Concerning flight

Working the weekend sucks.

In my case, I was working last weekend. And, while I did get to meet Michael Ignatieff, I had to do so in sweltering thirty-something degree weather. Outside, the entire day, too. Canada's one of those weird countries where you eagerly anticipate the summer until the exact moment it arrives. Then, in my case at least, you beg for fall.

Still, I was working, so after the shindig at the Town Square, I made a beeline for the airport, where they were having a small fly-in of private aircraft owners.

That's when I saw this thing:


There must be some proper name for it involving numbers and letters of dubious meaning, but the pilot called it a training glider. It's pulled behind a single-prop plane until it's airborne and, once it's aloft, a simple pull of a switch cuts it loose, allowing it to glide gracefully back to earth.

Irritated by the heat, mindful I'm not paid extra for working the weekend, and seeing no reason why I can't have any fun on the job, I strapped myself in.

The supervisor, standing safely with both feet on the ground, warned me to keep an eye on the cadet pilot seated behind me.


Lieutenant Hamm, he said, was a little inexperienced, so if I notice the glider tilting a bit to the side, just point it out, and he'll probably be able to level it off again.

It wasn't until the cockpit hatch was shut around me and the tow plane was about ready to roll that Lt. Hamm, of the Canadian Forces' Cadet Instructor Cadre, leaned forward and informed me, actually, he's been an instructor for four years, with seven years flight experience before that, and his boss was just being a dick.

So up we went.


That's Chatham, the downriver half of Miramichi. You can see the Centennial Bridge across the river just there. I can see it from my apartment window, and my pad is just slightly to the left of where the bridge touches down in Chatham.

Across the river is Douglastown. Basically, the mall district.

It's a shame I don't have any shots of Newcastle, the upriver half and Chatham's mortal enemy. It's nicer up close, but Chatham's got more striking landmarks, like the bridge and St. Michael's Basilica:


Check out that graveyard. Nice bit of prime real estate right in one of the hearts of the city.

Here's the exhibition grounds, where the CNE and a couple of summer concerts call home:


And, for something completely different, here's the ultramar fuel depot.


Reason I include this somewhat boring shot is to hammer home the fact this city is really spread out. With a population of maybe 17,500 (and dropping), it covers a huge area. Parts of the city which are firmly within city boundries are just completely forested, like above. Most of it, in fact. Even places like this ultramar station, in Bushville neighbourhood, are as far from the city limits as can be.

This city's got a lot of potential. Shame about the economy.

Speaking of which, here's a shot of what is probably going to be the largest structure in town ... if it's ever built:


That's going to be a giant metal fabrication facility to built steel girders for the Deh Cho Bridge over the MacKenzie River in the Northwest Territories.

It's owned by Atcon. I don't want to talk about it, so I'll move on.

Another great asset this city has is the Miramichi Airport:


It's got easily the longest runway in Atlantic Canada, and was the heart of CFB Chatham, which closed in 1994. We have the national gun registry in Miramichi because the feds needed to compensate the community for its loss.

Great airport...except the airport commission treats it like Fort Knox. Don't want to talk about that either.

Here's an aerial shot of some of the planes that made it in for the fly-in:

And so that was my day out. As far as weekend assignments go, it could have been worse.

Bigwigs

So, for a remote part of a small province, the north's been getting a lot of attention, and Miramichi in particular.

First was the Prime Minister's visit in February. Then we got a couple visits from the premier.

And, thanks to the ongoing World Acadian Congress, we got a couple more special visitors, starting with this person you may be familiar with:


Mme. Jean had a sort of simpering quality about her that I didn't know what to make of, and she was always smiling. But she's a good speaker, that's for sure. Oh, and she took the opportunity (She was in Tracadie-Sheila, up the bay from us) to reveal to all and sundry that her great-great-great-great-great Grand-dad was an Acadian deportee from way back. Boy, that went over great. They're still talking about it.

That was last Thursday. Then on Saturday, we had this guy:


Michael frikkin' Ignatieff, the leader of the opposition, here in Miramichi, waving the Acadian flag and ringing the bell for the great Tintamarre, the part of Acadian Day where everybody makes as much noise as they can, with a few instances of "vive l'Acadie!" thrown in.

He seemed okay at ease, and sounded in person remarkably like Leonard Nimoy when not playing Spock. Oddly, his PR person, talking privately with me and the guy from the Times, said he was pretty shy, it's his wife who's the massive extrovert.

