Best of May

May turned out to have some good shots. Here you go.

------

Here's Freeman Ward, newly elected chief of Metepenagiag First Nation, just upriver from us.


It turned out to be an excellent portrait of the guy. The incumbent was turfed out by, like 14 votes (a common occurrence). He had great ideas for the place, like alternative energy and, of course, a new gambling hall right in the heart of Miramichi. But it seems he pissed off too many folks, so out he went.

Or something. I don't know ... it's hard to tell what goes on behind the scenes in these places, but this reserve tends to be pretty quiet.

The new guy was VERY suspicious of me. When I got to his house, he was on the phone with someone in Mi'kmaq, and later he told me it was a band councillor from another reserve on the river who told him to slam the door in my face.

He didn't, and we had a long, long talk off the record before I turned the recorder on. I'm cautiously optimistic ... he called the next week to thank me for the article, and point me in the direction of a rising baseball star in New Brunswick who everyone thinks is from a reserve out of our coverage area but was actually born in Metepenagiag.

Of course, it happened to be his son. But hey, gotta start somewhere, and it turned out to be a cool story. Let's see what he does when I have to ask the tough questions.

-------
Aaaaaand, the token candid shot gone awry:

The lad on the left is Councillor Robert Trevors, just after he won the Tory nomination for the Newcastle area of the city in the upcoming provincial election. I love single-frame candid shots that make politicians look crazed.

-------
Just some lads painting the tennis courts. Turned into a nice enough shot, so here it is.

Apparently that paint is specially designed to deliver the right kind of bounce, and is used for the masters, or something.

------
This lad, playing a young Max Aitken, shows off what a li'l scamp the old bastard was as a child.


Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook, went to school in Newcastle, NB, and rose to become a cement magnate, later a newspaper giant who practically owned Fleet Street in the UK, rising to become part of Churchill's war cabinet. Apparently he was also a bit of a dick, but he left a sweet art gallery behind in Fredericton, so it's all good, right?

------
This one isn't the best in the world. I just like the posing.

From a Saturday morning mosquito practice. Cute kids.

------
This one is probably my favourite of this bunch: Opposition leader David Alward standing in the Miramichi city council chambers.


Stood on a chair to get the panorama shot. His handler was adamant he was behind schedule and wouldn't have time after the press conference. So I smiled, nodded, then went up to him directly to ask him to pose. As always, he was happy to oblige. Silly communications people.

Reason this is remotely significant is because the big Norwegian solar panel company that wanted to set up shop in Miramichi announced the lousy global economy was forcing them to shelve the project. The people blamed the Liberal government, and the Tories capitalized on that by arriving for a much-publicised meeting with the mayor just two days after the news hit. The speed of it was impressive.

This shot, sadly, never ran, but I guess I just liked its depth.

Best of April

April turned out to have a few good shots, so I've posted them here for your perusal. Enjoy.

--------
This young lady on the monkey bars was enjoying the first warm weekend on the Miramichi.



With a little help from her cousin, of course.

So, in other words, really slow day. So we all got kicked out of the office to go find people to take pictures of for a weather story. I felt like such a weirdo ... what must these people have been thinking? "Hey, you've never seen me before in your entire life, but your kids are really cute, and I'm from the paper, so could I get a picture of them playing?"

That's not exactly what I said. But you'd be amazed how often that works, as evidenced above.

------
This guy, Lt.-Col. Joscelyn Paul, was down in Miramichi for a talk on a novel Canadian strategy for dealing with the Afghan insurgency. It involves not actually killing anyone.


Basically, he talked about this method of theirs where they garrison soldiers in actual Afghan villages, rather than just clearing out the Taliban and going back to base. If they stick around long enough, the villagers realize they can rely on them for security, so they start giving them tips. The guy claims it works, and it sounds like a good idea.

Pity about the Canadian soldiers dying for a hopelessly corrupt Afghan government, though. *sigh*

-----
That big hunk of scrap used to be the engine of a WW2-era torpedo bomber. Like many of its kind, it's been refitted extensively since then, and has seen service in water bomber fleets across the world, including the waterbomber base here in Miramichi.


