Driven to reflection

As I sit in the local Chevy dealership awaiting the sting in the tail - those little extras that mechanics always seem to find wrong with my aging SUV during its service – my mind wanders and I begin to marvel about driving in Canada.

Initially, ‘marvel’ is perhaps not the best verb with which to describe my thoughts because I’m recounting how many miles I’ve traveled and hence how many services my not so trusty car has had in the ten months since my arrival in Haliburton. I’ve tried to avoid these precautionary pit stops, believe me. I ignore the sticker, so kindly stuck to my windshield, which reads “next service due in … kilometres”, and I speed quickly past the dealership for fear of an accusatory finger wag from Norm and his mechanics. But, with another 10,000 kms under my fan belt, here I am sitting waiting for judgement time (receiving the bill) again.

I’ve racked up a good 50,000 kms since I moved to Haliburton. This may not sound a particularly high rate of clicks to the seasoned Canadian motorist but coming from a land where car manufacturers advise a service every 18,000 kms or once a year, which ever comes first, it’s quite an achievement. And, to a fellow who hadn’t owned a car for a decade before moving here, it may as well be to the moon and back!

You see, I believe it’s all about perceived distance: what you think is a long drive; where you think far away is; how long you’d travel for an hour’s visit with your grandma. The answers given by English and Canadian folk would be worlds apart, I guarantee.

To give an example, my mum often pops for coffee with her friends back in Blighty; it’s a five minute, 5 km drive. Popping over for a coffee with a friend in Haliburton County can mean driving 50 km each way!

My English friends gasp when I tell them of traveling 230 kms into Toronto for a meeting. They practically call me a lair when I state that it takes over a day to drive west out of Ontario. They can’t imagine the 4400 km schlep from Toronto to Vancouver. Why? Because it’s further than driving the entire length of the UK, three times. That’s why!

English folks, you see, picture English distances when talking about driving. They also think of English traffic, which never bodes well for pleasant discussion. The UK is a small island with far too many folks living on it. Every one of them seems to own a couple of cars and has the ability to drive both at the same time, or so it seems on highways overflowing with traffic.

It’s a fact that in London the average speed of motorised vehicles is 6 km/h, and I’m not talking about golf carts. Every road trip from my London apartment was an ordeal. With gritted teeth and furrowed brow, I’d slide reluctantly into the driving seat of my rental car and no sooner had I reached the end of my road than the first fist waving obscenity strewn interaction with another similarly embattled driver would take place. No one gives an inch in London, let alone offers to allow you to turn in front of them into the crawling line of traffic: no matter that cyclists sail past the almost stationary cars and a pensioner walking an aging three legged terrier has just overtaken them.

There are good roads in the UK. Beautiful twisting turning lanes amidst patchworks of quintessentially English countryside: hedges and trees growing tall either side, sometimes curving over to create sun dappled tunnels of foliage. The trouble is they are few and far between and to get there you inevitably have had to negotiate a spider’s web of traffic clogged suburban streets while verbally abusing every second driver you have had the displeasure of making eye contact with.

In contrast, here in Canada driving is a pleasure from the moment I leave my driveway and that’s a good job too because there’s a hell of a lot of driving to do. I am still getting used to ‘distance’ and Canadian ideas of what it constitutes, though, so don’t be surprised if I turn up for that quick coffee with you, suitcase and sleeping bag in hand!

Footsteps in the snow

So beautiful after it’s just fallen, a pristine white blanket of snow is something that no artist could capture the full beauty of, no writer could describe with any real justice. So, why the hell am I trying? Hmmm…

But the fields, shrouded in twinkling white crystals, untouched, unsullied, don’t stay that way for long. Before a night has passed there are telltale reminders of the nature that we live amongst. Tiny and not so small footprints crisscross the fields, gardens and laneways. They come out of the bush, seemingly out of thin air, and melt away again not with the thaw but through and between low-slung branches, thickets of thorns, places where all but the most intrepid of naturalist sleuth would baulk at following.

And, it is these magical, mysterious night-time visitors that have so captured my eye in my first real winter in Haliburton. While walking the streets of London had its own moments of investigation for an inquisitive tracker: the telltale pools of vomit from bar exit to home doorstep; the trail of garbage and kebab meat scraps left by after-pub feeders; even the hoots and hollers of teenagers in heat, there wasn’t much that could be described as anything other than the detritus of human society.

