Lions and tigers and bears oh my, or, how my son went to sea

I took my son and grandson to the airport yesterday, we made a day trip out of it by going into Halifax a little early and strolling the waterfront to see the International Buskers Festival. My son tells me it is one of the best in the world. We stopped to watch a couple of performers, my grandson requested a balloon creation of a dragon from a ten foot tall man in a red suit and top hat (he was on stilts I think), and we had potstickers, egg rolls and naan rolls at the Farmers Market.

We happened to see the HMCS Sackville moored at a dock with a big sign saying it was free to tour ("by donation"). It is a decommissioned corvette veteran of three wars. My son said it was similar to a ship he served on when he was in the naval reserves. So we went on board and my son gave us the tour. He explained in detail how everything worked, showed us the sailors quarters, the engine room, the helm, the guns and a host of other things. Since my son was the helmsman on his ship when he was on board (in the reserves he did "contracts" of four weeks or so out at sea) he was able to explain in great detail how it all worked. Everything was mechanical, almost no electronics or electrical components at all. They communicated with each other via bells and speaking tubes.

He told us that they did duty in four hour shifts and the shift from 12AM to 4AM was known as "mids". When he was on mids he would sleep leaning on the wheel. The compass ticked whenever it changed direction by a degree, the ticking woke him up and he would adjust the course of the ship. He said he was very good at it and every time he went to sea they always put him on the helm. He sailed up and down the east coast of North America from Labrador to the Caribbean. He said he felt privileged to have had that experience.

In this ship the sleeping quarters and the mess were the same rooms. There were racks for hanging hammocks from the ceiling and below the racks were tables and benches for meals. The hammocks were very narrow and each rack held four hammocks in a space of about six feet in width. Pretty tight! My son said that on his ship they had bunks not hammocks, and the bunks were in a separate room from the mess. But it was still pretty crowded.

Before that we spent some time in Prince Edward Island at a cottage that belongs to my son's inlaws, near a beach. The whole area is mosquito infested, you pretty much had to stay indoors or be thoroughly bug-doped-up to go outside. At the beach were deer fly. The water was warm and the beach quite shallow for a long way with a series of sandbars that you could swim to. Some people sat on the beach in the sun and never went in the water. I quickly found out why: if you went in the water and came out covered in salt, the deer fly zeroed in on you. It was impossible to sit still once you got wet, the deer fly saw to that.

I took Hapi there with me and she quite enjoyed the beach. She went out as deep as she could while still keeping her feet on the bottom, then wandered up and down the beach to check out all the people and kids in the water. She kept a close eye on me and when I went out in the deep water she tried to follow. She did actually swim a bit but mostly she walked on her front legs and dogpaddled her rear legs. The kids at the beach quite enjoyed her.

After a few days of that I was thoroughly insect-bitten and just wanted to go home. Hapi does not travel well and she was glad to go home too. We spent a couple of hours cleaning up the cottage before leaving, one of the owners arrived the day after we left and was impressed at how clean and tidy we left the place. Back in Nova Scotia we mostly just hung out. My son is training for a marathon in the fall so he did some running, we took Hapi to the Reservoir every day and on one day we went to the zoo. It is a really nice zoo, just the right size for an hour or two of walking around looking at the creatures without burning out on too much zoo.

It is a private zoo, run mainly by one family who live on the premises. All the animals have names and little placards saying when they were born and how long they have been with the zoo. Every year they sell off some of their animals. Last year when I went they were selling guinea pigs and pygmy ponies, this year it is piglets. The llamas are in a large pen that you can walk into and pet them. Last year they let the peacocks run free but this year they are penned; someone said it was probably because they were losing them to local coyotes.

There's a resident bald eagle who is injured and can only hop-fly. There used to be two bears now there is only one; the jaguar, siberian tiger and half a dozen lions were all sleeping. One lion slept on his back with his legs in the air! Lots of gibbons and macaques, fallow deer and goats, and one very noisy cockatoo. Of course there was a corn feed dispenser for hand feeding various creatures whose pens clustered around the dispensers. Two huge pythons slept entwined with each other in the reptile house.

Today is my first day of getting caught up on chores and whatnot since the boys left yesterday. Pulled up all my garlic, picked and froze a bunch of green beans, pulled up all the pea stalks and weeded, weeded, weeded. Cleaned out the shed in readiness for stacking the firewood which is currently piled in the driveway. With cold and wet in May and June and then a heat wave for most of July, the garden is not doing so well. Two packets of basil seeds planted and none survived, cucumbers barely surviving, peas so-so and half the potato plants look ill. The blueberries did not do as well as last year and I've been lazy about picking them so the birds are doing it for me. The birds also planted sunflowers all over the yard and they are not doing well but they are flowering. The daylilies are happy though.

