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In 1991, I was assigned to a series of Canadian client sites,
traveling almost every week from Detroit to both Windsor and distant
Cambridge, Ontario, in the outskirts of Toronto. It was during these
commutes (down the boring Rt 401) that I first learned of the
Canadian Country-Western singer "Stompin Tom Conners". I
purchased one of his tapes at a rest area on the 401, and listened to
it non-stop until I nearly wore it out. Stomping Tom was the first CD
I purchased for myself to play in our new CD player we gave ourselves
for Christmas. If you are not familiar with "Stompin Tom",
you should know that he authored and sang dozens upon dozens of songs
celebrating the various regions and provinces of Canada. Between
"Bud the Spud" (Prince Edward Island), Sudbury (Ontario)
Saturday Night, and the dramatic vision of a "Newfie" in a
"Calgary Hat", he quickly became my favorite artist for his
witty insights into the Canadian people, his amazing ability to tell
a story, and his gift of being able to accurately mimic the various
dialects of Canadian peoples from each of the provinces. I travel for
a living, and enjoy hearing the melody of each person's regional
accent, and Stompin Tom's ability to deliver each song in the
regional dialect from the subject area was remarkable and delightful
to my ear.
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When the big moon shines in the Maritimes, on the old Atlantic Shore,
I'll be glad to be back to old Halifax, and the girl that I adore.
Where the big sky is blue, I'll be coming to you, with a love forever more.
Where the high tides roll on the rocky shoals of the old Atlantic Shore. |
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He sang rich songs about Halifax, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, even
Montreal and Ottawa. His song about Halifax became mesmerizing to me
as I listened to it hundreds of times. His song about "Big Joe
Muffaraw" on the river Ottawa, digging the Rideau Canal taught
me about a character like Paul Bunyan that lived north of the
boarder. And his song denouncing his fellow Canadians choosing to
move south for personal economic advantage, "If you don't
believe your country, should come before yourself" then maybe
you should "find your happiness where Stars and Stripes are
flown", still moves me to tears when I hear it. I wish there
were people in my own country that felt so strongly about national
pride and dedication.
So it was songs from Stompin Tom that kept driving me to go to
Halifax and environs, but life didn't cooperate. My company in
Detroit was the victim of horrible management, idiotic strategic
directions, coupled with a small economic downturn. Had they had one
tenth the management in place, they could have easily weathered the
storm in 1992, but it was not so. I was laid off during a downturn
when nobody was hiring, and we were forced to sell the house and seek
greener pastures. We moved west to Ogden, Utah and took a job with no
travel. With a big house payment, a tedious job laden with
departmental politics and devoid of frequent flyer points, I gave up
Halifax and put my Stompin Tom CD's in the bottom drawer (for seven
more years).
When we got a new job and moved to Florida in 1994, Halifax came up
immediately. We decided to take "hot weather" vacations in
July each year, visiting a cool location to get out of Florida. In
1998, we visited the UK for 16 days and had
a delightful time. Everybody apologized for the cool, cloudy, rainy
weather, but us Floridians just smiled and nodded. When 1999 rolled
around, the Maritimes were at the top of the list.
July and August of 1999 were also very special for us. We were
married in August of 1979, 28 days after my 20th birthday, so this
August was to be the double whammy of my 40th birthday and our 20th
wedding anniversary. (Read the Jesse
birth story to learn more about our early days together). With
such an special , it was tempting to spend a "little extra",
stay a "little longer", do a "little more" then
we might on a typical July vacation. We talked about Europe again, or
an Alaskan cruise, pondered and discarded a Hawaiian resort. Then we
settled on Halifax and the Maritimes.
We started the analysis by printing maps and putting them on our
pushpin corkboard. Since we always like a circle tour, we analyzed
flying in and out either Halifax or Montreal and doing a circle to
include the other. It was too long and too difficult with too much
boring driving in the middle. I was trying very hard to make it north
to Newfoundland, possibly flying in or out of St Johns after taking
the ferry over from Sydney. Of course we did lots of research on the
web, asking Jesse to try to spend at least one hour per day looking
for different sights.
