Foreigner vs. U-Haul

Another of ye columns.

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You know what phrase I've learned to hate?

"Free upgrade."

I know it sounds odd. Those two precious words are pretty rare as it is, but when they are spoken down the line, it's usually to do with airline seats, or hotel rooms, or maybe even car rentals.

So free upgrades are supposed to be a good thing. Except the free upgrade I got last weekend was from a nice lady, calling me from U-Haul, to let me know the 14-foot moving van I'd booked a couple of weeks ago had been magically transformed into a 26-foot monstrosity of behemothic proportions.

All at no extra cost, of course. Which was nice.

Still, that left me with a huge honking great truck for the contents of my apartment, out of which I was moving for greener pastures.

I suppose I would have felt less embarrassed had I actually had a lot of stuff. In fact, when I decided to move out of my little apartment, I assumed the hundreds of books I'd accumulated over the past two-and-a-half decades would make a respectable showing as cargo, so I moved it over in one backbreaking marathon session the previous night.

And so it was the next morning, sleep deprived and with aching shoulders, that I and a volunteer mover confronted my nemesis, the 26-foot U-Haul truck that would move the rest of my stuff into my new home.

The beast was huge. Just looking at it was intimidating. And, since I'd been licensed only for about a year in any case, and had never driven anything remotely that big, the thought of actually getting behind the wheel was a touch terrifying.

"Well, let's see if she'll start," said the proprietor nonchalantly after scraping the snow off the windshield. It did, to my dread.

After squaring away the details of the actual rental, he left us with a friendly warning about the tires, which were, shall we say, less than suitable for winter driving.

And so we were left in the shadow of the monster, unsure whether to drive it or caulk the bottom and sail it to the Island for kicks.

My volunteer offered to drive, but I said, actually, I want to try. Game optimism? Sheer foolishness? Probably a little of both.

So, into the cab I clambered, adjusted the seat, put both hands on the wheel and looked around for a bit, puzzled.

"Hey," said I, opening the driver door and addressing my companion. "Where's the thing to make it go in reverse?"

He told me to get out of the truck.

So we finally got on the road, after a few tries since beneath the thin film of old snow on the parking lot was a sheet of ice that made reversing in near-bald tires a little tough.

We sped down the highway at a respectable tilt, because these things are all made in the States and the 80 on the speedometer did not mean kilometres.

"Man, I'm only going 80, but it feels SO much faster," my driver said with a wide grin.

I presume he was joking.

But we made it, to meet with other volunteers lending their strong arms to my exodus.

And it went like clockwork, more or less. Down came the bookshelves, table, chairs, couch, bed, boxspring and desk (which ended the trip in more pieces than it began), all squared away in the cavernous cargo space of the U-Haul.

So, that left us ... the TV.

Lord, the TV.

Even in the weeks leading up to the move, just the thought of having to move the TV filled me with dread.

It's one of those biggish ones with no real handgrips that weigh about as much as the Yukon. I don't even remember how I got it on my TV stand when I first moved in my old place. My brain blotted out what must have been the terrible memory of the effort.

But there it was, nestled menacingly on the unvacuumed floor of the empty apartment while we pondered it.

Then two of us lifted the beast, with difficulty, and started the slow trek down to the truck, fumbling the grip halfway down and coming dangerously close to wrecking my main source of weekday evening entertainment.

But we saved it in the nick of time, struggled to hoist it into the back of the truck and set it down, happy in the knowledge it would be the other two volunteers who'd have to take it into the new apartment.

Prior to setting off, bright sun shining down on us on the chill Saturday morning, we gazed at the cargo space. Every stick of furniture I owned, laid down flat, filled the barest fraction of the behemoth. What an embarrassment.

"Could just live out of this thing," said one of my volunteers. Indeed.

But no. I'll be living out of a spacious river view apartment from now on, which was filled with my furniture in record time, despite another Bald Tires Episode in the crowded parking lot of my new building.

Next time, I'll just get a cube van.

Staff reporters will offer their views in this space on Wednesday and Friday. Daniel Martins covers health and education. His adventures in Miramichi continue.

Not dead...I promise!

Okay, so I went through tons of writer's block over the past few months.

I'm posting a few instances of the times my boss forced me to be creative (i.e. our rotating column), in the hopes looking over them will get me off my ass and writing again.