Now that the garlic is done I'm thinking about planting carrots and a fall crop of peas. My beans take a breather and then produce a second crop later in the summer. I used to replant them but I don't think I will this year. The tomatoes reseed themselves, I just transplant all the ones I like into one garden bed and pull up the rest as weeds. My strawberry bed has had the biscuit and hardly any of them came up this year, however tomatoes have taken over the strawberry bed so I just let them be.

TBD...

Weekend Tancookers

Isaac had to leave a bit early to take Tristan to spend some time with his PEI grandparents, Tristan and Dobby were being dropped off there before Phelan and Isaac headed home to Toronto. They all left early Friday morning, and then I went into the Valley to do laundry and have lunch with my friend Lin. She suggested I call Mel in Halifax and invite myself out to her Tancook Island house, which I did. As it happened Mel was planning to go there anyway and was happy to have the company, but she did have to get some work done over the weekend. So I brought along books, laptop and knitting to self-entertain, but all of it was just extra baggage as there was never any time to "self-entertain".

The trip to Tancook Island was fabulous, from start to finish.

You get to Tancook Island by a walk-on ferry out of Chester. This weekend Chester was celebrating Heritage Days in honour of its 250th anniversary (1759-2009), so the Bluenose II was anchored in the harbour for the occasion. When our ferry left the dock at Chester it headed straight out toward the Bluenose, as if the ferry captain intended to ram it! At the last possible moment the ferry veered to port and gave out a great horn blast. The crew of the Bluenose waved at us, no doubt grinning in relief rather than greeting. All of us passengers with cameras got lots of close-up photos of the Bluenose.



I found out later that our first mate used to be the first mate of the Bluenose II, perhaps he put the captain up to that little stunt.

We also passed a schooner race, it was quite spectacular to see all these large two-masted schooners heeled over in the breeze speeding past us. More photos.




At the Tancook Island wharf we met some Island women that Mel knew who helped carry our bags to her house. Mel told me that she was expecting two more women friends to arrive on the evening ferry, they were attending the Lunenburg Folk Fest and would be spending the night on Tancook.

This particular weekend there was a two-day island-wide yard sale, so after unpacking all our food and personal effects, we set out with Mel's friend Mary to hit the yard sales. Mary lives in Portugal but spends summers on Tancook.

There are about 150 permanent residents on Tancook ("Tancookers") and many summer people. Some of the houses are well over a hundred years old. Mel's house appears to be built smack in the middle of the road, the road has to curl around it. It looks rectangular, but inside you can clearly see that it is shaped like a parallelogram!



They used to build schooners on Tancook, and the old boat-building family of Nova Scotia, the Stevens, has a branch of the family on Tancook. Mel's house used to be a Stevens house. The rest of the Stevens' live around Lunenburg. Both the original and the second Bluenose were built by Lunenburg Stevens'. That's the ship on the Canadian dime. Nowadays Tancook is famous for sauerkraut, although I saw no cabbages while I was there.

There are quite a few cars and trucks on Tancook, but none of them are licensed or insured, and hardly any have mufflers. Some residents drink and drive, so you have to be careful. One fellow came to a screeching halt when I was standing by the road, he yelled out to me "Hello sweetheart!" A few more words and it was very clear he was so drunk he could hardly speak, let alone drive.

Also met a young fellow, no more than 14 I'm sure, driving back and forth across the island in his new $450 Chevy S10. One of the women I was with flagged him down and admonished him to drive slower and not hit anybody.

When we were at a yard sale at the far end of the island, Mel suddenly remembered the beets she left boiling on the stove. She hurried off, hitching a ride home to save the beets, or at the very least, her house. Mary and I continued on, spotted a deer in the road, turned around and walked leisurely back to Mel's. We stopped at the Island Cafe for ice cream cones on the way.

Every car that passed us, you could hardly see the face of the driver but you could always see their waving hand. One driver said she always waved because she never knew if the person on the road was someone she knew or not. Another driver was an older gentleman with flowing white hair and no teeth in a bright red car. He played chicken with Mary and me on the road, and laughed as he passed us.

The beets turned out to be a lost cause, but the house was saved. We started preparing dinner and then at 8pm strolled down to the ferry dock to meet Mel's friends, Marilyn and Louise. Between the food we all contributed it was quite the feast. We also had several bottles of wine to go with. Jan dropped by and since she didn't drink I offered her my sweet apple cider from the Valley.

