Obligatory Post Too
It has come to my attention that today is the tenth anniversary of when those unpleasant terra-ist people flew those planes into those buildings and killed a bunch of Americans.
Like every other blogger in the world, for some reason I think this calls for a comment.
My comment is: Get over it already.
I don’t disrespect the people who died in that unfortunate incident, nor to I belittle the heroic work done by rescue workers, cleanup crews and hosts around the world in the days immediately following.
But to focus on those 3,000 deaths is to disrespect and belittle some much more serious problems. A casual survey shows that motor vehicle accidents, Alzheimer’s disease, influenza and diabetes each kill more than ten times as many Americans every year, and cardiovascular diseases kill more than three hundred times as many Americans every year. And that’s just American figures, not worldwide. These are real tragedies, going on around us all the time. Somebody do something, please!
Don’t pretend that 9/11 was such a big deal because it was shocking. It’s no surprise that a lot of people hate America, and many of them have good reasons for doing so. It is a little surprising that they actually succeeded in crashing not one but two of those planes. It doesn’t seem like a hard problem to prevent that, and it doesn’t require any of the ineffectual and invasive crap that has been going on in airports over the last ten years.
The American response to the terrorist attack ten years ago was wrong, and I said so at the time. Instead of saying, “Fuck you, you don’t scare us”, y’all just scurried away and hid under your security theater and foreign military meddling covers. You let Bush hand the terrorists their victory on a silver platter, and that victory was that their terrorist act worked. You got all scared and voluntarily sacrificed your own freedoms – the very things that once made your country great – for a thin illusion of security. It would have been inspiring and admirable if instead you had deliberately and explicitly rejected any responses that would have curtailed the rights and freedoms of Americans.
Anyway, I’m tired and rambling on. Instead of digging myself in deeper, what these people said.
Change of Plan
Two, actually, regarding my cross-Canada road trip.
The first decision I actually made about two weeks ago, and just haven’t mentioned it online yet. After driving around on gravel roads in Manitoba for a bit, I discovered that the Slaywagon doesn’t handle very well on gravel roads. I think the suspension is set wrong. I basically lose almost all control when on washboards.
Given that Labrador’s only through road (just completed last year!) is all gravel and frequented by transport trucks, I decided I really didn’t want to spend three or four days driving under those conditions. So I’ve scapped the idea of driving through Labrador. Perhaps some other time.
The second decision was more difficult. My sabbatical and vacation time is growing shorter, and going to Newfoundland would definitely make my return home late. It’s a six-hour ferry ride each way to the island, and then a twelve-hour drive from the ferry terminal to St. John’s. So if I wanted to spend a full day in St. John’s, which I do, it would basically cost me an entire week.
At present I have just enough time to get home and do the things I want to do on the return trip. I could book another week off work to make the Newfoundland trip, but I find I’m already looking forward greatly to the trip home and the things I wanted to do in Newfoundland are not sufficiently enticing to justify an extra week of travel.
Halifax and PEI will be sufficiently east coast to complete the eastbound leg of my road trip.
I am disappointed at not making it an “island to island” trip (Vancouver Island to Newfoundland) and at missing going to the easternmost tip of civilized Canada, but I think I can live with it.
If I end up dwelling on it in later years, I can fly out to St. John’s, rent a car and do Newfoundland and Labrador in a combined trip. This is what I’m telling myself, anyway. Hopefully it will work.
to Moncton
2011/09/11
Today was a short hop because there were two time-consuming side trips I wanted to make.
The first was to try and relocate an old home. When I was two years old my parents bought 50 acres near Harcourt, New Brunswick, and my father built an A-Frame house on it:
It had one room downstairs for living/kitchen/dining, and one room upstairs for sleeping. No running water – the outhouse was in the woods beside the house.
We lived here until I was four, at which point we moved to Calgary. Here’s me in the winter. That’s my dog Coal in front of me (she was born here) and the thing behind me is a “Big Scoop” snow shovel – the snow got deeper than I was tall here.
I have only a handful of memories from this place. My uncle Roland built a cabin of his own not far away. There was a stream crossing the laneway further down from us, and in the summer I remember seeing a horse leech (huge, disgusting thing) in there and in the winter the ice and snow covering the edges of the stream were beautiful.
Anyway, today I went to try and find the remains of the house. It was very difficult. First was a half-mile drive down Harley (“Hardly”) road, which looks like this now:
Then our house was some distance along the hydro line right-of-way. There was a laneway at the time, but the ROW now looks like this:
Young trees at just the right height to be a nuisance, and lots of tall plants. I slogged through this for perhaps 1/8 of a mile, but saw no sign of anything familiar. The going wasn’t getting any easier, and I was afraid of running into wild animals since there was nobody else around for at least half a mile. Perhaps I didn’t go far enough, but I doubt I would have spotted anything anyway. There was no sign of my uncle’s house either, and it should have been much more obvious.
