Notes on Canada

Have talked to Canadians on ferries and BBs, and in campgrounds including 3 who had cancer.  All have been very happy with the medical system.  I asked one if she had to wait for treatment.  She said no that there were rules about how fast things had to be done.

One result I have seen of a socalist form of government is that the fisherman can not sell their fish to anyone but the big company in their town because their catch has to be recorded , so they get their quota, so they can get their unemployment checks in the winter.  So, local people can only get frozen fish like the rest of us unless they know a fisherman who is willing to sell them some on the side.  The BB owner told me she had to buy 70 lbs of cod to get any from the plant and then she salts and freezes it.  Have been fascinated with the way fishing was the whole economy.  Every village was on the water on the coast.  We thinks of fishermen being poor, but they were wealthy in the early days of european settlements.  Fish were salted and sent all over the world.  The cod industry was considered decimated ( probably thanks to Russian factory ships that skimmed up everything) and strict controls were put in in 1992.  There is all most no regular fishing any more.  Thanks goodness they could turn to lobster ( once considered food for convicts) and the new industry of  snow crabs.

Do not like being where I can not understand the language.

The highway signs are complicated here.  In tead of the side of a school bus, as our signs have, theirs has the front of a school bus with a child on either side.  The view point, instead of having a pair of binoculars, has a man looking though binoculars and a child under his arm pointing.  His straight body and his arm and the straight child under his arm always look like an letter to me-probably a H.  In NS and NB the signs are in  in French and English.  There are so many words on the signs that you can not get them all read, sometimes, before you pass the signs.  I think in the US we have, maybe, 4 or 5 pictures on our road way sign.  They seem to be unlimited here.  We think the @ sign must mean some one on the exit has WiFi, a house with a flower we figure must mean a garden shop, the hand holding a pot must be craft stores, we saw a new one yesterday- a bed and an egg - we figure meant a BB.  Lots of moose signs, but some have the moose standing by a crumpled car.We think it is nice in rural areas from Vermont on up that the gov. tries to help local businesses by putting the name of the businesses on blue signs on roads so you know a business is down them.

Never saw junk and old cars sitting beside houses in Canada.  They seemed to be neater.  Lots of artificial siding on houses which made them look neat even in small fishing villages of 5 or so homes.  Was fascinated by the way you were never far from a small village when you were on the coast even though you felt like you were in the middle of no where.  Never had been exposed to how important fishing was to the north east.

Saw lots of smoking.

Favorite park- Gros Morne  Besides the walks, and scenery, I loved all the little villages to visit.  Loved all the living history parks.  Loved the whale watching experience at Digby Neck.

Read lots of books- Longfellow"s poetry including Evangeline,  Ann of Green Gables.
Got some books from a park gift shop- Memoirs of a Light Keepers Son about a boy who spent 5 years living with his parents on an island off of Nova Scotia in the 1950s with no electricity or a way to keep anything cold and no supplies could come from Nov to April due to the frozen sea.  Also, got The Island Doctor about a man straight out of his internship who becomes the only doctor in Digby Neck 1950s with the hospital 50 miles away including a ferry ride.  Both great books.  Also got a book of short stories about the area.
Read Reading Lolita in Tehran which I would recommend.  Just finished Electric Barracuda about a crazy man who kills bad people and hids out in little towns all over Florida- trash but fun reading.

Homeward Bound

Hi kids- It's Barney Bear
We went over to the Adirondack mountains to see what they were like in NY. Had always heard of them.  We camped on a lovely lake called Craneberry Lake in a state park, but the wind was so high and cold that we did not try to get out on the lake.  We did drive over to Lake Placid where 2 winter Olympics have been held.  We were going to go to Heather's tomorrow, but we are not going to drive into a hurricane, so we are coming home to Fla. to get away from a hurricane!  We are going west away from the coast into Virginia to get away from Interstate 95 and all the people who may be evacuating the storm and then stop by Nana's.  Will get home in about a week.

So this will be my last blog.  It was quite a trip.  Will be glad to get back home.  

Signing off,
  
Barney Bear

Ottawa

Hi kids- It's Barney Bear

Arrived in Ottawa yesterday.  It is a beautiful city on the St Lawrence river.  We have done some neat things.

 Yesterday we went to a  Aviation Museum.  It had airplanes from the beginning to now.  The picture is of me on a pier where a pilot is loading up his plane to fly goods into areas like Alaska where there were few people and some times no roads.  The people who did this were called bush pilots.

