The south will rise again?

I half expected some bucktoothed stereotype to emerge from this one house and shoot me with a rusty shotgun as I took a picture of the flag on his lawn.

This is about midway between the villages of Blackville and Doaktown, on the long road to Fredericton from Miramichi. In, erm, New Brunswick. Eastern Canada. You know ... not the American south.

Just the damnedest thing. I'm passing by on my way to an assignment. It's a beautiful, crisp and sunny fall day, with the wind only just picking up, so I'm driving down admiring the colours and suddenly there's a goddamned confederate flag flying on some guy's lawn.

I pulled the car over and snapped some shots. Then I zoomed in on 'em in my camera's viewfinder, and what do I see? One of those German style crosses from WWI, or WWII. I was hoping it was the former. I'd hate to think it was the latter.

Oh god, thought I. There's some crazy white supremacist from Alabama down the road from the city. I mean, should I tell someone? Should I warn the black people in town? I know three by name, and there's probably about a half dozen more, so it shouldn't take too long.

Then I got back to the newsroom, and zoomed in on the writing, which I couldn't see from the distance I took the shot and didn't dare go nearer, in case I really was dealing with some crazed racist.

Couldn't make it all out, but the second word seems to be "chopper." So probably just some guy who really, really likes some brand of motorcycle in the southern united states founded by a fine upstanding citizen of German extraction.

Or something. Bloody Miramichi.

Not the golden gate bridge

So the Centennial Bridge, the iconic structure you can see in the blog's header, has been down to one lane due to maintenance by the department of transportation.

It was opened briefly, before being shut again to one lane so the DOT guys could do a routine inspection on the Douglastown side. We didn't know that at the time the editor's wife called to say it was shut again, so when I got sent over to find out what was going on, I basically had to walk almost the whole kilometre-length of the thing before I could find someone to ask.

I've driven across it a million times, but a giant structure like this is a totally different experience when you're walking it. Looking up at the giant, sloped girders, it finally hit me just how tall the damned thing was.


Looking over the side was terrifying. There was no possible way I could have fallen over, but I still held on the rail with white knuckles. No wonder bridge jumping is such a popular form of suicide. At that height, maybe 15 stories up, it would be like falling onto concrete.

For the engineers out there, here's a shot of some of the ... whatever those are. Nuts and bolts, mayhap?

So I walked the full length, got the shots of the DOT folks doing their inspection in the next post, then started walking back.

The way they were doing it, they were letting a few cars on one side through for a few minutes, then stopping them, radioing the other side, and letting some cars on that side go through for a few minutes.

But the bridge is so insane long, between letting the last car go on one side and letting the first car proceed on the other, there's at least a minute delay. Who knew when they'd be shutting it down like this again?

So I stopped off the sidewalk, marched right into the middle of what may be the busiest highway in the north, and just stood there for a bit.

Felt wrong. I expected someone to yell at me to get out of the road, or some truck to magically appear behind me with just enough warning for me to scramble clear.

Nothing like that happened, though. So I took a shot.

If you click on the shot, you can get a better look at the left side of the shot. There's a welder there, if you want a sense of scale.

I love this bridge.

Bridge Shots

While I was on the little adventure on the bridge described in the next post, I took a few shots while I was there. I'm sorry it was cloudy...I should have liked to have seen the river from that perspective on a sunny day.

Here's Chatham.

Click on it for a bigger perspective. The marina and basilica came out clearly. It won't mean as much to you as it does to me...I can make out literally every single building and its purpose.

Maybe I ought do up a little guide...you know, a number for every little building in the shot and what it is/what it does/when I last got sloshed there/etc.

Here's the mall district in Douglastown, across the river.


If you look carefully, you can make out the shoppers drug mart, Canadian Tire and probably the Tim's and BK.

Finally, there's these guys, the reason I was out there on that bridge.

Their little inspection cut the bridge down to one lane only. Godsdamn, that played havoc with the lines. This bridge is one of two major arteries in the city, and THE gateway to Bathurst, Campbellton, Quebec and beyond, so when you close it down to one lane so some DOT guys can look at how rusted the underside is, that's a bit of a problem.

Construction guys are odd when it comes to reporters. Sometimes they'll be adamant you don't get near without a hard hat. Other times, they just shrug their shoulders and tell you anything you need to know, usually in the monosyllabic grunts of craftsmen who just want you to go away so they can get on with their work.

Pimp mah truck

I'll say one thing about the good people of the Miramichi: Some of them have a lawless sense of style. And no, that's not a typo.

Like this lad, Billy Reynolds, and his wheels.

A former garbageman by trade, Billy is a self-described packrat, and when he and his vehicle rolled into the paper the other day well, gosh, I had to go out there with a camera.