About half an hour before this shot was taken, it was whirring happily away at a few hundred feet before the pilot of the craft lost control and crashed in the woods near the old airbase in town. He died on impact. Still don't know what happened, but he was in his 60s, and had been flying for 40 years. Probably had a stroke or heart attack or something, since Transport Canada said engine failure wasn't the problem, and it certainly wasn't inexperience. Very sad for his hometown.

--------
Also sad: This month was the birthday of Hilary Bonnell, who was murdered on one of the local First Nations communities last year. To commemorate, around a hundred residents launched purple-coloured Chinese lanterns.


Another example of upping the ISO, trying to keep camera shake to a minimum and hoping for the best. I'm not a good photographer, just a really, really lucky one.

--------
Moving unexpectedly away from the topic of death, believe it or not, here's a car that went flying off the bypass, flipped over a couple of times, then came to rest in the ditch.


The back window just shattered, the shocks and wheels are shot, but the young lady inside walked to the ambulance when it came, to be sped none-too-swiftly back down the same bypass she came up to the hospital.

She seemed quite glum about the whole thing.

--------
Also not involving death in any way, shape or form, here's Graydon Nicholas, New Brunswick's first and newly minted aboriginal Lieutenant-Governor, at a talk for aboriginal youth enrolled in a job training program on Eel Ground First Nation, just outside of town.


He's a better speaker than the last one, who tended descend into university lecture-style utterances. And, of course, by rising to the highest ceremonial office in the land, he's basically a hero to every aboriginal person in the Maritimes.

Impressive ... though I'll be more impressed when we have an aboriginal premier. We'll have to wait a bit longer for that, probably.

--------
And behold!

That magnificent mane and classic '80s suit belongs to Judy Losier, the wife of Dr. Gerard Losier beside her. He's mellow, laid back and obsessed with getting better equipment for the hospital. She's been involved in every community group ever and has the energy of a small nuclear reactor with a higher-than-allowed dose of Plutonium in the hopper.

Never ran this, but I thought it was quite the sight. Also, these two gave $1.5 million to the local hospital foundation, so they're pretty popular.

--------
*Sigh* And here the Losiers are again ... along with the mayor apparently sticking his tongue out and the city councillor on the right looking less than enthused at being there.

Well-timed goof shots FTW.

--------
Aaaaaaand, for your viewing pleasure: The back of my head.


A freelancer took this, and sent it along. Only time I've ever posted a pic of me at work, and what am I doing? I'm having a sip of fine ice brandy at a wine tasting one Saturday. Brilliant.

Hey, c'mon, this is journalism. The pay sucks. Let me have my perks.

Adventures in Redneckery

Observe, below:


Your eyes aren't deceiving you. It's a home made raft. With their backs to us are seated two young lads on a dislocated car backseat. Others weren't so picky. They're seated on what look to be barrels.

Also, that smoke from the centre? Yeah, that's from a barbecue. Not visible (but, boy, you know it's there) is a cooler filled with generous and probably illegal quantities of booze.

The water level was a bit low, so there weren't too many places where they could just drift like that. They'd probably have to get out pretty often, hip waders and all, to drag the divine contraption past the shallows and back into the pools.

So where did I see this marvelous invention ... and hundreds of others just like it?

Read on.

--------

Regardez: The Pollett River Run.

It is a springtime event, where the good folks of Albert County and beyond celebrate the seasonal awakening by a public appreciation of nature and the wild rivers of the Maritimes.

It's also, like, a vortex of redneckery.


You'll notice the numerous canoes in the background. That's the exception to the rule. The vast majority of vessels on the Pollett River that morning were of a somewhat more haphazard type.


I don't even know what that is. But it floats, and it stores enough beer, so, what the hell, it's good enough.

These fine lads were even lazier than me and my buddy, just got themselves an inflatable raft.


For their laziness, the redneck gods punished them by having their cheap paddles snap. A cruel blow, made easier to bear by the redneck gods' granting the two lads enough beer to see them down to the other end.

Others (quite a few, actually) took the time and effort to build their boats from ... well, scrap.

And to lock the event very firmly into this rollercoaster of redneckery is this baffling image:


Guh. Stars and Bars. Not the first time I've seen it in New Brunswick, but just as baffling. What, is that like the redneck national flag or something? It just makes no sense. Curiously, I've also seen it on some First Nations reserves during festivals.