Here, on the other hand, the opposite is true. Yes, I see the tracks of skidoo enthusiasts weaving curvaceous patterns across the lakes. Yes, I see the enthusiastic treads and subsequent down-hearted shuffles of the ice fishermen (as so eloquently described recently by a fellow columnist); yes, I witness the slithered slides of cross country skiers moments before excitedly glimpsing such an athlete and then being rebuked for walking on the ski trail! But these human interventions are a mere sideshow to the myriad evidence of nature in beautiful Haliburton County. Tracks, tail drags, wing beats, delightful frolics and deadly encounters, all are captured and preserved in ice cold imprints.

And, it was these animal tracks that had me in their spell early one morning as I padded round my garden testing out – for ‘testing out’ read ‘stumbling around in’ – my new snow shoes. Amidst the dawn mist were signs of a visit by two deer. The muskrats had been busy scuttling along the shoreline; their tiny footmarks divided by the drag line of a scaly tail. A mob of those unruly blue jays had left quite a scrum of prints around the deer food. And, our friend Nutkin the squirrel had been busy too, his bounding hops dot-to-dotting patterns between the spruce trees.

And it was then that I saw them. Big tracks. A trail close into the bush at the bottom of the garden. Paw prints, really fresh and of such a size that my heart pounded suddenly faster and my head spun round instinctively looking for their maker. My brain had already gone into overdrive; one part of it conjuring all kinds if red in tooth and claw scenarios, another telling me to calm down because hardly anyone ever sees a wolf.

I stood up straight and smiled, my breathing slowing to its regular pattern: “Like following the spots of blood after that fight in London,” I chuckled to myself, reminded of a time past when that same heady cocktail of fear and excitement had gripped me. And it was then, just then, that said cocktail came flooding back. Ahead, just 40 feet perhaps I spotted a large shape through the alder brush.

I stopped in my tracks – those tell tale tennis racket shaped ones, interspaced with large hollows and flailings where I’d fallen over – and so did the creature I shared this early morning with. I couldn’t make out its features clearly. I couldn’t do anything. I simply stood rooted to the spot staring, my breathing sounding like a steam train in my ears, my heart beating a tattoo in my chest.

Then it moved. It came at me, bounding through the alder thicket. I tried to turn and stepped backwards, which is always a mistake in snow shoes, and promptly fell over. Panicking, I struggled on to my back and came face to face with the wet muzzle of our next door neighbour’s German Shepherd, Brewzer!         

Home and away

The Outsider is back ‘outside’, so to speak: currently returned in the land of my birth, doing my duty and taking little Z to see his grandparents. And, as was to be expected we are being right royally fussed over. "Another cup of tea, slice of cake, dear? Is it warm enough for Little Z? Do you want me to make you a sandwich? Should we put a sweater on him, or take one off? How about another cup of tea…" and so it goes on.

Families are wonderful things, even if we don’t realise it or appreciate it at times. And, undoubtedly the hardest thing about my upping sticks and moving to Canada was the decision to leave family, and to wrench a grandson away from his then newly infatuated grandparents. However, family bonds are strong: VERY STRONG! Both sets of grandparents have already visited us in our new home. These trips, I wholeheartedly encouraged in order that they could experience just why we felt the need to fly so far from the coop. But grandma, give your newly Canadian son-in-law a break! I’ve seen more of the mother and father in-law since we absconded than I did when we lived virtually next door to them in Blighty.

Our trip is predominantly one of family time: shuttling between grandmas’ homes, being smothered in the type of hospitality that only ladies of a certain age can muster. But, in anticipation of and as an antidote to said family love, our vacation is bookended with stays with the Londinium sophisticates, the friends we left behind when clearing out after 15 years in the metropolis.

And, as the saying goes, ‘when in Rome…’ We’ve already dined in a ridiculously expensive restaurant, the proprietor of which now makes his living swearing on TV. We’ve sampled wines so smooth and complex that a country as young as Canada can not hope to produce something as refined, just yet. And, the cheeses, oh the cheeses. The pungency of these soft slices of soured milk, the aroma wafting from the fromagerie door… Most were French, I admit, but purchased in a deli local to a chum’s doorstep. I almost wept at their taste. We’ll visit museums, too, and perhaps take in the theatre. Oh, and we’ll shop: tis a vice that my lovely wife succumbs to when afflicted by any large city.

However, as we relax after a hard day enjoying ourselves - slumped in a stupor, part alcohol induced, part knackered from chasing Little Z around the Tate Modern attempting to ensure he didn’t add a mark of his own to the Rothkos, Twomblys and Hirsts - I can not help but think of the fields and forests of Haliburton, bundled in a thick fluffy quilt of snow. I miss the growing familiarity I enjoy with Haliburton Village and its friendly inhabitants. Most of all I yearn for the view across the Burnt River that I stand gazing upon each morning when I rise in my Canadian home.

