant, fellow Great War obsessive and Arthur Currie devotee. While John and I went on a war memorial quest with Brian Angyal, Jan and Brian’s spouse Micki prowled quilt stores for fabrics and fat quarters; they made immediate and fast friends of each other.

At St Marys ON we were drawn to another war memorial. St Marys is home to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. We went there on Fathers’ Day to look for relics of Ferguson Jenkins, Canada’s finest contribution to major league baseball. There can be no disputing that Fergie is the greatest Canadian right-hander ever. According to the CBHoF, the best left-hander is Oscar Judd, who was an all-star teammate of Ted Williams with the Boston Red Sox in the early 1940s. Oscar just happens to be Jan’s first cousin, twice-removed. Impressed with that disclosure, the curator showed us Oscar’s hall-of-fame plaque, a nice 1943 picture of him with Red Sox teammates and his baseball spikes.

But there was much more than that: a nice old gent reminding me of Clint Eastwood overheard the Oscar Judd conversation. Well it happens he once lived in the same Guelph neighbourhood with Oscar and knew him well. He shared Oscar stories. About the thermal underwear he wore even in summer to keep his pitching arm warm. About the time Oscar struck out Joe DiMaggio during Joltin' Joe's 56-game hitting streak and made the great man mad as hell.

We moved on to Stratford, home to the Stratford Festival and the Ontario Pork Congress. No Shakespeare was on offer but the town has historic charms of its own, and an Indian restaurant whose offerings exceeded any we’ve experienced in years.

Now we are on the doorstep of the Big Smoke. Toronto beckons. Nephew Michael and family are there and maybe a dozen pieces of public art by the nonpareil Emanuel Hahn. We plan to make the most of a couple of Toronto days. Maybe even three.

Stone Soldiers, Metis Ghosts, the Lure of a Kirtland’s Warbler

War memorials and Canadian history have been principal obsessions of our trip to date. We have gone into about thirty hamlets looking for memorials featuring a soldier statue. We’ve chased Northwest Resistance ghosts of 1885: Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont and their Metis fraternity, at Duck Lake, Batoche and Winnipeg. To ensure that Jan’s affections aren’t forever alienated we stop at quilt stores too, though not in fair and equivalent ratio.

A corollary benefit of the war memorial chase is that it leads us to out-of-the-way towns and villages we’d never have seen, into the arms of strangers we’d never have met. More than once on the trip, while photographing a war memorial, I have been cautiously approached by a townsperson wondering what I’m up to. Perhaps casing their beloved cenotaph for night-time demolition by a gang of crazed pacifist-terrorists. Once they realize that my intentions are benign, even loving, doors are typically flung open and I’m often rewarded with snippets of history and bits of context I’d never have otherwise had.

Some folks claim to find the prairies boring. Astonishing. How could they possibly be boring? There are no trees to obstruct your view. Every pond and slough has an abundance of breeding ducks and waterfowl to delight the passing birder. It is a rare village that avails nothing to commend it. Small towns turn up all kinds of unexpected local attractions and curiosities: a creation science museum in someone’s front parlour (Big Valley AB), a fine array of outdoor historical murals (Duck Lake SK), a handsomely restored 1910 steam engine tractor (Austin MB).

Hamlets compete for attention by arranging to have the world’s-biggest of something: the world’s biggest T Rex at Drumheller AB, stalk of wheat (Rosthern SK), prairie crocus (Arden MB). Or they brag about the number of hockey players produced in the local shinny nursery that have gone on to fame and glory in the NHL. Tiny Foxwarren MB took the cake with four.

Some days we have to put with a longer-haul drive. To shorten the long hours we gawk at roadside wonders, or sort out the problems-of-the-world, or simply shove a CD in the disk drive. Or maybe (in my case) think fondly about women’s body parts. Sadly, even that pastime has a limited shelf life. But Jan has a solution for driving ennui: before departing Victoria she loaded up her iPhone with podcasts of the CBC Radio program Ideas. That was sheer genius. In Victoria we’re normally too distracted by other stuff to listen to night-time radio. In Big Bras d’Or we do listen to Ideas but invariably fall asleep about a third of the way into the program, no matter how entrancing it might be. But in the truck, barreling down the road at 100 kph we are a captive audience, and don’t dare to sleep. The podcasts have turned out to be vastly more entertaining and illuminating than listening – for the umpteenth time – to our favourite Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn or Fred Eaglesmith CDs.