We interviewed him, of course, but we didn't really use any of it, aside from some nice things he said about Acadians and anglo New Brunswickers working together.

He brought an entourage with him:

You may recognize Dominic LeBlanc on the left, in the remarkably unflattering novelty Acadian tie. The other guy is an MP from northern NB, Jean-Claude d'Amours. They seemed nice enough, although Dominic was a little baffled when a local volunteer firefighter accosted him about the city supposedly conspiring to steal his fire hall.

Ah. Small town politics.

Irish pride

I wish I was Irish.

That's nothing new. Everyone wishes they were Irish, whether they admit it or not.

For the most part, it's more a vague longing for such a famously laid back, funloving culture. It surfaces once or twice a year, usually around St. Paddy's Day, or whenever one of my old roommates took it into their heads to dig out a copy of Boondock Saints (I don't care what anybody says, that's one of the greatest movies ever made).

This year, though, I've actually identified a specific Irish clan to try weasel my way into, Clan Barry. Here's why:


There's just no possible way that's their actual slogan, but I think it's something we can all get behind.

That shot's from the families parade. Basically everyone in Miramichi with an Irish surname (i.e.: All of them) sends a group to one of the high schools, then they march around town before heading to the arena for an afternoon of Irish music and Gaelic mingling.

It's like Carnaval, only with less dancing and only slightly less skin.



Guh. Talk about giving Irish "pride" a new meaning. The things I put up with for the public good.

Some things were less offensive to look at.



From car accidents, to Journalism School lessons, to small-town Irish parades, puppies make everything better. Sweets too, and these three kids were among the most popular:




And to give you a general idea of how bloody Irish things were, we had like three of these things kicking around:



And, of course, there was always a few special guests lying around, like the lieutenant governor and the premier, all decked out in his green tie:



As far as weekend assignments go, it wasn't too bad. My one regret? Not being able to get shitfaced when a bunch of my workmates turned up and had at 'er. Stupid work. Stupid Irish.

Ah, who am I kidding? The Irish are awesome.

Rock 'n' Roll part deux: How they roll

To give you a general idea of what kind of unexpected, unexplained things crop up in Miramichi sometimes, have a gander at this:

2003 Chevy SSR. Convertible. In cop car colours.

See, someone stole that in BC, then drove it aaaaall the way to New Brunswick, where he was caught. In the interim, the owner wrote the car off as stolen, or something, so when the cops found it, it was the property of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. Cops bought it off of them to replace a retiring cruiser.

Now it's their poster vehicle. Most onlookers were envious. But there were a few shaking their heads in disgust.

And now for something completely different:

1980 Firebird. When I was a kid, I had one of those die cast models of it, like matchbox-sized. Prolly wouldn't have given it a second glance if not for the phoenix painted on the hood. Cool. Kitschy, but cool.

The overall theme of the Rock 'n' Roll Fest was not the 80s, but the '50s, so of course, there were certain expections to live up to:

I want one. The thing was 100 per cent restored, even the interior.

But as awesome as it was, I couldn't shake the feeling something was missing, until this guy turned up:


Then, of course, the universe was complete. 'Couse, not sure how well fat, 1970s Elvis fits in with the 1950s pink cadillac, but whatever.

No Marilyn, though. Pity.

Rock 'n' Roll!

Last weekend was the Rock 'n' Roll fest. That means a bunch of ho-hum events centred around a frikkin' sweet car show.

Feast your eyes on this:

Ain't she a beaut? I don't know what make or model it is. Prolly from the '50s, is my best guess. But I don't need to know what it is to enjoy it. Which I did, for most of Sunday and Saturday afternoons, along with about 200 other ones just as awesome.

Pretty much every decade from the 1920s onward was represented. Oldest was a 1925 Model T Ford (Still running, too). But between the Model T and the giant frikkin' boats of the 1950s, there was plenty from the 30s and 40s.

Although I'm pretty sure some of these engines are, shall we say, not part of the original specs:

The one below definitely had some tweaking done.


The one below seems like it could actually be the original engine. It was one of about 40 that showed up from Ontario.


A bunch of hotrodders from Ontario turned up at the end of Sunday, bringing their own vehicles in. While the New Brunswick crowd held their own, some of the stuff from my would-be home province put us to shame.