Love it as I do, London and England can not compete with the more rough-and-ready charms of Canada and Haliburton County. Your wine may not be as refined as the European vintages and the good cheeses in Canadian stores – the speciality ones, not the giant slabs of fluorescent plastic that masquerade as my favourite sandwich filling – are more expensive than gold but these are small prices to pay for the fresh air that I taste each morning when I wake in Haliburton; the view from my window; the opportunities to sit in a small hut on an icy lake and catch nothing… OK I kid about that last one.

I’m enjoying seeing my family, reacquainting myself with British friends and sampling the delights that only a city like London can offer. But amidst it all I look forward to returning to the freezing temperatures and warm hearts of Canada.

See you all soon.

Something a little fishy

“So you’re the newspaper guy. You got your pen with ya? Better not have!”

I stood in the doorway, looking into the small main room of a hunt cabin. Looking back at me, menacingly, were 13 of the biggest, meanest, roughest looking fellows that this writer has ever had the dubious pleasure of meeting.

White haired and lacking teeth but with forearms like Popeye’s and a wicked gleam in his eye, one chap stepped forward and with a scowl relieved me of the two large tubs of butter tarts I was carrying. “Si’ down over there,” he said gruffly, pointing to a small space on a sofa almost entirely occupied by two glaring giants. “Shall I frisk him for recording devices?” growled one. “I could skin him like a rabbit,” snarled the other. As I turned to make my escape the entire room erupted with a roar of laughter. It was then the guy who had invited me on this ice fishing trip, popped his head around the door. “They’re looking after you, I see,” he grinned.

And so began a weekend in which I learned as much about rural Haliburtonian life as I’ve done in my previous eleven months here.

We ice fished, for starters. A sport entirely new to me, I initially thought the tiny rods were for children. Now, a number of my new angling companions could easily have felled a tree and used it as a fishing pole, so to see these fellows handling such dainty piscatorial tools was quite a sight. As each took two tiny rods from his backpack I smiled as it brought to mind the image of grizzly bears knitting. 

We ate very well. Or to rephrase that, I ate while my new friends gorged themselves. Fresh air gives any man a good appetite, I know but the amount of food that these fellows packed away in a weekend could have fed the Boston Bruins for a fortnight. Paper plates were piled high and silence descended on the hunt camp. “Seconds?” barked the cook after a few minutes. A crescendo of scraping chairs, groans and expletives erupted as fourteen men all vied for first to the moose stew leftovers. “Pudding,” came the order not long after and I watched in awe as 40 butter tarts were consumed in a matter of seconds!

We drank plenty, too. In camp, the preferred beverage was rum and coke, although some of the party insisted on mixing clamato juice into beer. Just because they did it does not make it right, though!

Out on the ice the choice of alcoholic tipple became more exotic, and a little bit girly, if I can say that without offending female readers. Amaretto, peach schnapps, Irish cream, orange liquor… This parade of sickly sweet cocktail mixers was proffered to me by ruddy faced men mountains, now colossal in size due to the extra layers required to sit for hours poised over holes bored through the frozen lake. I smirked at the choice of drinks initially but soon came to appreciate their sweet energy boost and warming alcoholic kick. When the ‘skidoo oil’ was passed around I almost baulked but on trying what turned out to be a mix of whisky and cherry whisky I realised that this lethal concoction was the best of the lot. Faces glowed, the sun shone, we caught almost no fish.

Best of all though, we, or rather they, told stories. There was the one about the suicide deer, who kept coming back to be shot – told much to the chagrin of the fellow who kept missing it. It seems one poor chap once fell asleep drunk and in wet clothes, only to wake up frozen to the cold cabin floor. Not being able to move his legs he screamed like a banshee until he realised he wasn’t paralysed. And then there was the newcomer who, not knowing how to drill through the ice with a power auger, first pussy footed with the trigger, to no avail; then wobbled the machine a bit, no luck; finally, he gave the trigger a good squeeze, the auger bit hard into ice, spun him around and sent him skidding across the lake on his backside.

Unfortunately, that last chap was me. How my new chums roared with laughter.

Precious time

Living in any major metropolis from Toronto to New Delhi, New York to London is a grand experience and one that I’d exhort anyone to try for a little while at least. It is exciting, frenetic and enthralling. There is more to do than you could fit into two lifetimes: so many stores to shop, places to dine; galleries to peruse and theatre to bemuse; sights to explore and people to ignore (please refer to my previous column on friendliness in the city).

But, amidst all of this feverish living of life, the one thing that you can not easily find in the city is peace: time to relax, to sit back and contemplate your life. And so, I packed my knapsack, slung it on a pole over my shoulder and headed out from London to come live in Haliburton. I came here to gulp down the clean fresh air, to wander through sweet smelling woodlands and to find a more sedate way of life.