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, so today we went to see the capital building called Parliment.  It looks like a church.  We got up early so we could get in town to see the "changing of the guards."  Canada never broke away from England like we did, so they do things like the English do here.  The soldiers are dressed in red and march around.  It is pretty neat.  We, also, went to a museum that talks about all the earliest people in Canada like the Eskimos.  It was neat too.  My feet were so tired from walking around that we did not get to see much of it.

Tomorrow we will come back into the United States.  We are going to the Adirondack Mountains in New York.  Then we are going down to see Heather and her family.  Heather is my mommy too.  She made me when she was about 10 years old.

Quebec, Montreal

Arrived at Levis which is across the river from Quebec on Aug. 16th.  Trying to get around any big city here is a misery because of all the road repair which may block off an exit from a highway.  They have little time to be able to repair their roads.  There is a ferry from Levis to Quebec but getting there was not fun with all the detours.  Walked to the the top of the hill and took a tour of Quebec's parliament. It is very pretty.  The picture above is of the House of Commons.  They did away with the House of lords( in the  60s I think).  Not democratic.  Trying to populate the area so France could keep it, one governor had girls brought over from the orphanages.  They had to get married in 2 weeks and the men had 2 months.  The population here had gone up very lowly compared to the English colonies. On interesting fact we learned was that a meeting and what was decided in it is considered to have never happened if the masse (looks like a gold club) is not in the room.  It makes the meeting official.  We walked on the walls of the old citadel which was built after the War of 1812 by the English to  protect Quebec from the Americans.  Walked around old town and had a good lunch.  Had fun.  Weather is low fifties in the day time to 64-75 in the day.  They keep saying it is going to get warmer but it never does.  Lots of rain but no more fog, and we left the mosquitoes behind, thank  goodness.  The next day we drove 150 miles to St Catherine which is beside Tadousssac to go whale watching.  It is suppose to be the greatest whale watching area due to being near the mouth of the St Lawrence.  It was a cloudy, very windy day, and the boat was crowded.  Whales jumped out of the water several times, but I only could see it once ( due to not being able to see over people) and it was far away.  There were mink, fin, and humpback whales, but none came real close to the boat. Did see flashes of white in the water on the way back in and learned it was beluga whales.  That was neat.   Stopped at a fromagerie (cheese making shop) and got fresh cheddar and brie.  Still enjoying it.
On the 19th drove to a little town across the river from Montreal.  We were told that the traffic came to a stand still after about 2PM on the highway into Montreal.  It was under construction also.  Butch says he gets a sinking feeling every time he sees an orange sign.  We decided not to risk it and stayed in and did our wash and cleaned up till we left for supper at 7:00PM.  Celebrated our 45th anniversary early with a very nice meal in Montreal.  Big cities scare me to death.  It had ramps off of ramps off of ramps. When we got there I was not sure I could pry my hand off the arm rest I had been holding so tightly.  The next morning we drove to the subway across the river which was in the town we are staying in.  Getting to it was not easy, but once we did we enjoyed using the subway to get around.  Went to the Beau Arts museum.  A lot of it was closed, but we enjoyed the exhibit on Napoleon (They had one of his hats and boots there.) and one on ancient civilizations.  I enjoyed it because it gave a good time line of the civilizations.  Then we went to Montreal Underground- 4 stories tall, 1700 stores, and 40 movies underground.  Then we went to the Notre Dame Cathedral  (gorgeous) and walked through old town to the old port which has a lot of tourist things like a discovery center.  Had supper in a restaurant which was in a 300 year old stone building in the old town.    There are 3 universities here and everyone seems to be younger than 40.

Caraquet,NB

Caraquet is in the north west part of NS.  We went there to see Acadian village Historic.  It is considered the most accurate living park.  Over 100 buildings from the 1700 through 1900s have been taken apart, numbered and rebuilt there.  People go about their daily business they would be doing  in their time period from cooking biscuits in a dutch oven or making barrels, but they stop what they are doing to talk to you.  It was excellent.  The only frustration is they would talk to us in English if few other people were around, but if their were a lot of other people they would give their info in French.  I was surprised that they kept a lot of white turkeys.  Main crops were turnips, potatoes, onions, and the only spice was savory in their gardens.  They also had wheat fields.  They had pigs, turkeys, chickens, and cows, so life seemed pretty good.  They liked to drain and use the marshes, also  We were there from  10 to 3 when it closed for Festival Acadienne.  It began in the 70s when a priest told the people to let the world know they were still alive.  Everyone had dressed their houses and themselves in red, white, and blue.  The flag has a single star.  At 6:00 is the tentamont when everyone goes downtown and walks in a parade either up or down the street at the same time making as much noise as they can.  It goes on for an hour and then everyone parties the rest of the night.  Activities go on for a week. We got a plastic flag and walked too.   Some Acadians escaped the deportation from Nova Scotia and made their home here.  You see the same family names over and over.  Acadian pride is big.  I can see why Quebec wanted to succeed.  Today we drove to Quebec.

