The Third World

On Wednesday, I drove to the third world.

It was about a half-hour drive down the 117, in a town called Baie-Ste.-Anne, named for Acadia's favourite saint. The cloudy sky couldn't take away from the scenery, a mix of forest, rivers and coastline dotted occasionally with boats of all kinds. Seemed nice, until I got to the place, anyway.

See, about a month ago, a man from here froze to death after the provincial energy utility disconnected his hydro. On Wednesday, I went to his house. Here's the story, have a gander before reading on:

http://miramichileader.canadaeast.com/front/article/284138

This happened before I started, and it's not my beat, but the boss figured we ought to do something since it's in out coverage area, so I wrote it as a feature, not news.

I tried to bring across what a godsdamned hellhole that was. And it wasn't even some random shack on the outskirts of town, either. The post office was right across the road, next to the bloody RCMP detachment, of all things. It was maybe a three, four room house, but every room was filthy. You could barely see the floor for the scraps of clothing and blankets, and tons of propane tanks. There's a picture attached to the story, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. You had to have been there, in the dark, with the stench of shit and kerosene in your nostrils to really get a sense for what a place that was.

The brother, Bert, changed his story a couple of times, and I notice when doing archive searches of other papers that some of what's printed there is different from what he told me. Either they fucked up, or he was unreliable. That's not uncommon. He was obviously traumatized by what happened and people in that situation, their heads can be a little screwy. This is unrelated, but I've found that sometimes the worst sources are eyewitnesses.

But that doesn't change the fact that this shouldn't have happened. And it's just a glimpse of what some parts of this province are like. Out in Ontario, we make jokes about how poor the Maritimes are, and I guess I knew what I would find. But knowing is one thing, and seeing it is another.

And I'm going to be here for years. I like to think that's the worst I'll see, but this is definitely a rougher place than what I'm used to. I'm settling in fine, but having the chance to see that for myself and have to write about it in a way that brings the reader right in there...makes me feel like a real reporter. Odd that I should feel so good about something so terrible, but there it is.

This is such a strange place.

And so it begins

I finally got around to starting that blog that was mentioned in the sacred texts of the same unspecified religion that foretold my coming. The world is now one step closer to the apocalypse.

Anyone who is mentally disturbed enough to actually enjoy my weekly "News from Exile" e-mails - which will keep on coming anyway - will expect the same type of pseudo-humour here. Occasionally, I'll dip into politics or personal philosophical musings, but mostly it'll be updates on my adventures, with a lot of descriptions of Miramichi, that world-renowned hive of human activity.

Sometimes, it will seem like dispatches from another planet, and not only because of the extraterrestrial origin that is one of the more popular explanations for my mannerisms and mode of speech (I tell my friends from Ontario that I'm from South Africa for the same reason I tell the Miramichiers I'm from Charlottetown: It cuts down on the confusion).

This will mainly be because for the first time, I don't really have anyone to hang out with. Aside from my fellow reporters at work, most of whom I get along with great, I just don't have anyone my age to talk to, aside from the guy across from me who likes Final Fantasy, doesn't drink and smokes like a bloody chimney.

So I have a lot more time for introspection and I like to think it's made me more observant. At the very least, it's allowed me to keep pitching stories at work such that I rarely have to ask the boss for newstips. As well, most everyone I know in this country lives in Ontario, and while my exile is necessary and a true godsend (hey, compared to having to go back to Africa...), it won't last forever. When I go back to Ontario, I hope to return to contacts and friendships that won't have dulled. It will make it easier to find a couch to crash on while I hunt for a new place.

That's all that's in my head right now. More to come as more odd things happen to me.