We had a marvelous dinner by candlelight, five sixty-ish women. Then Jan suggested that we go look for a dark place to view the Perseids meteor shower. A bit hard to do since the moon was still pretty full, but we set out in Jan's car to a beach on the far side of the island. Five sixty year old women cruising along at 15 kph in an unlicensed, uninsured old car with no muffler.

We passed the island graveyard twice, many of the gravestones had Christmas lights on them, so the graveyard looked quite gay.

Turns out there was a party going on at the beach, with a big bonfire. We hung out there for awhile and then headed off to the other end of the island in search of darkness. None to be had, and in any case it was a bit early for the meteor shower so there you are. Jan dropped us all off at Mel's house and then headed out again, I suspect back to that beach party.

On Sunday we thought we'd try to go swimming. We had heard that the water was warm, a bit unusual and not to be missed. I had left my camera in Jan's car the night before so we went to her house to get it and Jan said she'd join our expedition.



We had a map of the island trails and set out on foot to find a good swimming beach. The trails of course did not match the map, but we encountered lots of raspberries, gooseberries and chanterelles, so that was OK. I got a chance to chat with each of the women individually and they were all very interesting people. Jan is an "experimental" novelist and creative writing teacher from Manhattan, a sober alcoholic who likes to party. Marilyn is a Halifax doctor with hair dyed blond and red. She showed us all the things she could do with two-coloured hair, alternately a redhead or a blonde (or both simultaneously!) depending on how she arranged her hair. Louise is an English professor and a grandmother who owns a summer house in PEI but is very interested in finding a house on Tancook. We also met Gay, a retired English prof from Montreal who tried to live fulltime on Tancook but found the winters too depressing so now she winters "away".




We finally decided to go swimming off a dock on the far side of the island, but if that was warm water then I'm just way too hot-blooded to appreciate it. Marilyn loved it, the rest of us just made a quick in-and-out to say we did. We picked up Gay at her house and headed to the Cafe for more ice cream cones, then Louise and Marilyn packed up to go back on the Sunday evening ferry. I didn't have to be home for anything so I stayed over one more night with Mel. We took all our leftovers down to Jan's house and she made something called Pezzole? The basic ingredients were chicken and hominy, with added lime juice, salsa, hot pepper, and fresh tomatoes. Very interesting.

But before we ate we took Jan's canoe out for a paddle down the shore to a little cove where we landed for a while to poke around on the shore. As we were heading back one of the local men showed up in his motor boat to do a bit of handjigging. He said he saw fish jumping right by our canoe so he headed over to try his luck. It was amazing to watch, I've never seen anyone handjig before. It's kind of simple, just a fishing line with a hook on it that he "jigged" by hand. All the while keeping up a patter in a classic Tancooker accent about the fine art of handjigging and hook-removal, when you inadvertently hook yourself in the face. You don't want to know any more than that.

We ate Jan's Pezzole and then headed back to Mel's. Mel had not yet gotten any of the work done that she planned for the weekend, so I went to bed and she stayed up to work. We had to be up early in the morning to pack up and catch the 8am ferry back to Chester. The weather had turned and was grey and drizzly, but somehow a drizzly Monday morning is just fine after a lovely sunny weekend having fun. Gay was at the ferry dock, I guess heading to Chester for shopping.

I like this picture of the ferry boat and some fish boats; to me it looks like the ferry boat is the mother ship and the fish boats are all the baby boats...


The ferry has a small crane on it for lifting cargo onto the aft deck. It can carry one or two small cars, but you can't drive on, the car has to be lifted onboard.

This one was taken by Marilyn. Not only is she a doctor but she also has a degree in cinematography; she didn't have a camera with her but she loved taking pictures with mine...


We all piled onto the early morning ferry and it began to leave, just as a young man on a bike came tearing up to the end of the dock, looking all pathetic and soaked. He was the lone camper on the island that weekend. News travels fast there, while none of us had seen him, we all knew of his presence. Anyway, the ferry captain saw him and put the ferry into reverse and backed up to the dock again. Mel and Gay joined a crew man in helping to get the young man's bike and bags onto the ferry and then invited him to sit with us for the ferry ride. He was from Knoxville Tennessee, cycling around parts of Quebec and Nova Scotia on holiday.

He told us some interesting stories. He drove to Albany NY in his car and then cycled up to the border, through the Adirondacks. At the border, US Customs wouldn't let him cross on a bike! Apparently there is a rule forbidding bike crossings! So he tried to get the Customs guy to drive him across, and that didn't work, so he waited five hours before he found a cardriver willing to take him and his bike across the border. Unbelievable. Anyway, he cycled up to Ottawa and then through the province of Quebec to Quebec City, where he caught the train to Halifax. The province of Quebec has marvelous dedicated bike routes all over the province, making cycling there a joy.

