Taking some time out in the Maritimes

CHARLOTTETOWN -- I can’t help thinking I’ve been giving the Maritimes short shrift.

After perhaps the worst meal of my trip, an unfunny and nearly inedible comedy of errors at Station 127 in Edmundston, New Brunswick -- I roared off down the four-lane Trans-Canada bound for Fredericton, the provincial capital.

I spent most of my stay in New Brunswick -- my seventh province since leaving home on May 11 -- on the four-lane Trans-Canada Highway. No backroads wandering on this stretch of the ride. I was riding point-to-point and I just wanted to get ‘er done!

Almost 80 days on the road are beginning to take a toll in terms of fatigue and recovery. One’s too quick and the other’s too slow.

Several days in the mid-to-high 30s Celcius – nearly 40C on the highway – finally kicked my ass! Not enough water on the ride and not enough supper when the riding day was done!

I know what to do! Some good food, more water and limited hours in the saddle! I started with the tasty baked potato soup at the café at the Potato World museum in Florenceville, N.B. – home of McCain Foods, Canada’s No. 1 potato processor.

I learned a few things about the spud, including its pre-eminence as Canada’s most important vegetable crop -- especially here in the Maritimes! It was well worth the $4 admission.  

I spent two lazy days holed up at the home of Anne, a former colleague from the Alberta Public Affairs Bureau; her husband Rob; and their 20-month-old son Matty. While they work in Fredericton, they live year-round in a cool beachfront home on the largest lake in New Brunswick!

It’s not a great lake, it’s a Grand Lake! And Grand Lake was just that, a grand place to rest up and recuperate after a long, hot ride!

Doing nothing was just what the doctor ordered.

Over the past week or so, I’ve developed a nasty case of “throttle wrist!” Nearly 11 weeks and 13,000 kilometers into my trans-Canada ride, I’m in a fair amount of discomfort whenever I crank the throttle. I suppose it’s some kind of repetitive strain injury. Thank God for cruise control!

I could have spent several more days lollygagging in the St. John Valley, but I had to keep moving. I have reservations on the busy ferry to Newfoundland this weekend. There’s still a fair few kilometers between me and the ferry terminal at North Sydney on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island!

I must confess I felt quite foolish when Anne, a senior provincial communications bureaucrat, reminded me that Fredericton is the capital of New Brunswick -- and not Saint John. It’s not the first time Fredericton has tripped me up.

I’ll never forget the lesson I learned after applying for a job at Fredericton Gleaner in the late ‘70s. My cover letter and even the envelop was returned to me by the managing editor with several circles in red grease pencil, the preferred spell-check tool of the time!

An accompanying letter castigated me for not spelling Fredericton with its second “e”. “At least, you’re consistent, Mr. Kenny,” the editor wrote in declining my request for a job.

Damn me with faint praise, why dontcha!

I spent a night in Fredericton and then headed further east on the TCH, switching to a really good NB Hwy. 105 through l’Acadie to Moncton. I had hoped to catch up with an old friend, but he wasn’t available. Oh well, he knows where to find me.

I was therefore all the more thrilled to get an invitation to stay with Vic, a former publisher of the late great Brampton Times, where I worked from 1977-80 and again 1985-88!

I really enjoyed my second stint with the BT and spent a wonderful afternoon and evening with Vic, now retired, and his lovely wife Ruth. We shared beers and memories at their cool and breezy seaside home on Northumberland Strait at Grande-Digue near Shediac.

Every once in a while, Vic would take time out to fire marbles with his slingshot at a flock of Canada geese to keep them from coming ashore and fouling his lawn. He said it’s fun to watch beach-goers collecting his lost marbles at low tide!

Over a superb meal of steak and lobster – and Ruth’s excellent blue-cheese cole slaw – we caught up on the intervening 25 years. What a good time we had and didn’t always appreciate just how good they were! Time and distance have a way of winnowing the memories to just the good ones. At least, that’s how I’m rolling these days.

Before a pretty good neighbourhood fireworks display, Vic showed me a pic of himself as a young man with shoulder length brown hair and a full mustache looking like a young Michael Stivic! Those who know will know! I’m guessing it was taken around the time he went to Woodstock. Yep, that Woodstock.

I will return to New Brunswick, Grand Lake and Vic’s – with Mindy next time. We’ll get off the Trans-Canada and really see the province!

Ditto for Prince Edward Island! It was just starting to rain as I rolled along NB Hwy. 16 and the sky looked about to unleash lightning and maybe worse when I arrived at the Confederation Bridge, the Canadian-engineered “fixed link” connecting Canada’s smallest province to the Canadian mainland.

But no sooner had I got to the foot of the imposing structure, that all changed! I ran the 13-kilometer bridge in bright sunshine, no wind and even better, no traffic!!

There’s no welcome sign when you get to the PEI side of the strait, but there’s no mistaking the bright red sandstone cliffs that greet you when you arrive.

I tooled up PEI Hwy. 1 to Summerside, only to find out that The Ballad of Stompin’ Tom, a live musical tribute to the late Canadian troubadour I had really been looking forward to seeing at the Harbourfront Theatre, was not on stage Monday evenings. Darn it. I was really in the mood for some Tom songs sung in his spiritual home!

I briefly considered spending another day, but didn’t have one to spare! For a change! On to Charlottetown, the eighth provincial capital I’ve visited on this grand odyssey!

They’re celebrating the 150^th anniversary of the Charlottetown Conference in September 1864, the meeting which laid the foundation for the confederation of a handful of British colonies in North America into what is known today as the Dominion of Canada.
 
I got in a couple of good meals in Charlottetown and several good New Brunswick and P.E.I. beers like Alpine Lager and Gahan’s Harvest Gold Pale Ale, in pubs like the Gahan House, Hunter’s Ale House, the Old Triangle and the Olde Dublin. A lot of things are old, olde or auld  in this part of the country!

Riding along PEI Hwy. 2 then 16 through towns like Cardigan and Montague, I caught a midday ferry from Wood Islands, P.E.I., to Pictou, Nova Scotia, my third province this week. I really enjoyed the ride from Charlottetown round the eastern tip of the island. Next time, I’ll explore the beaches and lighthouses a little more closely.

And there will be a next time! I need some more down time on Grand Lake and the rest of the Martimes!

In the meantime, please consider a donation to my Ride for Sight. The money goes to the Foundation Fighting Blindness to fund Canadian researchers looking into the causes and prevention of blindness. Please consider making a donation here to their work.

Ride for Sight is Canada’s largest and longest-running motorcycle charity endeavour. Bikers cover their own expenses so that every penny raised goes to the foundation.