Adieu.

Winter weather

This one is a basic summing up of my first encounter with the winter here. Let's just say it can get a touch apocalyptic at times. Keep in mind it's written for a different audience than most anyone else I write for.

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Even though I've been in Canada for several years now, this whole snow and slush thing never ceases to be fascinating.

Well, mostly fascinating. Really, the proper word for the meteorological chaos that assaulted the city last week is "terrifying," when you don't have any real winter driving experience.

I didn't mind the snow. In fact, I like snow, at least while it's still falling from the sky.

Then the freezing rain started, then the slightly thawed slush on the roads froze solid, with nary a plow to be seen on my little side street. Cue two wonderful days of me somehow navigating that jagged frozen wilderness in my little Toyota, simultaneously cursing the day I got a car and thanking the gods for my studded tires.

Then a bafflingly warm rain began to fall, clearing the streets of the frozen slush snow — for now, at least — and getting me to thinking about how winter was so much simpler back in South Africa.

See, in winter, we didn't have any freezing rain up on the plateau where I used to live. Or snow. Or any kind of precipitation at all, in fact. What we got in winter was four, straight months of bright, crisp sunshine, with the average high somewhere in the mid-teens.

We had so little rainfall in the winter that the government would take to placing water restrictions on households, and there'd the annual "don't waste water" blitz that I doubt we'll be seeing in Canada anytime soon.

With so much sunshine, it didn't mean it wasn't cold, though. I'm not sure what the rest of the country was doing, but in my neighbourhood at least, we never quite grasped the wisdom of insulating our houses ("hey, it's Africa, right?").

So at night, when the temperature plummeted past the freezing point, out would come the dubiously adequate space heaters and electric blankets. Mornings were a shivery wait by the two-metre long hallway heater for the day's clothes that had been draped over it to warm up.

Fire hazard? Probably. But when you're six years old and the house is freezing, you really don't care.

So, yeah. That's my winter memories growing up. No freezing rain, or snow, or slush.

Still, you'd think a few years in Ontario would have prepared me for the weird weather of the past week or so, but no. Maybe in Ottawa, but down in Mississauga, where the weather is gently massaged by the much-touted lake effect, the temperature didn't get too far down past the minus 10 mark most of the time, and we only really had maybe five or six real snowfalls.

Certainly nothing like the past-my-head snowbanks that greeted me when I first rolled into town in March.

And unlike most of the people in Canada, I managed to make it to my mid-twenties before being forced to get a driver's license, about a year ago now (lord, I miss taking the bus) so I'm still learning the ins and outs of winter driving.

In fact, the whole up-and-down nature of last week's weather has given me quite the lovely little crash course in winter driving habits most of you have been developing since your teenage years. I think I recall some weatherman somewhere saying we saw every conceivable Canadian weather system pass through the Maritimes last week.

I don't think I'll ever forget the streak of terror I first felt when I put on the brakes before a stop sign only to find my car refusing to do my bidding, winter studs and all.

Then, during one of last week's thaws, a routine Tim Horton's run turned into a minor crisis as my car slammed into a street-wide puddle that almost came up over the wheels.

The little while it took for me to extricate myself from that flood, eyes fixed grimly ahead as my car inched its way to solid ground with bits of half-melted slush floating past like mini-icebergs, was a bit nerve-wracking.

And, then, also from last week, the wonders of freezing rain and the thin coat of ice covering my car as I come down the steps from my apartment, already late for work. It was late in developing, but the love/hate friendship between me and my snowscraper is coming along quite nicely.

We've had a lot of ups and down weatherwise this past fall, with freezing alternating with balmy like a seesaw. Now, don't get me wrong: I like the balmy parts, and over the years I've come to appreciate the occasional Indian summer.

But now that the temperature seems to be below zero again, I really hope it stays down there for a bit, without rain, until the spring.

Call me crazy, but I prefer it when the weather gods pick one type of precipitation and stick with it.

Coalition blues

This one's about the coalition, waaaaaaaaay back when. Since it had to go in the paper, it's completely different from the one on my Facebook.

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Who says Canadian politics is boring?

Most everyone, I'd imagine ... until last week, when the firestorm over the budget erupted.

While there's a lot of facts, counterfacts, rhetoric and emotion over the possible fall of the Harper government under a sustained opposition assault, I think the main story is the fact that everybody knows, and everybody is talking about it.