Once in Nova Scotia he began cycling down the South Shore. He told someone that he had a fantasy of becoming a hermit on an island, and they told him about the Tancook Island ferry so he had to check it out. He came across and asked at the Cafe where he could camp, and the proprietor told him he could camp on Lee's land on the far side of the island. So that he did. He said he had a great slate beach all to himself for the three days that he was there. He was a three-day hermit.

On the weekend the ferry leaves at 9am, but on weekdays it leaves at 8am so kids can get to the high school in Chester (little kids go to school on the island, right now there are four kids in the island school). The young man from Knoxville didn't know that, so he thought he was early when he arrived at the dock at 8.30am.

Good thing the ferry captain doesn't ram schooners or leave late passengers behind!

I found out later that the Gulf Stream came further north than usual this August, so the water on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia was unusually warm. But on Saturday night a northwest wind blew all the warm water in Mahone Bay out to sea, so that's why everyone told us how warm it was, and why when we went swimming on Sunday it was frigid.

When I got home there were lots of messages on my answering machine: Sheila wondering if I was going walking, Ruth offering me some of her surplus beans, and Nancy enquiring as to whether I was available to house-sit. So here I am, eating Ruth's beans in Nancy's house, and going walking with Sheila in the morning!

No Thanksgiving weekend

On Saturday Dave, Johanna and I set out for Gambier Island again. This is the Thanksgiving weekend, but we had no plans for a Thanksgiving dinner, we were just going to hang out and relax. We went over in Dave and Johanna's little runabout, then Dave took it back to Horseshoe Bay and caught the ferry to Langdale and then the foot ferry to New Brighton on Gambier Island. Johanna and I went down to meet him at the dock, but he arrived before we did and was already in the little Gambier Island General Store when we got there. So we had soup and beer for lunch at the store. We all walked back to the house. In the evening we had some leftover sausage from the previous evening, and some salad and boiled potatoes.

Sunday was still a nice day, although the weatherman was predicting rain for later in the day. Fortunately the weatherman was wrong. Johanna had some work she wanted to get done so Dave and I went out in their inflatable kayak to explore West Bay. Although there is no road around the bay, there are still quite a few large homes there, so we just cruised around looking at them. We also saw four seals basking on logs in the sunshine. Three of them slipped into the water and disappeared when they saw us, but the fourth must have been deeply asleep, he didn't move. When we were almost next to him he woke up and looked around for his buddies and then at us with a look of surprise on his face. I think he decided it was too late to do anything, and he just stayed on his log as we paddled by.

For dinner we hunted through all the cupboards and fridge to see what was available, and put together a meal of tinned salmon, salad and an omelet.

Sometime during the night the rain started and by Monday morning it had settled in for the duration. We decided to take the 4:00pm ferry back to the mainland, and just read until then. At the New Brighton ferry dock we listened to folks describing their Thanksgiving dinners the night before. As it turned out, the Langdale ferry was quite late, we did not get into Horseshoe Bay until after 6:00pm. But we decided to have dinner at a local restaurant and Dave and I shared a pizza while Johanna had a seafood soup.

It was kind of nice to come home in the rain, knowing that we managed to enjoy a couple of days of sunshine before that!

Set back and relax

Thanks to Dave and Johanna and Leia for a wonderful weekend on Gambier Island!

I really enjoyed it!

After five days of driving hard to get here, it was really nice to just sit in the sun, go for walks in the woods, and enjoy the ocean views...

The Gambier Island parade

I'm so used to getting up early that today is no exception.

















Leia rouses Dave fairly early for breakfast and getting outdoors, I was up not long after.











We took her for a walk through the woods and down to the wharf.


























Today the Gambier Island community is having a kind of harvest festival, there will be a parade, a craft fair, musical entertainment and community supper.













Johanna and I went down to view the parade and the craft fair.
















The parade consisted of a couple of vehicles, one clown with a small sidekick, a dog in costume, and another dog riding a motorbike (with human help).










And lots of followers.
















They paraded from the New Brighton wharf, past the General Store and up the hill to the Community Centre.













We went for another walk down to the wharf, where we watched some kids rolling a big cedar log in the water...















...with their dog...





































...and a windsurfer...














...while Leia chased sticks in the water.



Later in the evening we returned for the community supper: barbecued chicken or ribs, corn on the cob, Caesar salad and lots of different cakes for desert. Unfortunately Johanna had injured her back and was uncomfortable sitting for very long so we only stayed long enough to eat. I grabbed a rice krispie square and a brownie for desert. We went back to their house and watched Ghost on the VCR.