Hell, I'm not into cars at all, and even I want one of these:

Canada Day in Miramichi

My third Canada Day in the Maritimes was cloudy and misting. Definitely no Ottawa.

But a day off is a day off, so I spent most of the day at home playing videogames, although I braved the shitty weather to head on down to Newcastle for the raising of the Canada Day flag.

Observe how insane huge it was:

That's because this particular specimen once flew atop the Peace Tower! A nice British immigrant couple visited the capital once, liked the big flag and put their names down to get one, as they change it every day.

Waiting list was 25 years. They moved on with their lives, forgot all about it, then one day they got this huge honking great flag in the mail.

They didn't have a flag pole big enough to fly the damn thing (must have been an impulse thing 25 years ago, I guess). So they passed it on to some friends in the Miramichi who, lacking a flag pole, donated it to the city.

So here it is! Our peace tower flag. It was worth it go down and see it raised.

Canada Day in Miramichi is no Ottawa.

But, with the peace tower flag, it's almost like there was still a connection.

The pilgrimage all men must make

Brothers.

I have been there. I have seen it. I have touched it with my own two hands. I still feel the coarse stone beneath my fingers.

Once, long before, the temple was the centre of what binds us all together, Working man and CEO, retiree and underaged fake ID holders, Canadian and Canadian.

No more. That holy function has moved on to other places, and the great blessing with it. But before me, on that sunny morning, with gulls crying and the distant ding of some ship's bell mingling in with lazy Friday morning traffic, the building was as holy as the day its cornerstone was laid. In the pantheon of holy places, it stands tall among the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem, the Great Mosque in Mecca and any Catholic cathedral you'd care to name.

And as I stood before it, I felt my spirits soar, and my lips dry from a sudden thirst.

Hmm? Oh. Yeah, I was talking about the original fucking Keith's brewery, yo.

Man, I love Halifax. I was there that weekend because the ACNA people bribed me with free booze and gas money to take pictures at their annual conference again this year. I had a free morning, though, so I went out to take in the sights of Halifax.

I was really only just on Lower Water Street or thereabouts. The thing I love about Halifax is how it's got a nice mixture of quaint old colonial and dominion buildings (like the imposing Art Deco stone one above), and some really modern stuff. You walk the downtown, and it feels like a big, thriving city. Which, by Maritime standards, it is. There's about 300,000 people in the 'Fax, and around 2.5 million in all of Atlantic Canada (Maritimes plus Newfoundland). After living for more than a year in a city of 18,000 (and dropping), my sense of scale's a bit warped.

It's a little tough to make out, but that's the Bluenose restaurant (yay, Canadiana!). I stopped in for a steak-and-eggs breakfast, grabbing a copy of the Chronicle Herald first. Over the meal, I got a close-up view of the ongoing election in Nova Scotia, which would eventually lead to an NDP victory, the first in Atlantic Canada.

The day I read the paper, it involved Tory premier Rodney MacDonald calling the NDP leader a car thief. Ahhhh, Tories. No matter the province, no matter the issue, it always comes down to the name calling.

While we're in Halifax, maybe this will mean something to you guys:

They tell me it comes from some kids' show. All I can say is, that must make quite the impression on ships coming from places like China or wherever.

Speaking of which:

Yes. There is a Chinese restaurant in the old Keith's building.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...but that's just the weirdest place I've yet seen one of those things.

Believe it or not, there's a big Chinese presence here in the Maritimes. In Miramichi, we have something like five Chinese restaurants (more than Fredericton, I've heard, tho' I don't believe it).

Which is neat! Yay, multiculturalism!

But...in the Keith's brewery?

Anyways, after my morning walkabout, I went to the ACNA conference, spent the day taking pictures of people I mostly didn't know. Then it was time for the booze cruise! We literally chartered a sailing ship and spent the evening drinking and eating as we sailed up and down the bay.

In between shots of the ACNA prez scoffing down the hors d'oeuvres, I had a glance at the shore. There's tons of old buildings and nice riverfront homes the further you get from the downtown core.

Just down from the Lower Water Street sights, you get a sense of Halifax's position as the great seaport for the east coast.

It was nice. If someone offered me citizenship and a nice job in Halifax, fuck yeah, I'd take it.

I'm not kidding: That city is the jewel of the east.