 For
pure driving convenience, we settled on a one-way driving route.
Flying into Montreal and out of Halifax. We researched renting a van
(just like we did in the UK the previous summer) and found a good
deal on the internet from Budget. We found out about whale watching
in the St Lawrence around Tadoussac, Quebec. We pulled out our 12
year old vacation pictures of Montreal, and the brochures I picked up
during my one-week client engagement in Ottawa in 1995. We cruised
the web, and read the AAA guides, and scanned our
DeLorme software for what to see and what to do.
Sadly, we found that Marriott
had very few hotels across eastern Canada, with a full Marriott in
downtown Montreal and a new courtyard in Ottawa to use my zillion
points. After that we would be on our own, paying out of pocket to
stay each night. (drat). We put in for two weeks vacation, and got to
add an extra day when my previous week assignment ended on Thursday
instead of Friday. Unknown to us at the time, my following week
assignment was doomed to be cancelled at the last minute and we could
have had an extra third week tagged onto the back, if we wanted it or
could have afforded it. Instead I ended up having to fly home from
Halifax (and therefore pay for my ticket!). Double drat.
We finally gave up Newfoundland (for our "next trip to the
Maritimes"), and worked and worked on getting in a visit to
Ottawa. We finally decided to go to Montreal first, and not get a
car. Stay downtown at the Marriott and use the subway and taxis. We
would pick up the car when finished and immediately drive west to
Ottawa for a couple days, then turn around and drive right back to
Montreal, passing through it west to east on our way to Quebec city
and points east. While this little "lasso" on our route map
seemed odd, it actually worked out for the best. All in all, it was a
good plan.
Unknown to us at the time, the web arrangements made with Budget were
erroneous and caused us great difficulty when we went to pick up the
car on Day 4. However, the folks at
Budget-Canada went beyond the call of duty and creatively satisfied
our request. From that wonderful experience, I encourage everybody to
investigate using Budget
Rent-a-Car in Canada.
 My
week prior to the trip was a one-week internal meeting in downtown
Chicago, including a group outing to Wrigley field to see the Cubs. I
arranged for a direct flight from O'Hare to Montreal Friday morning.
Lyn and Jesse where to fly on Delta frequent flyer tickets from
Florida to Boston and on to Montreal. They would arrive Thursday
afternoon, and have a day to themselves and I would arrive Friday
well before dinner. On Thursday morning I dropped off some shirts at
the desk and headed to the Chicago office. At lunchtime I learned
that our meeting would end early that day and that I could leave at
the end of Thursday instead.
While I should have just sat it out, instead I took the opportunity
to move all the arrangements. I ran at lunch and checked out of the
hotel, moved my plane tickets, and ... what to do about the shirts?
The concierge at the Chicago Marriott agreed to simply forward the
shirts to me at the Marriott Montreal. The ordeal of my shirts is
theater of the absurd. The shirts did not arrive Friday, Saturday or
Sunday before we checked out. We called from Ottawa on Tuesday as we
would pass back through Montreal and could pick them up. No. They
arrived ten full days later, long after we had passed through Quebec
city so I asked the Montreal Marriott to forward them to my home in
Florida (what I should have asked the guy in Chicago to do in the
first place). Can you guess the rest? They arrived over a week after
we arrived home, then a week later I received an inquiry about their
value. It seems the desk person in Chicago had declared my three
shirts to have a $250 US value (yes, 10.99 each at Wal-Mart) and
either US or Canadian customs was prepared to debit my AmEx card
about $25 for their cartage. I explained, in writing, that their
street value was less than the fine and the episode was finally
closed, six weeks later. How ridiculous. I should have spent the
night in Chicago and caught the "first flight out" in the
morning as originally planned. And so it goes.
And now, on with the show.
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Dreaming / Planning / Arriving +
We had been looking forward to a trip to Canada's Maritime Provinces
(chiefly Nova Scotia) for over a decade. It was just a matter of
deciding how, when and exactly where we would go.