I wanted to post a whole cavalcade of pics like that, but we never got the chance ... thanks to the lower than usual water levels, we just zipped by in our flat-bottomed plastic canoe, leaving the clunky rafts to founder on the shoals. From what I heard, there were hundreds.

Here's my guide, Ryan, a buddy of mine from the paper. Growing up in Riverview, across the mudstream from Moncton, he often took the 40-minute drive to the dark depths of Albert County to join the throng on the bridges along the way, laughing as the silly rafters capsize or hit rocks in years where the river was more than a couple feet deep.


However, he never actually went on the run himself in the past. He had to wait a few years until he could con a certain perpetual tourist to come with him. And even then he had to sell it as a "cultural experience."


These pics are taken with his little point and shoot. No way I was bringing my SLR. Kudos to Monsieur Ross for taking the occasional shot of me.

Shame. I could have stayed there all day. At the other end was basically a giant, drunken party in the middle of nowhere. A couple grim-faced RCMP officers could be seen by the road, but their function was mainly to check people for drunk driving as they came in and out. If there's ever any problems, they're fucked. Hundreds of revellers vs. a dozen mounties wouldn't end well.

And where there's rednecks, there's mudpools:


That's one of the many trucks and other assorted vessels whose owners prove their manhood through the time honoured ritual of getting 'em stuck in the mud, to the great cheers and adulation of the assembled, plaid-clad multitude.

No fear, though. They got, like, the biggest truck in the place to hitch up a rope and haul 'im out.

Yep. A rope. You can imagine how that ended:


Yeah. Anyone standing near the thing when the rope finally snapped like a piece of string would have had their heads taken clean off.

*Sigh* It was so awesome. But I had to head back to Miramichi, so we bade farewell to the party and headed back to Riverview, but I'll never forget my first-hand introduction to the great voyageur traditions of the great and storied province of New Brunswick.


Also, we ran out of beer on the way down.

The reason I barely get any visits

This appeared as part of my monthly column, based on the visit from the next post down. Given how my friend's visit was my first from the Ontario crowd in, oh, two years, I figured it was column worthy.

---

The gods decided long ago to punish me for some forgotten insult, and their vengeance often takes unusual and creative, if petty, forms.

One of those forms basically boils down to divinely enforced solitude.

Now, look, I like the Maritimes. I like Miramichi. And I've been here long enough such that if I want a weekend away, I've got a decent pick of cities with hosts willing to put up with me snoozing on their couch for a weekend here and there.

Sometimes, though, you just want a visit from old friends in Ontario.

Living in Miramichi, it's always been a bit out of the way for my buddies back home who're reluctant to shell out hundreds of bucks in airfare just to come visit for a weekend.

Limited vacation time all around also makes it tough for me and them to take extended time off to make the trip worthwhile.

I go back there for a visit once or twice a year, which is nice, but when they come here, it's another story, where I get to play the gracious host and show them the wonders of the Maritimes, where most of them have never been.

Also, it's cheaper.

Occasionally one hardy band or another will make the effort to try come down. And when they do ... well, the gods usually have a plan.

Two friends were going to drive down here from Toronto and spend a few days, last summer. So I booked the days off, planned the itinerary, stocked the booze and prayed for decent weather.

The weather was gorgeous, and I enjoyed it tremendously when the weekend came.

My friends enjoyed the weather also ... in Toronto. Car trouble killed their travel plans.

The gods had spoken, but I decided the gods were to be defied.

This time, another set of mates were coming down. On past trips back to Ontario, I'd wowed them with tales of tubing, thick woods, fine beaches and ATVing. Now they decided to come chill for themselves.

And they were flying. No car trouble for them, they were going to be carried to the Maritimes on silver wings for a long weekend of drifting down the river, dozing off with beer in hand.

It would have been glorious.

Would have been.

See, when the gods (and make no mistake: this is their fault) looked upon my vacation plans and saw that they were good, they decided to take drastic action.

Remember that freakish weekend in August where there were tornados in Toronto?

Yeah. That weekend.