Here's the side of it. Literally every surface was covered in some way with some kind of knick knack, like this:


Those longish plastic things, one to the left of the elephant? They light up. There's a button on his dash, and a little remote attached to his key chain. The horn sounds like an ice cream man jingle.

Some of the stuff wasn't recognizable, like the many metal things welded to the hood:

Every damned surface. I didn't know what half the vehicle's ornaments were. Their function was esoteric. It would have taken, like, an hour to show me the full extent of the decades of work Billy did here. It was like Xzibit got high with Monty Python and took a joy ride to the Miramichi.

And, when Billy ran out of room on the car's body, there was always room for ... protrusions.

It think it was made of wood. I'd hate to think any of the additions were actually once real animals:


I've lived here for a year and a half. I have never, ever seen this contraption before. Never ever. He must live up river or down the bay or something.

I was impressed, and in awe.

Hm.

Maybe I should get started on that immigration application now.

You know ... the one that will let me get out here before I go mad. Or start re-decorating my car.

Missing

This one has been photoshopped to make it suitable for print, so it seems grainier than the original file.


Had to set the ISO to max, kill the flash and take 50 shots in the hope of getting one where the camera shake didn't blurry it beyond use.

Came out nice. But it's a strange thing to be proud of.

It's at a candlelight vigil for Hilary Bonnell. At the time of this writing, she's been missing for around three weeks. Went to a party on one of the local first nations (she's native, but lives in Miramichi), then never was seen again. Last anyone saw of her was a surveillance video from, like 7 am the next day, walking along the highway past a convenience store at the entrance to the reserve.

All this time, everyone on that reserve is swearing sideways they think she's alive. Cops too. But the area has been searched over and over again, and extended beyond it. She could be anywhere now.

By a conjunction of the fates, three of us had to cover this over three days. One on the Thursday, when we went down first. Then he had the day off, so another of us went Friday. Finally, I was on that weekend, so I went down, heard of the vigil, then went down again in the evenings to grab a shot. We needed something the dailies didn't have, and it's an image of hope and waiting, rather than a shot of Hilary's tearful parents and stepfather at a press conference, begging her supposed kidnapper to return her.

Had to talk to the parents. Took awhile before we were let near, and mostly I listened. It's messed up. Her mum's total wreck. They're basically living in a holiday trailer by the fisheries building on the reserve where the search is being coordinated from, just so they can be as close as possible.

At the vigil that evening I was there, amidst the firelight and honour songs and prayers in English, French and Mi'kmaq, I could see the mum, rocking back and forth and holding herself. I can't imagine what she must have been going through. Still is.

Hope they find the girl, one way or another.

The joys of rural reporting

Observe:

The gentleman below is Leon Bremner. He owns several tractor dealerships. Yes. Tractor dealerships.

This pic was taken at the grand opening of his newest one, on Route 11 a stone's throw away from the city limits. It was, of course, a big deal in a rural county like this.

I happen to like this one. But as I stood there, in a rare hot day, snapping shots of this man and his tractor, his shiny new mechanized conveyance, I came to a realization.

I was covering the opening of a tractor store. On a saturday. And it was a big deal.

Truly ... I am in exile.

That's all I have to say about that. Moving right along...

Another dispatch from the twilight zone

So last week, premier Shawn Graham skipped out on some high profile events in Freddy that evening to go to Sunny Corner, a small local service district just upriver of the city, to hand out some funds to one of the local legions.

Said he wanted to honour the legion, given his background with them when he was younger and involved in sport. More like he wanted to avoid someone in the capital, but hey, the veterans were grateful.

So I'm waiting outside for Graham to emerge ... when public safety minister John Foran comes up to me.

You have to understand: The honourable Mr. Foran is a very large man. He's past six feet. And, without being too uncharitable, he's also a bit on the big side.

So he looms over me, peers down at me with a big, boyish grin on his face and says, with the enthusiasm of an eager child, "Hey dan-YELL...me and the premier are going to an abattoir after. Wanna come?"

Sweet jesus, it was like I'd stepped into a scene from some Mafia movie.

So I followed their cars, got to the slaughterhouse, but one of the workers' brothers was hospitalised that day, so they only stayed long enough for me to grab the shot.

Left to right is premier Shawn Graham, local MLA and public safety minister John Foran and Earl Sutherland, the owner of what is possibly the only slaughterhouse in the Miramichi.

I felt awful about the pic ... Foran looks like he's thinking about eating the damned thing. But it was the best art we had that day, so onto A1 it went.

Some of the comments were awesome, though.

Still...it stands as the weirdest assignment in recent memory.