Home sweet home.
7:30 p.m.
We left almost when planned on Thursday last, driving in absolutely perfect weather east towards Quebec City, stopping once at Thetf0rd Mines where we got out of the car to view what has to be one of the world�s largest open pits from the observation deck. The massive trucks at the very bottom, the kind where a man is dwarfed by the tires, looked like dinky toys, and the few people we saw walking around looked like ants. The area surrounding the mine is piled high with tailings, the industry having totally changed the face of the landscape. After Quebec City we stopped for lunch and changed drivers (I took over), travelling along the lower shore of the St. Lawrence to Rivi�re-du-L0up where we turned south and headed into the interior. The scenery is incredible. The Trans-Canada Highway runs along the St. John River, which originates somewhere in Maine and becomes a mighty torrent very quickly as it heads toward the Bay of Fundy. We changed drivers again somewhere after Edmundston, but stopped for supper at a charming town called New Maryland where we had a takeout pizza and ate it at a picnic table. From there I called my friend to let her know where we were (I ended up leaving a message as they were out, they had their own adventures that day having to do with car trouble and aged parents) and realized that we had lost an hour when we crossed into New Brunswick. We finally arrived at her house in R0thesay, a suburb of St. John, at 10:30 p.m. local time, although for us it was an hour earlier. The last several hundred kilometres were incredibly stressful (I was driving), fraught with moose signs, in the dark, not quite sure where we were headed.
My friend looks fabulous. She is in fact thinner than when I saw her at her wedding, which is an improvement, she has cut her hair quite short, and I wouldn�t have recognized her. But she�s the same warm, generous friend I remember. Her husband I only met at their wedding, so I definitely wouldn�t have known him, but he�s a very nice guy as well. Our son and theirs hit it off immediately, and their 13-year-old daughter was very sociable and pleasant. They gave us accommodations for the night, and breakfasted us the next morning, before running off to the golf course where they had booked a lesson. It was a short visit, but a very pleasant one.
We left St. John, again in perfect weather, and continued our trip eastward, stopping for lunch in Sackville, the home of Acadia University and the Marshlands Inn where we stayed one night on our own honeymoon. We eventually arrived in Antig0nish, Nova Scotia mid-afternoon and checked into our motel where my in-laws and Hubby�s brother had just arrived. We spent the evening over at Hubby�s aunt�s place, she having prepared a fine turkey dinner (we vegetarians were given a can of tuna to share and she repeatedly offered to prepare us some spaghetti or something, which we also repeatedly turned down), and her husband John D. kept downing the whiskey and being a congenial drunk. Hubby got out the guitar and we serenaded our relatives with several jazz standards. It was a lot of fun.
The next morning we drove to the cemetary where my father-in-law�s parents are buried. Their grave stone also commemorates his uncle, the WWI flying ace whom Buddy Boy was researching for his bid at being a movie star. Hubby�s brother made a short video of him with his digital camera, speaking a text of his own composition describing his great-great-uncle who died over Provin, France saving the rest of his squadron. He was 24 years old. I just watched the video and was very moved, both by my son�s heartfelt delivery, and by the story itself.
The wedding was held in the chapel of St. Francis-Xavier University, a Catholic ceremony which I found excruciatingly long (I was wearing high heels and there was a lot of standing and my back was killing me) but the music was pleasant enough. The organist was an older woman who also sang the responses with a very beautiful voice, and a Cape Breton fiddler played the couple out when it was all over. The dinner was lavish (we vegetarians were served a filo dough triangle stuffed with all sorts of wonderful vegetables and the turkey eaters at our table looked over at us longingly), and the dessert was literally to die for (from chocolate overdose). It was a small, flattened round thing with whipped cream and a strawberry on top which turned out to be solid chocolate truffle. I couldn�t finish mine, so Buddy Boy helped. We four were seated with Hubby�s cousin from Michigan and his wife, an incredibly good-looking couple a little younger than us with small children (who were not there), and we had a riot. We stayed right to 1 a.m., dancing and laughing. I fell asleep immediately that night when my head hit the pillow.
The next afternoon there was yet another party at the home of the parents of the bride, Hubby�s other aunt, where we got to meet more relatives. We left with Hubby�s brother and parents in order to watch the sun set at Malignant C0ve (pronounced �Malligant� by the locals), a piece of which is owned by one of the aunts (it used to be owned by the whole family, but it got consolidated, much to the dismay of some of the younger generation). We four settled on the beach, more rock than sand, and threw pebbles into the water listening to the different sounds produced by handfuls of differently-sized rocks. It was a beautiful spot and we were rewarded with a lovely sunset. For dinner, we, my brother-in-law and his wife, and the cousins from Michigan went to a lobster restaurant where I had (wait for it�) lobster, something I only eat when I am on the coast, and which I have not had in a very long time. It was very fine. If you can get past the grotesqueness of the creature itself, the eating is mighty good.
We did not get away the next day (yesterday) until early afternoon, for we had to go to the university library and the heritage museum to look up more information on Buddy Boy�s great-great-uncle. He came away with some interesting stuff, photocopies of microfiched newspaper clippings and the flying ace�s school records, for he actually graduated from St-FX with an engineering degree. At the heritage museum I was able to tell the curator what an implement in a glass case was, one that was labeled with a question mark, arranged with other tools for sewing and lace making. It was a turned piece of wood with a smooth point at one end and it occurred to me that it was for everting stitched corners. When I sew and make a corner, I end up turning it right-side-out with a pair of scissors which are rather pointy and often end up going through the fabric. This tool would have been perfect for that job. She thanked me and said she could now make further investigations into it.
Before leaving town, we had to shop for souvenirs (of course) and went to a Scottish boutique on the way out to the highway. I bought a lovely pendant there (which my kids weren�t too keen on, but I can�t let their taste rule my adornment) and I have scanned it for your viewing pleasure.
We drove quite a distance yesterday, leaving Nova Scotia in hot, 30�C weather, meeting rain the moment we crossed into New Brunswick. At 8:30 p.m. we pulled into a motel in Woodstock, the rain sluicing down. Hubby got totally soaked as he went to the office and checked out the accommodations, and thankfully it had tapered off a bit when the rest of us got out of the car. The room smelled pretty bad, having had smokers in it, but we opened the windows and aired it out and had a good night�s sleep. We got away early this morning, it was still raining, and finally got sunshine as we crossed over into Quebec and gained an hour at the same time. We arrived home around 4:30.
There were a few funny stories. The cousins from Michigan had been rather flustered when they were leaving, having to drop off their kids at the wife�s sister�s before heading to Detroit to fly to Halifax, and suddenly the wife remembered that they had forgotten to bring their birth certificates. At Canadian customs they luckily had the invitation to the wedding and other pieces of I.D., but were really worried about returning to their own country. The wife had her sister fax them their birth certificates, which she hoped would suffice.
Our front brakes sound terrible. I think the pads must be worn down to nubbins, for every time we applied them or were going at a very slow speed or reversing it sounded like nails on chalkboard. We have an appointment to take the car in first thing tomorrow.
And we�re done.
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