Flying's a little tough when Torontonians used to nice, quiet weather have a few twisters winding down Yonge and Bloor, so most of the flights were either cancelled or delayed.

Then it started to rain. My buddies said they'd try again next year. Bums.

So I resigned myself to a couple more years without visitors from Ontario, until one more friend e-mailed the other day to say they'd be in Halifax for work for a few days. Any chance of meeting up?

Halifax. Wonderful city, much to see, jewel of the Maritimes and four bloody hours' drive away.

No problem, she said, cheerfully. We'll meet halfway.

Halfway? Um...okaaaaaay.

Gods bless her, she didn't know a whole lot about the Maritimes. Halfway between Miramichi and Halifax is ... well, Sackville.

It was a nice, picturesque town of which I knew absolutely nothing. But, hey. A visit is a visit, so I set out to find what the hell there is to see and do in Sackville.

Turned out there was a lot, and my visitor was an outdoorsy type. So the fateful Saturday came, and I got up nice and early to head down there before her to scope the place out.

Walked out my building to find it was raining. And cold. And hideously windy. After what had been weeks of a toasty, unseasonably warm spring.

You bastards, I thought. You know who I meant, and so did they.

But I headed down there anyway. The rain stopped, but the cold and wind didn't, so when she turned up I greeted her sheepishly, and pointed her to a few things to do and see in Sackville that didn't involve freezing outside.

Nuh-uh, she said. We're going for a long stroll on the hopelessly exposed boardwalks of the waterfowl park. And then we're going to find a dirt road and you're going to take me to see the Fundy coast.

I blinked. Then smiled. I'd forgotten: This was someone who once went to Antarctica for fun.

So we found some out-of-way dirt road forgotten by the civilization of man and headed down to the coast. We dithered around some cliffs, and almost sank out of sight in beaches that turned out to be made mostly of quicksand, and laughed at how the dirt road was actually better than many paved roads around here. Took the usual cheesy pictures.

All with a freezing wind dogging us every step of the way until the sad hour of her return to Halifax came. It was awesome.

So it took awhile, but I finally got a visit. All I had to do was wait for someone who was prepared to join me in sticking the middle finger out to the heavens.

Of course, her flight was delayed on the way back home the next day. Her Facebook status said something about freak snowstorms, although I sure she was only joking.

And if she wasn't ... hey, the defeated gods had to save face somehow.

A slice of quaint in no man's land

So my friend Christelle came down for a visit...to Halifax, four hours from Miramichi. Neither of us were evil enough to demand the other drive all the way to either town, so we met halfway, near the border with Nova Scotia.

Sackville. Population: 5,000. Student population: 2,500.


I was having marvellous, marvellous flashbacks to U of T...most of the buildings of the Mount Allison University campus pretty much blew my alma mater, UTM, out of the water hands down.

Didn't take too many pictures because it was bloody cold and I tried to keep my hands in my pockets, but the place was surprisingly nice, and pretty much deserted.



In the middle of sackville is this giant waterfowl park. Pretty skimpy on the waterfowl that windy, chilly day, but I've always been a sucker for good boardwalk, and this had a whole network, winding through these marshes surrounded by suburb.

Still, there were some. Dunno what these were, but I'm sure they were Canadian:


And maybe someone can help me...what is this, exactly?


We were pretty sure it was a beaver ... I mean, I could have been a ground hog.

Yeah. All I have to say about Sackville.

Thoughts on Gilles

This appeared April 9. Occasionally they force us to write columns on whatever we want. Sounds like a nice idea, but by the time my turn rolls around, I usually have no ideas, so I hammer out some fluff piece that I cringe to look at.

This one, however, actually turned out pretty nicely. I can see where I could have tweaked it some, but I'm running it as it appeared.

----

My favourite federal party leader is one I will probably never be able to vote for.

Bloc chief Gilles Duceppe never runs candidates outside Quebec, and I don't have any immediate plans to move there, so, sorry. No Bloc votes from me anytime soon.

Don't get me wrong: I would never actually vote for the party and don't like what it stands for. Just Duceppe. With him, it's basically all Quebec, all the time.