For once, staying in a cabin in the woods, I have cell phone reception and can make calls. I have to arrange to transfer to another friend's place on the Sunshine Coast on Monday, and my son Josh has offered to take us flying some time that week so I have to talk to him about the arrangements for that.

We have a nice long chat, me standing on the deck under the stars with my little cell phone.

I must say, that is one bit of modern technology I really appreciate, the ability to be in the middle of nowhere enjoying the scenery and still keeping in touch with friends and family.

On the west coast

I woke up pretty early, as usual. While I was puttering around getting breakfast, I noticed a couple in a campsite nearby pushing their van out of the site onto the road. I walked down the road to their site, and asked if they needed help.

I said, I have cables.

The guy said, You saved our lives! So I went and got my truck and cables.

I can never remember the proper order to attach everything but I do have the original owner's manual for the truck and there are instructions there. They didn't know the order either so I pulled out the manual. We laughed over the first few pages of instructions: lots of warnings about making sure both cars are parked near each other and turned off. We had to untie the front rope on the kayak to open my hood.

Their car started up right away, we joked about not leaving MP3 players on overnight (apparently the cause of their dead battery), and they offered me a bottle of ice wine in thanks for my aid. I gratefully accepted. Further, the woman showed me a better knot to use on my front tie down, something her father taught her.

They were moving to Toronto, they had family there. They were the second young couple I met on this trip that were moving from the Vancouver area to Ontario.




Vancouver is expensive, it turns out I am not the only person who has left because it is just too expensive.

As expected, the drive into Osoyoos was spectacular. I could not take pictures of it, the steep winding road requires full attention.



Unfortunately the ticking sound was not going away but rather getting more insistent.

I debated stopping to get advice from a mechanic on what the matter might be, but after running through all the possibilities in my head, I decided I didn't want to know.

I would just keep driving as long as possible and deal with the problem when it happened. I speculated on the fan belt, an engine problem, a transmission problem, something merely caught somewhere flapping in the breeze. But the fact that pressing the gas pedal made it worse and coasting downhill with my foot off the gas pedal made it go away was not reassuring.

Somewhere in Manning Park the rain started. By Hope it was coming down in buckets, drowning out the ticking sound. That made me feel better.

In Surrey I phoned Johanna on my cell, to tell her I was arriving. She and Dave were planning to go to Gambier Island around supper time, it looked like I would arrive just in time.

When I got to New Westminster I decided to stop at the garage where I used to go for all my truck repairs. They would remember me and my truck, and they did. I told them my truck problem and asked if I was safe to continue driving to the Sunshine Coast this weekend.

Stanley said, Don't drive.

I asked, Do you have any idea what it might be?

He said he wasn't sure but it sounded like a bearing in the engine to do with the lifters. I am paraphrasing here, I don't remember his exact words, but basically he thought that if it wasn't serious now it soon would be. He said I should park it and then apologetically said that he didn't think they had room for it this weekend.

I said not to worry, I was staying with friends just up the road and could park there; when I get back from Gambier and the Sunshine Coast I'd call and set up an appointment for the truck. Then I continued on up the hill to Dave and Johanna's place.

They wanted to leave for the island almost immediately, so in less than half an hour we took the kayak off the truck and into their side alley, I hauled out several bags and boxes from the truck and picked out clothes to last me a week on the coast.












I really wished I could take the truck, I wanted to try out the kayak there, but it just wasn't meant to be I guess.

We piled into their car, Dave, Johanna, Leia the dog and myself, and drove out to Horseshoe Bay at the far west side of West Vancouver.










We drove to Horseshoe Bay where we transferred all our boxes and bags to their little runabout and carefully picked our way out of the marina and into Howe Sound.







The Sound was pretty choppy and we had to go slow, the little boat bounced from wave to wave.










Eventually we made it to the West Bay wharf on Gambier Island.

Their house is a short walk up the hill from the wharf, Johanna and I walked there to get their island car while Dave moored the boat at their buoy.


Everyone on Gambier has an island car; these are old vehicles that are just for use on the island. Most of them are miracles on wheels, it's amazing that they still run at all. Dave and Johanna's car is actually their old mainland vehicle, so in relatively good shape compared to other island cars. Dave boasts that he has working signal lights!

Even though I travelled a relatively short distance today, it seems like a radical change for a single day. From driving all day to finally being at rest in a house in the coastal rain forest, with a real bed for the night and no plans to drive any further for a week or more.