The Other Side of Eighty

I had this idea. My friend with memory problems that she is working on fairly successfully? I thought to make plans with her. How would that plot work out? And, I thought, the sooner the better.

I looked at a good old Google map and picked a point half way between our dwellings which happened to be St. John, New Brunswick. I'm about 1,500km from there and so is she. I have to catch the winter ferry as the seasonal summer ferry won't start in time for the trip. So that entails a road trip across the island of around 900km, give or take.


I love road trips, so does she.

I managed to find a cabin on the river for us to share for a week. Staggeringly reasonable. it includes breakfast.


On my way to St. John I also booked in for 2 days with a friend who has a cottage in Cape Breton not too far from where the ferry decants me in North Sidney.




She's planning a dinner party and gathering her Inverness clan to meet me. They all sound wonderful, writers and artists galore.

Then I head off from her place to St. John to meet my Toronto friend.

So I leave on the 12th of June.

I feel this trip is very important.

And it truly has been a carpe diem thing organizing it all.

Sailing route from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Argentia, Newfoundland, pretty much across the open Atlantic ocean.

Well, here we are. Our sailing time was 4.00pm and it is now 6.30pm. They let us on the boat, The Atlantic Vision, about 30 minutes ago with no sailing time in sight because of Maria. As of noon today, the sailing was still on but I imagine they are cautious now as Maria roars through Newfoundland and incidentally right by where I live. I took the precaution before I left of moving all the lawn and deck furniture in and battening down the winter door at the front of my house. I am glad now. I just hope all the trees will hold.

There are many boats and ferries at anchor in the harbour as I look out my gorgeously huge window. This is not a porthole by any stretch of the imagination. The weather outside is innocent: blue skies, a few white caps on the waves, but not a hint of Maria on this side of the crossing.

No news on when we will be sailing but we have been assured there is a ton of food on board and much to entertain us in the interim. I feel sure there is many a story to be told in this waiting for the crossing.

Placentia

I'm writing this on the Atlantic Vision, the wonderful ferry running between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and which is even better than before as it now has highspeed.

Well, ahem, we're a day late. And, ahem, there was a slight problem in that I thought we were sailing on Monday 29th, when in actual fact, ahem, it was Tuesday 30th. Says so right on the ticket. The ticket that Grandgirl and I failed to look at until the security guard pointed it out to us at the gate to the empty ferry terminal.

So no, we didn't skulk the 200K back to home (something about waving goodbye to all and sundry as we left and then showing up on the evening of the same day with a red face). We stayed in Placentia. At Harold Hotel. A most fortuitous decision as it turns out.

We went for a wonderful walk on the Placentia boardwalk after dinner. The dregs of Irene were all around us, unseasonable heat, raging wind and the ocean beating off the rocks below us. Magnificent.

Today we visited the old graveyard, some of it early 18th century. The old caretaker was shattered to hear I was of the lapsed catholic variety. I regretted telling him as soon as the words were out of my mouth as he took it so personally. He insisted on showing me a grave that held a Margaret O'Brien whose epitaph read "She died as she lived in God's Grace." And told me to think about that. I too could live like that, it wasn't too late.

"Maybe I already am in the grace?" I said to him and he shook his head sadly muttering about the one true church.

After the attempted conversion, we went for another long walk, this time by the wonderful river with the boats tied up and the sun splitting the rocks.

Meanwhile I ran into the president of the historical society whom I had met a few times at conferences and took the opportunity to talk about my play. We popped into a gorgeous new cafe recommended to me by a friend. Stunning. Home cooking and patisserie and the old general store beautifully renovated with floors and walls restored to their former glory. The owner and her husband are currently living upstairs but plan to eventually transform this space into an art gallery for her work.

She owns one of the inns in the area and in chatting it turned out she was looking for an accountant.

Well, duh, bingo. I have a new client. A most fortuitous misreading of tickets. All is not lost and Grandma is not destined for the home or a minder. Just yet.

Photo by Grandgirl who raced out in stockinged feet to get this wondrous shot the other night.

Grandgirl and I are packing up the house and sorting out the car and assuring Ansa, that yes, she is coming with us even though we are washing her bed and packing all her stuff in her own little bag. She looks stunningly lovely actually, as she was groomed only a few days ago. But she walks around the house with that worried look that dogs get. Comical. But we try and keep straight faces around her as she goes from bag to bag and the place where her bed used to be. And licks our legs as she walks by reminding us that "Lookeehere, yes, you do have a dog!"

So far the ferry is leaving on time. Even though this morning's was moved to an earlier time because of Irene. We are sailing on the Atlantic Vision, which I sailed on before and raved about.

They have changed the hours of operation to be more people friendly. We are leaving at 6.30pm and arriving in the morning at 9.00 a.m. A huge improvement. Before it was appalling, arriving in the middle of the night in Cape Breton with long, long hours of mountainous, often foggy, driving in darkness in order to hit the Nova Scotia mainland.

It is well over a year since I was in Ontario so I am looking forward to catching up with everyone. Reportage from the road may be sporadic.

So far Irene is avoiding us. Let's hope she stays that way. My sympathies to all and their dear ones who have suffered.

Today, the last day my family are here with me, we visited Bell Island for the first time. It was an extraordinary day, contributed to in no small part by the weather which was stunningly clear, it was as if the ocean and the sky were having a tug of war as to which would get the most turquoise.