Other party leaders, regardless of political stripe, well, they have to do all the usual maneuvering and horse trading and maybe-promises to appeal to the widest electorate possible.

Not Duceppe. No candidates outside Quebec means never having to care what the rest of the country thinks. Just Quebeckers, who are still a complicated lot, but probably not as complicated as the entire country put together.

His only apparent barometer when looking at any kind of federal legislation is: Is this good for Quebec, or is it not?

Or, more cynically, is supporting this going to appeal to Quebecker voters, or not?

That's why I like him. You always know where you stand with him. His whole political universe is Quebec. And it's much easier for an outside observer to predict how a smaller universe works than a larger one.

Well, actually, that seems to have changed a bit this week. He's in New Brunswick on a cross-country tour, apparently to talk to Canadians about their thoughts on Quebec sovereignty, starting in Fredericton.

Logical choice. The Quebeckers, and the French language, are tightly woven into the fabric of Canada, so where better to talk about it than the country's only (technically) bilingual province?

On the one hand, support in Quebec for separation or sovereignty or whatever it's called now is at its lowest ebb in a long time, so much so that the great crusaders of separation, the Parti Quebecois, aren't even in power.

On the other, separation, or the idea of it, is not going away in our lifetimes, and Duceppe is at least paying lip service to the idea that, you know, maybe the rest of the country has an opinion on the subject.

I say "lip service," because I'm not sure Duceppe actually cares what the rest of the country thinks. This may be just a public relations exercise to try con the rest of the country into thinking he's not the big, bad bogeyman he's made out to be.

Maybe he thinks if Canadians realize a sovereign Quebec will be no threat, and a greater partner outside Canada than within it, they'll shrug and say "oh, okay. Go in peace, mon frere, see you at the U.N."

Sorry though, Gilles, but I'm not holding by breath.

I know, I know ... occasionally someone says 'well, let's kick 'em out.' I've said that a couple of times. Usually after polishing off one too many doses of hangover-in-a-bottle with my Ottawa buddies.

When you sober up, though, there's no real support in anglophone Canada for Quebec leaving, of course. If they did, it would hurt. Both us and them.

See, as much as I dislike the Bloc, I love having them in parliament, for much the same reasons I tend to look favourably on Duceppe. You know where they stand: All Quebec, all the time.

Also, I'd much rather have the separatist/sovereigntists right where I can see them.

Parliament makes the law. It sets the budget, it carries out the work of this country. A sovereign Quebec would have to work out trade deals with Canada, or be choked to death by economic stagnation.

Now, where would you rather be when dealing with Ottawa on how it's going to impact your economy: In parliament, around the table where the decision gets made, and you get to vote on it ... or outside the door politely asking for an appointment?

The Bloc is a powerful, if sometimes really bloody infuriating, voice for Quebec in Canada. Especially now, when we're half-way through what's looking like the first decade of a long period of minority government.

Minority parliaments are great for Quebec. They have more clout now than they did when they were actually the official opposition back in the 1990s, provided they're smart about the deals they make with the rest of the opposition. Or the government, for that matter.

I think Duceppe knows that. I don't even like to call him a separatist, because for all he says in public and to his voters, I'm not sure he actually believes in taking Quebec out of Canada, where it has more power than any other province.

He's more a regionalist, working to get his party the best deal possible. Which, in practice, tends to translate into an insane amount of privileges no other province would ever be able to wrangle out of Ottawa.

Hope someone makes that point to him during one of his talks. Maybe he doesn't realize how much that pisses people off.

So if he says he wants to talk about separation or sovereignty or constitutional reform with the rest of Canada, sure, Gilles. Come on down, have a chat. Hear for yourself how the rest of Canada isn't keen on separation, and take it back to Quebec.

And hey, as much as we can call him an agitator just for turning up, and even though it's probably just lip service, at least he wants to know what we think, or says he does.

Whiskers, ho!

After some two years in exile, I thought I should look the part. That includes outrageous whiskers.


Basically, I stopped shaving just before heading to Brazil for Christmas, and didn't start out again for a couple months.

Here's the result: A great man-beard whose depths are mighty and ragged.

Aaand, a close up shot.


Trimmed it down to a more manageable stubble after a record two months, though. Itched like a motherfucker.