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.

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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.

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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.

God, the Devil and the Maritimes

This was written after I got back from Brazil

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Karma exists. And my only defense against being swallowed by it Sunday was a death grip on my steering wheel.

I'm talking about how a massive snow and sleet storm is a really bad time to come back to the Maritimes after a tropical holiday.

I managed to steal away to Brazil for the holidays, a reunion that brought the family all together in one place for the first time in three years.

Brazil was Brazil. It was nice. It was chaos. It rained every afternoon. And it was bloody, disgustingly hot, with the sweat drenching you from top to toe the moment you wake up and step out of your air-conditioned bedroom.

I had a good time. I got some sun. I got to see the folks. I got to see how my Portuguese is after years of idleness (prognosis: rusty).

But even so, I knew. As I packed my bags and got ready to head down to the airport, I knew there would be payback.

Because, in the dead of winter, I dared escape to another clime that didn't involve scraping frost and digging out. The gods would not be pleased with this inversion of the natural order, and they'd be waiting for me.

So I expected my connection to Moncton to be cancelled or redirected for four hours to another city or something but, aside from a half-hour delay and a couple of really bad turbulence spots, it went swimmingly. Had I cheated my doomed destiny?

No. My non-escape became apparent when I had to get my bags to my car, forcing the cart through an unplowed, two-inch deep part of the parking lot, in the face of a driving wind bombarding my eyes with tiny shards of frozen rain.

Then, of course, the marvelous ordeal of hacking the hardened snow covering off my vehicle so I can see enough to brave the highway back to Miramichi, but after that was done, of course, came the sigh of relief.

The worst was over. All that was left was an hour and a half's drive back to Miramichi, where I could finally unpack and rest up for a bit before mustering the courage to do those dirty dishes that had been mouldering for ten days.

See? That's how much warm weather kills your brain cells. I seriously thought it would be an easy drive.

It wasn't, of course. Up until last weekend, I thought 'weather bomb' was some made-up media catchphrase, not an actual weatherman's term for the hideous situation that made everyone's life a misery for three days and got bad enough to actually claim three lives.

Wasn't the worst weather I, or anyone, had ever driven through. But the roads were poorly plowed, the snow-slash-freezing rain was horizontal and I was battling a couple hours jet lag on top of no sleep during the flight up from South America.

Not a good frame of mind to be driving, even though by that time, the weather bomb was a pitiful shadow of its former self.

Still a formidable shadow, though. The bomb became a dark tunnel through some snowy underworld, though which I crawled at a breakneck 70 kph . Yes, I was that guy. All you guys in your trucks or SUVs can deal with it or pass. I ain't going the speed limit, not with a half-inch of wet snow on the road.

At every milestone, I cursed the weather gods. Just ... not too loudly.

Bit dramatic, I know, but you have to remember, I was standing on a hot beach in a tropical paradise 24 hours before, and I've had one weather-related accident on that road once already. Those aren't fun, and I wasn't interested in a repeat.

Didn't want to be late for work the next day either, burned down city landmarks and all. If you're reading this, I trust you are doing so with a total lack of sympathy, given where I was for my vacation. Imagine how my coworkers must have felt, although I hoped to buy their goodwill with a few Brazilian chocolates and a generous load of tropical coffee purchased from the finest of run-down Rio corner stores. Being late after a Brazilian getaway is a poor way to win the office popularity contest.

Ah, well. I got there, I got back to work and at least the temperature's been decent, at not too far above or below zero.

In Brazil, that would be catastrophic. For me and the Maritimers, it's rather nice.

Good to know my little tropical sojourn hasn't messed up my temperature tolerance.

Staff reporters will offer their views in this space on Wednesday and Friday. Daniel Martins covers the political beat.

A sin against numismatics

Check this out:



It's a 1943 Canadian 50-cent piece, with all the dead space cut out, leaving only the text and coat of arms on the reverse side.

It's a fine piece of Canadiana which I found, of all things, in a special shop in Paraty, that little tourist town in Brazil detailed below.

The guy who ran the place was, I think, from Uruguay, as if it wasn't complicated enough.

I wear it around my neck. Love it to pieces.

Reveillon 2010

I rang in the new year with my family ... on a boat anchored off Rio de Janeiro's famed copacabana beach.

The fireworks display there is legendary, although it was nice to be able to see it without rubbing shoulders with the two million strong crowd of revellers on the beach itself.

Here's the pics, taken by me and my dad. Miss 'em already.










Good bye, 2009, and good fucking riddance. 2009 sucked even worse than 2007. May 2010 capture the hopeful spirit of 2008.