We took the ferry from Portugal Cove – picture by me below, ferry is in the background

and headed over on our 30 minute ocean ride across Conception Bay South. I had heard that the iron ore mines were well worth visitng though they were not for the faint of heart as the climb down (and back again!) was pretty challenging and at times claustrophic. We were undaunted by this but confess to feelings of unease at the thoughts of the overwhelming weight of the ore above our heads.

Karen, our tour guide, was amazing. Our group was small, very unusual, she said, so we were given, I believe, more personal anecdotes about the miners who worked long and hard in digging the incredible shafts, deep within the earth and under the surrounding ocean. Unbelievably challenging even today but an astonishing engineering feat at the time, well over a century ago. We trudged around in our warm jackets (we were asked to put them on prior to going down as the temperature would drop dramatically) and our hard hats, fascinated by the lives that were lived by both man and beast down so deep within the bowels of the earth.

Karens' father and grandfather worked in the mines, starting at very young ages doing menial work and then graduating at fourteen to the actual mining itself. She had stories of horses that didn’t see the light of day for months on end, even their stables were way down in the bowels of the earth. Stories of rats that were treated with total respect by the miners as they could sense an imminent collapse and would scatter – the miners fed them bits of their lunches every day as a thank you for saving their lives – much like the canaries in coal mines.

The mines have been kept intact and many artefacts were on display. You can read more about it here if you like.

Another of Bell Island’s claims to fame is that it was the only site in North America to be attacked by German U-Boats in World War Two.

Picture below was taken by the grandgirl from the Bell Island side of the path of the ferry crossing.



To add to our adventurous day, a few minutes after she took this picture, we were on the ferry and dolphins entertained us all the way back to Portugal Cove.

My summer scrapbook overflows with unforgettable memories.

On December 30th, 2008, we took the ferry from Riviere du Loup to San Simeon in Quebec, across the mighty St. Lawrence river. A far, far different experience than it is in the bright heat of summer.

I took this picture of the still white and grey landscape with frozen boats, remarkably monochromatic, as we waited to board the ferry. Devoid of the bright colours of summer, but still hauntingly beautiful.



Travelling through the icefield, the engines of the ferry were muffled underneath the cracking sounds of the ice splitting in ever expanding seams from the prow of the boat, widening out to the horizon and then folding in once more behind us covering our freezing trail.

A remarkable experience.

One of the advantages of living a life longer than many of my dear, departed friends is that I don’t attach myself to results too much. Expectations can let me down as I’ve learned over and over. The 2 X 4s of life I call them. Always have a Plan B.

Like Christmas Day, my daughter was scheduled to fly to St. John's and she got to the airport in Toronto, early, was issued a boarding pass and then without any warning or apology, her flight was cancelled without any reason offered.

Reasons, of course, are obvious on the media. Vancouver was snowed in and Westjet could not get their planes out of there. So my poor daughter had to schlep her way back home again. A driving trip we had planned to share across the province of Newfoundland from St. John’s to reach the ferry in Port Aux Basques – over 900 km of at times treacherous weather conditions - now had to be undertaken in one day alone by me. Through the spectacular mountains, sometimes by lonesome outports, beside dense forests and uncountable miles of uninhabited beauty. Stressed? Yes, I was. But I made it, in less than 12 hours and 3 breaks. One short stop for a quick restorative nap in the car (I’m lucky that way, I can have a 15 minute nap that rights me with the world.)

And I slept well on the ferry in spite of a shocking storm and slabs of ice that hit the sides of the vessel with great big shuddering wallops from time to time. I thought of the Titanic going down in such conditions as I was woken up by the ferocity of the rolling ship the first time and thought to myself, if the alarms go off, I’m not getting up – I’m just too damn tired. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

And this morning I ambled across Cape Breton and landed in Moncton, where I now wait as my daughter, once again, waits in Toronto airport for another delayed flight, this time to Moncton, and hopefully not cancelled.


We may spend an extra day here in Moncton, there is a centuries old woollen mill, Briggs & Little that I would love to check out. An ex-police chief – female - of a major American city who was touring Newfoundland this year with her ex-fire chief husband – saw the sign on my car (“Got Knitting?”) and we bonded over needles for an hour or so. She told me about Briggs & Little, not to be missed. I told her about Baadeck Yarns in Nova Scotia.

My gratitude list is long. It nearly always is in spite of myself and my whinging. And a few samples:

· Yay, I’ve got high speed in the hotel, now I can see all my blog-buds’ YouTubes and check out what I’ve missed.

· My dear darling dog, Ansa, who has travelled 1,500 km in the car in the past 30 hours and ne’er a whit of complaint. Though I do spoil her a bit with road food. A great big *Thank You Tim Horton’s* for your great, great breakfast biscuits, from both of us. And note: I will always put your misplaced apostrophe back into your name. So there.

· Walking in the snow: we went for a long trek in the lightly falling snow tonight, looking in at all the windows with the Christmas lights - a telescope into the lives of others.

· Lobster – I’m in the capital. Need I say more?

Posted Later @ half past midnight.
I drove out to the airport in freezing rain conditions at a crawl and once I get there I'm told that the flight was turned back due to the weather. So my poor daughter is once again foiled in her attempt to get out here to Atlantic Canada. How awful for her.

What was that again about expectations?