People I've never known to be interested in politics are suddenly weighing in on what has rapidly become a full blown, made-in-Canada political crisis.

Everywhere you go, online and in the dailies, news agencies are focussed on the issue, and people are paying attention. Comments on some news websites number in the thousands. Every day on TV, the radio and in the newspapers, a new chapter in the drama, or a new feature ("THIS is how parliamentary government works." "THIS is what the governor general can do.").

In everyday conversation, through Facebook, over drinks at the pub, in offices across the country, people are talking politics.

Not just talking. Reacting. Wasn't long before someone got the pro- and anti-coalition facebook groups up and running, and changed their facebook statuses from the mundane to the political.

There'll be protests and rallies, too, by both sides. Students, unions, political parties, the whole nine yards.

Now, sure, the larger the group of people having an argument, the more likely are the chances some of the comments will be outrageous, or insulting. It's certainly polarized Canadian society, and the invective is flowing like the Reversing Falls.

But in between the charges and counter-charges, people are talking about the system, or the governor general, or the parties' past records and performance, or what should be done and why.

Best of all, aside from talking about the issues, people are educating themselves on the system and how it works.

And a lot of people have been surprised at some of the details that have come out in print or on the air about exactly how parliamentary democracy works. They are surprised it is actually possible (though not guaranteed) for a coalition to come to power without an election.

I would imagine even more have been shocked to find out the governor general actually has the deciding power she apparently has, and how past governor generals have dealt with similar situations.

And the overwhelming charge we've been hearing from either side is "undemocratic," whether it be levelled at the coalition or Harper's supposed behaviour in parliament in the years leading up to this crisis.

That says a lot about how little some people know about our system and its possibilities.

But it also shows Canadians have an idea of how the system ought to work, and are disturbed to find that it doesn't. If enough of those people feel strongly enough about how the system should or shouldn't work, will MPs and parties get the message and make changes down the road? Should they?

For my part, before this crisis blew up in everybody's faces, I apparently only had a partial grasp of how the Canadian party system worked, and I had no idea a coalition was even legally possible. I didn't even know what "prorogue" meant. And I was a poli-sci major.

This is a revived, nation-wide political discourse we badly, badly needed.

The last time we had an election (remember that one? The one that put us pretty much right back where we started?), voter turnout was a record low, at just over 59 per cent, according to Elections Canada.

In the provinces, the highest turnout for the federal election was Quebec, at just over 61 per cent, with Newfoundland and Labrador trailing the pack at around 48 per cent.

Nationally, the total percentage was down from almost 65 per cent in the 2006, or around a million voters less than the 2006 election.

Granted, that's still higher than most European countries, but when almost a million people who voted in 2006 decided it wasn't worth it last time around, that's a bit of a problem.

Whether they're just generally apathetic or genuinely annoyed with the way their politicians are behaving, that kind of voter turnout at a time when people are supposed to be choosing the men and women who are supposed to lead this country doesn't bode well. Can we now expect more people to get on their feet and head to the polls next election? Whether it is called next week or next year?

Parliamentary legalities aside, is the coalition undemocratic, or isn't it? Like everything else in politics, it seems to depend on where you stand. But if this many people are asking that question, and asking it loudly, I think it shows, one way or another, that democracy is alive and well.

How not to attend a wedding

I don't have a clue who the person walking down the aisle is.

Looks pretty enough, I guess, and her soon-to-be hubby looks suitably dashing. He's from here, apparently, or she is. I don't know him either, or anyone else in the wedding party. The only people I know in this whole damned cathedral are Reid and Mary, up for a visit from the port city and mid-way into turning my apartment into a mirror of Reid's third-world hellhole of a domicile.

So it's their fault I'm standing in the house of the lord with a mouth full of cottonwool, a belly full of writhing cockroaches and an anvil dropping on my head from space once every few seconds.

The excuse for their visit was the wedding itself, apparently one of Mary's good friends from school. Then, of course, the visit turned into an excuse for a trip down to the only Irish pub in a city that bills itself as the Irish capital of Canada (No, really...it's on the water tower and everything).