We spent three happy days with Steve and Elizabeth in Winnipeg. Jan joined Liz for a ukulele ‘Strum n’ Suds’ while Steve took me off on a – what else? – war memorial quest. We went to Gimli to see relics of ‘New Iceland’ and watched Steve and his Britannia Rovers teammates win a Manitoba Major Soccer League match.

This morning, loath to drive northern Ontario yet again, we crossed the 49th and had a three-state day: North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin. Crossed the Mississippi twice, close enough to its source that it looked little bigger than a fair-sized creek, offering no hint of the epic river it will eventually become. The mission here in America is not war memorials but that other obsession: birds. Or more specifically, one bird. Kirtland’s warbler is one of the rarest birds in North America. In breeding season it goes about its business in only one place in the world: scattered patches of jack pine habitat in northern Michigan. We aim to see our first Kirtland’s warbler Friday morning. We’ll report on how that goes.

Mountain Meandering, High Plains Drifting

Inasmuch as cruise ships had returned to Victoria’s Pier 1 with their offloads of tourists in the thousands, and rickshaws and horse-drawn carts had once again commandeered the neighbourhood, we decided it was past time to hit the road. We fled Vancouver Island the last day of May, stopping in Coquitlam to see Lexi and Ben and the grownups whose domicile they share.

One of the things I like about four-year-olds is that they typically haven’t yet mastered the art of dissembling. If you’re unknowingly suffering from halitosis or have a dessicated boogie hanging out your left nostril or are wearing a large soup stain on your chin, many adults – even people who claim to be your friends -- will say nothing and let you proceed on your benighted way; a pre-schooler is far likelier to point out your haplessness thus saving you from further mortification. In the nature of people of her tender vintage Lexi cried when we departed. Mostly it is tears of joy that my departures now tend to generate in fellow humans so it made me all soft in the head to discover there is someone in the world genuinely sad to see me go.

After Coquitlam we spent our first night in mountain-ringed Revelstoke where pal Jan-San provided precisely the anticipated warm reception that drew us to her town. We stopped at Lake Louise, something I don’t recall ever doing before, to revel in the glory of the remote Canadian wilderness together with a throng of several hundred others, most speaking languages with which I am entirely unfamiliar.

Even at my advanced age I am drawn to the ‘lifer’ – something I’ve never seen done before. To that end we chose to invade Alberta via the Icefields Parkway and Alberta Highway 11, which we saw billed as the Alberta Rockies’ best-kept secret. We stayed at a self-styled ‘resort’ quirkily featuring upside-down trees as its signature and a restaurant where a 12-point buck – or at least its head – stared unblinkingly as I ladled my soup while a country crooner wailed in the background.

In the morning, surrounded by fabulous mountain vistas we took our pre-breakfast constitutional, tallying birds as we walked pine woods. We heard the tap of a woodpecker and waited long enough to hear a single call note. ‘Hairy’, I said dismissively, meaning the main-sequence woodpecker in this corner of the cosmos. Jan was silent for a while as I walked ahead then I heard a pregnant ‘Ahem!’ I turned to see her pointing out, not a hairy, but a three-toed woodpecker. I don’t need all the fingers of one hand to count my sightings of three-toed woodpecker. Jan will dine, justifiably, on the glory for some time to come.

We walked in the footsteps of David Thompson along the North Saskatchewan River at Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site. I renewed my grail quest for war memorials featuring soldier statues, especially gratified to see with my own eyes Frank Norbury’s excellent figure of a Canadian ‘Tommy’ at Red Deer. I took pictures, happily and prodigiously, only to discover many kilometres down the road that I’d neglected to ensure the camera contained a flash card. Complete disaster was averted only due to the fact that, given such a special target, I’d used two cameras for the shoot. Not for nothing did my father frequently assign me an alternate name. Halfwit.

From Red Deer we headed south and spent much of this day in the Alberta Badlands and in the Tyrell Dinosaur Museum which we found even more alluring than the first time we saw it thirteen years ago. Now we are holed up in Camrose looking forward to another Norbury down the road and, across the Saskatchewan line, a couple of national historic sites devoted to Louis Riel’s ill-fated Northwest Rebellion.

This transcontinental migration is different from all our previous ones: we are no longer ‘Leo & the Taj’. Fearing ever more frequent mechanical breakdowns in the Taj, our Bigfoot camper, we sold it last month and are making our way in this fourteenth season of coast-to-coast migration in the truck alone. Jan may not be entirely happy to have kissed her home on wheels goodbye, but I as principal driver am delighted and if Leo could speak he’d say he’s as overjoyed as a Nepali Sherpa emancipated from his backbreaking load.