Dear Kids It"s Barney Bear writing,
We have see some really neat things!

Went on a walk around some mountains that were a rusty brown.  It was because the were formed when 2 land plates collided and the inside of the earth, called the mantle, rose above the other land.  The mantle is liquid iron.  It hardened into a mountain and has been rusting ever since.  Because the iron is poisonous only a very special few plants can grow on it,so it looks dry and barren, but water flows down it.

Have seen 5 moose- 3 in our camp ground.

Drove to the very tip of Newfoundland to see a settlement where Vikings lived for awhile 1000 years ago.  The foundations of their villages are still there.  The park has  built a village to look like their village  .Also went to a place where their are remains of 5 different Indian groups that have lived there as they passed through looking for whales from the first men  to the Eskimos we know called Inuit.  The neatest  thing we  saw there was ICEBERGs floating .  One was know to have broken off a big glacier in Greenland and took 2  years  to float there.  It is over 4 1/2 miles long!  You can tell an iceberg from regular ice because it looks blue.

Took a ferry to Labrador.  Way up near the Artic.  We drove as far as you can drive on a paved road- 50 miles.  You can only get to the rest of the country by boat or gravel road.  Because they have so much snow melt here and in New Foundland,  most of the land is a bog with mosses and low bushes growing on it. Lots of berries grow on it and people pick them.  We walked out to try picking some.  It felt like walking on a pillow!

We are in a great big ferry now with our car inside leaving Newfoundland.  I hate to leave.  It is a neat place.    

Gros Morne

Friday August 5^th

We fit a lot into a day.  This AM we went on a hike with a guide which was advertised as a walk across 15 million years in 1 km.   It is a place on the coast where the upheaval of the tectonic plates is where the Cambrian and the Ordovician layers can be seen.  The layers are so well defined that they are used as the reference standard by the scientists of the world.  The layers are shell and granite which are standing on their edge.  Very hard to walk on but fascinating to see under you feet in a solid mass.  The earliest layer has microscopic fossils, but the more recent layer has fossils you can see in it.  You can walk around in the area of this recent layer and find fossils all around.  This is on the coast.  The guide said headlands are the stronger granite and  coves are the weaker shale.  Very interesting.  Came home, had lunch, and then went on a 4 1/2 km walk to the most beautiful water falls I have ever seen.  The unusual thing is that at least 3 1/2km of the walk was on a boardwalk about 18 inches wide.  It went through a bog.  It reminded me of the much smaller one at Swallow Falls we went to at Swallow Falls in Md.  At first there was a streamlet coming under it about every 6 -10 yards.  Then it was just wet all the time.  Beautiful, interesting flowers, ferns, fallen trees.  They had a bad insect infestation here also which killed many trees.  This they say is natural and would let other trees grow.  Moose were introduced here 100 years ago and have no natural predators, so they have become completely overpopulated.  They love to eat the new young trees that should be repopulating the forests, so they say they are missing 30 years of new forest growth.  They are having a hunt his fall.  Came home fixed supper.  It stays light till 9:30 or so.  It is hard to stay inside when this is often the loveliest, sunniest time of the day.  Today was beautiful sunny day.  We would not resist , so we went on another walk around a pond right here in the camp ground.  Very pretty.

As you can tell, we love Gros Morne- beautiful forested low mountains, closed of fyords, and interesting rocks and blue sea.  No individual services here, but as all Canada parks, they do have showers. Camp sights are set back in the trees.  We have the trailer facing a mountain away from the road, so we feel like we are alone.  No stink of campfires for some reason.  It is fairly full, but it does not seem so.  No rules.  We thought it would be isolated, but there were fishing villages all along the coast.  The little ones they bought out but the bigger ones are still there, so there are stores, laundries, etc. near by.  Going on a cruise on a closed up fjord in AM.  Suppose to be beautiful.  Dad says the national temperature of Canada is 60.  It did warm up nicely today into 70s but still had a chilly wind.  Gets down in mid fifties at night.