And, as is usually the case when we three meet, a pint turned into another pint, and then another, and then into three shots of tequila, then another three and so on. We got home at three, rose at nine for a crappy breakfast and tried our damnedest to look respectable as we tottered up the steps of the city's impressive old cathedral from my car, hungover as great holy fuck.

It was a catholic affair, of course, in the best church in town with an old Irish priest interrupting the usual ceremonies with the occasional inappropriate reminiscence. The regular standing to attention that entails has been scientifically proven to be ineffective as a hangover cure, as I can personally attest.

Then, of course, came the wedding reception...free food and booze right? Right.

'Cept ... you know all that rain we've been getting in the Maritimes? The never-ceasing torrent? Cottage-dwellers getting airlifted to safety out by Grand Falls, highways washed away, rivers rising ominously, all that stuff? Yeah, for one weekend...and one weekend only...everything cleared up. So blazing, noonday sun in 40-degree weather with neither shade nor quenching drink, save for some wine and watered down punch.

Such are the memories of my first-ever wedding....let's just say I much preferred the second night at the pub.

Fine Saturday entertainment.

I am far away from Toronto.

That blatantly obvious geographic fact was hammered home to me when I first flew into the freezing rain and late-season snow of eastern New Brunswick in March. But as for the philosophical realization, that particular penny took a bit longer to drop. Until this past Saturday, in fact.

Tell me, o friends and former neighbours from Oshawa to Burlington ... do you know what a Tire Frier is?

No? Well, I'll tell you:

A tire fryer happens when a few dozen people get together with their cars, drive them one by one onto a small platform and spin their back wheels to burn up as huge a cloud of acrid, asthma-inducing smoke as they can. They do this for as long as possible before one of the nearby firefighters signals them to stop by pulling on a black rope attached to the sunburned arm each of the drivers has hanging out the window. 'Cos by the time they really get going, that cloud is too thick to see any visual signals.

If you look closely, you can even see fragments of rubber flying off behind the vehicle like little smokey comets, ricocheting harmlessly against the thick carpet draped over a roadblock behind the vehicle.

And, lord, does this go on for awhile. I'm not kidding when I say "cloud" of acrid smoke, because it definitely ain't a few wisps. That's what it starts off as, but it's not long before the car is completely enveloped, along with the huge crowd gathered along the fire barrier ringing the parking lot.

And what a crowd. Of all of the events of this weekend's festival, this must have been the best attended. Kids of all ages crowded the barriers, while older fans couched themselves in folding canvass chairs, their bare skin pink from the day's sun.

Their dogs meandered among their legs, and I saw one pair of puppies barely old enough to have their eyes open curled up beside their mistress' sandals while above them the crowd cheered and applauded as tire after tire lost their treads.

And, since everybody along this river knows everybody, there were a few nods of recognition as some of the frier veterans stepped up. Apparently, this sort of thing makes for minor fame.

Even when a newbie turned up in a bike, which was bucking dangerously for a moment before the friction kicked in and the smoke started billowing out, the two gentlemen I was standing behind turned to each other and said something along the lines of "well, that Tozer boy better be careful on that thing." "Yep, that's some powerful."

Not without a certain amount of ironic humour, one teen turned to his friend and mulled what kind of effect the whole thing would have on climate change.

And, of course, both the drivers and the firefighters standing by would wave their arms during the worst of the burn, trying to whip up the crowd into cheers and hollerin'. Not much encouragement was needed, though. Everyone was really into it, a collective shared experience that binds the city together. For some, it is sports. For others, it is music.

And for the good people in the more rural parts of this province, it's watching a procession of cars in various states of disrepair spin their tires bald until they pop, then trundle off into the wings on their rims, buoyed by the adulation of the assembled multitude.

And you know? It was awesome. Sure it was ridiculous. Sure it was madness. But, as an outsider looking in, I could see why everyone liked it, and why they'd been promoting it as the weekend's top draw for awhile. It was a good day out for everyone, a great collective cultural experience and, I gotta say, I do like the look of wisps of smoke becoming billowing clouds.

And, hey, it got me out into the sun, especially when the car parade happened and I got to sit on a grassy hill taking pics of antique cars filing down Water Street with the bridge in the background.

Where else would that count as work?

Changes

Finally got around to putting up a decent title. That's the bridge over the river at Chatham at sunset.

More to come as I fiddle with photoshop some more. On a day which I haven't resolved to spend doing sweet bugger all.