I am a lucky soul. As I count the trips I have done this year, I see there are quite a few. My big trip in the spring was to Spain and England; the rest have been here in Canada. And when I say Canada, that gives me a vast territory to visit and explore without worrying about passports, customs or a different currency!
All these trips – and I have not even been to the west coast yet this year, but I have just got back from a visit to the east coast which for me here, in western Canada, is quite an excursion.
I started this trip going to the Ottawa area and into the province of Quebec. This was to visit friends, most from the time when I first came to Canada and lived for many years in the Ottawa-Gatineau area. Friends I used to visit annually, but this was my first visit since Covid, so lots of catching up. Added to our general news of health, family, trips, and some politics (there was a provincial election happening in Quebec) there were extreme weather events. I am having problems keeping up with the great and dramatic weather events that are happening with such frequency. So, when I visited friends in rural eastern Ontario, I had to be reminded about the storm that hit on May 22 – the Victoria Day holiday weekend. I see it has been termed a ‘derecho’ which is just how my friends described it: a path of ferocious wind that snaked through parts of Ontario and Quebec with winds of 100km an hour. (I have heard that in King Arthur’s time, derecho was the name for a dragon.)
Visiting friends who live on their hilly forested land on the edge of a very small village in Ontario, we walked through their woods to see the damage done to their sugar bush, in fact, two stands of sugar maple trees. This was a mixed old-growth forest where the trees soar up to get the best light. When one of these magnificent trees is plucked up by the wind, it crashes down and across breaking through and uprooting neighbouring trees. Much damage, and many future logs for their wood-fire heating.
My next stop was to visit a dear friend who had moved from Edmonton to Nova Scotia; I had not yet seen her house or new surroundings. In September, hurricane Fiona was tracking north from Puerto Rico and it just kept going until it hit Nova Scotia at midnight on September 29. I was arriving on October 2. Bravely, without power since the hurricane, my friend said absolutely to come anyway. I was expecting candles and lanterns, ready to mop and sweep. However, the day before I was to arrive, the power came back and the damage to her house was minimal. So we were free to explore and play!
Yes, there was heat and light, but during days of the black-out all perishable food had to be thrown out, so in homes and stores it was lean pickings. (However, restaurants were serving yummy food, I guess they have generators. I was able to eat seafood every day of my stay. Happy me!) All around Pictou County where my friend lives, there was storm damage. Again, mostly trees down blocking roads and the damage caused to buildings.
We had planned an outing to Prince Edward Island, and undeterred, we went ahead even though PEI was badly hit. ‘This is not a good time to visit the National Parks on Prince Edward Island was firmly posted on the Parks Canada website. So we planned our visit to the eastern side of the island which was the least affected.
It was a gorgeous sunny day and people were calm and hospitable. Locals had opened their stores, workshops and restaurants and were happy to see us. Wind damage was widespread. The wind seemed to have swept along roads, slicing down and uprooting the trees so they fell all over the powerlines. On our way to Panmure lighthouse, we passed road crews and the army cleaning the trees and the electricity crews doing the tricky work of dealing with the downed power lines. On our way back from the lighthouse it was their break time, and they were standing by their trucks having a Tim Horton coffee. We waved as we went passed and they waved back and one of the soldiers gave us a wavy salute. Ooooh, we felt a thrill of patriotic excitement! The army, Tim Hortons and a (sort of) salute!