My main memory from this place concerns the woods on the side opposite our house:
These woods are the only place I can remember ever getting lost. Once when I was three or four, I wandered in there and before long I realized I was disoriented and didn’t know which way led back to home. It was a little frightening since there’s nothing but more woods in most directions. This is the first case when I can remember deliberately employing knowledge and reasoning to solve a problem – I remembered roughly the direction of the sun when I went into the woods, and combining that with the certainty of which sides of the laneway and stream I was on, I was confident of which way I had to go to reach the laneway. And it worked. All told I was in there for perhaps an hour – definitely less than two – but it was scary and I resolved never to get lost again. And I haven’t. After that I put effort into developing my navigation and cartographic skills, and I maintain them to this day.
On the way to Harcourt, I passed a site I didn’t know existed: an internment camp. The base of the water tower is the only structure that remains now:
The sign says that Winston Churchill asked Canada to stow some Jewish refugees from Austria and Poland here for a while during WWII. After that, POWs were housed here – German and Italian merchant marines, and Canadian sympathizers including the Mayor of Montreal.
After getting my hotel room in Moncton, I headed further south to check out the Hopewell Rocks. Unfortunately the park was just closing as I got there, and I wasn’t allowed to go down and walk among the rocks. I did get some pictures from above, though the light was poor:
Further along the shore there is a huge mud beach. My photos don’t quite capture it, but all of this mud in today’s light looked just like melting chocolate – and it all comes from the equally brown Chocolate River, which looks like chocolate milk. Mmmm… chocolate…
I could sure use a Dairy Milk bar right now…
Also, Foadstools!
Overall today was a letdown – I couldn’t quite find the old house, I missed the best part of the Hopewell visit, and I made a disappointing decision that I’ll blog about separately. Trying not to let it all get me down too much.
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to Fredericton
2011/09/10
Drove from Quebec City to Fredericton today. Bit of a long haul, but it was a fast, easy road most of the way.
No pictures today – there was no place I really felt like stopping to take photos, so other than snack breaks I just drove through.
I rather like the landscape I’ve seen in New Brunswick. It’s a lot like the foothills around Calgary, with rolling hills, a few large hills and the occasional rock outcrop, but there are a lot more trees here.
In lieu of pictures, let me fill in some comments I meant to post on previous days but forgot.
Comparing the cores of Quebec City and Montreal: The old buildings downtown Quebec are really nice – they’re kept in good shape and very clean, but it’s very clearly a tourist zone. Montreal has as many interesting buildings and as old, but they’re much more lived in; they actually see use outside of tourism. I was surprised to find that the basilicae in Quebec mostly seemed smaller and less ornate than those in Montreal. Quebec is definitely gorgeous to visit, and feels like what I imagine some European cities must be like, but I think I like Montreal more.
I was asked if I still think Montreal drivers are insane, and I do. Vancouverites are speedy; going 10km/h over the speed limit is universal. People across the country do generally speed a bit, but not as uniformly as Vancouverites, and in other provinces the speeders tend to go much more over the limit. Torontonians are generally pretty sane, except when they’re on the freeway – then they speed excessively, and change lanes rapidly with inches of clearance. Torontonians also seem unable to understand the consequences of their own impatience, leading to universal gridlock at rush hours. Torontonians also use their horns more than anyone else, and usually in situations where it does no good – ie as a means of expressing frustration rather than the intended function. Montrealers speed everywhere, make dangerous lane changes everywhere, and do this to avoid traffic jams – usually successfully from what I’ve seen. They’re less respectful of traffic rules than anywhere else I’ve been – though given the complex rules on the island of Montreal, I can’t say I blame them. They’re also more given to shouting and gesticulating at each other.
When I was in Niagara Falls, one morning when I checked my oil I found a dead praying mantis in my engine compartment. I had no idea mantids lived in Canada.
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Quebec City
2011/09/09
Today I took the bus downtown Quebec City to see the sights. I’m glad I decided to take transit because (a) as expected, there is little parking to be had and (b) it turns out there was some kind of bicycle race on today, and some important streets were closed, causing traffic snarls.
Circled the Quebec Parliament buildings for photos.
Lots of statuary around here, but I’m not going to bother posting photos of all that. I was surprised though to find a bust of Ghandi, who I didn’t know was a major player in Canadian history.
Wandered over to the Citadel, but it was closed today so didn’t get many interesting shots.
Some shots of the nice buildings in the upper city:
There is also a street of artists selling their works here:
I took the funicular (in this case, more like an elevator with a slight tilt) down to the old city.
Wandered around the old city for a while, visiting shops. A bunch of the streets down here are pedestrian-only and there are tons of interesting shops and cafes. The streets themselves are very pleasant too. A few photos:
Here’s a shop for me:
Heh:
I went to the Museum of Civilization. Outrageously, they forbid photography, so no pictures. It was a pretty interesting museum, if small – about one third the size of the ROM, at most. The science & technology wing had a VIC-20 on display – that being the computer I learned to program on, I simultaneously felt a bit old and liked the recognition of its historical value.
Walked around a bit more after that, but it was past 5pm and everything was closing down, so I decided to call it a day.
I’m a little disappointed I didn’t have time to visit the Quebequarium – it would have been interesting to compare it to the Vancouver Aquarium. But it’s not a huge disappointment – maybe I’ll be able to fit it in on my return trip, but if not perhaps some other time. I’m already thinking I need to make additional trips to Toronto and Montreal in future.
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