That was easier said than done. The trouble is, all you folk are rushing around, taking one, two, three jobs; ferrying the kids from baseball to hockey, to ballet and curling; campaigning for council office, collecting for charity, cutting logs and careering around in speed boats.

We live in what the marketing men of the metropolis would call ‘a time-poor society’. Now, I don’t like the phrase but I get the meaning. There is too much going on in almost all of our lives. We need to find time to go slow every once in a while, to take the weight of our feet, to ‘just chill’, as I believe the young folk are apt to say.  

And so, I recommend to you all a trip to the barbers. There is but one in the area, Bruce’s. It can look intimidating from the exterior, and the clientele will give you a long hard stare when you enter but the proprietor, yep you guessed it, Bruce, will smile offer you a seat and then with a ‘where was I?’ continue his current yarn.

You can join in if you like, or simply sit back and enjoy the banter. It’s blokes’ stuff mainly – the nuances of hunting by bow or catching lake trout; the hopeless state of the Maple Leafs and the best satellite channels to tune into to be mortified by their current form – it’s anything and nothing, the whole world encompassed in conversation that is apt to be peppered with expletives and more than one tall story. The important thing is, though, that you aren’t doing anything else. This forced relaxation. And that’s good.

You can’t book an appointment at Bruce’s but you can calculate the approximate length of your stay by counting the number of gents already seated when you enter. Multiply that number by 15 minutes for each haircut, then add another ten minutes per man as a sort of time-out for Bruce to finish each story. There, you have your duration at the barbers figured out. But that’s not the point and neither is the haircut, really. The joy of visiting the barbershop is in knowing you are in for an hour or so of rib-tickling chat about everything other than worries and work. You’ll leave with a whole host of new knowledge (not all of it trustworthy) a joke or two and a short back and sides. There’ll be no perms, highlights or gel applied at Bruce’s!

Now, our local barber only cuts men’s hair, so ladies, unless you want your nose, ear and eyebrow hair trimming I’d avoid Bruce’s. However, don’t despair, simply pop into your local hairdresser without making an appointment. Turn up a couple of hours before you anticipate needing the haircut and say to the dumbfounded receptionist, ‘oh it’s OK, I’ll wait’. Then, sit back, relax and enjoy time well spent chatting about whatever it is that women chat about in hair salons.

And, if by chance you get any good tips as to where the trout are to be found in spring let me know because no one at the barbers can help!

Just another day

Now, right from the outset I have to admit to being the Scrooge of New Year. I’m the fellow whose frown deepens and hackles rise at the excitement and sense of anticipation that tends to afflict folks in the run up to the Eve celebrations. It’s not that I don’t like a good party; more the fact that folks get so so overly excited about a night that all too often fails to deliver the drama expected.

Bah Humbug.

However, just like Scrooge I have been forced to reassess my views on the aforementioned festivities: not by ghosts of New Years, thankfully, but by writing this column and so let us start with New Years Past.

Copious amounts of alcohol inevitably contributed to my New Year’s Eve frivolity in years gone by. Tony, you’ll always be remembered for the flaming absinth incident and Liz, I still feel I need to apologise for the hours you spent in ER following our drink fuelled tom-foolery. And, then there was Tim.

At one memorable bash Tim was bet he couldn’t drink a pint of lager from a glass without using his hands. The first sips, easy. As the level dropped, he slurped with the tilted glass propped against his chin. But how to finish the last half pint without spilling it? The answer: press face against glass, take a couple of good inhalations and cause a vacuum. Now, with the glass stuck to face proceed to empty it, head thrown back glugging beer down merrily.

Oh how we laughed on seeing that the vacuum glass trick had pulled Tim’s lips deep into the glass. On prising it off his face Tim found that his lips were as if distended to perhaps ten times their normal size. Speech was nigh on impossible unless you count the rubbery-lipped mumblings from Tim and squeaked expletives between rowdy guffawing from us his so called friends. We hardly stopped laughing long enough to chink glasses at midnight, while a wobbly mouthed Tim blubbed (that’s all he could do) about explanations and an impending visit from his grandma.

Now to New Years Present. While my little son can be quite silly at times he is as yet a tad young for the type of antics mentioned above. And, in moving an ocean away from long-time friends just a few short months ago, I imagined New Year’s Eve 2010 to be a quiet affair with my lovely wife and a bottle of fine French wine for company. And I was looking forward to it, too! The trouble is you Canadians are far too friendly and so this Scrooge was bundled off to a party, grumbling about not sharing his wine.

At said party, we ate and drank with a gay abandon that only parents of small children who’ll be up at six the next morning no matter how bad your hangover know how to do! We performed ancient family rituals (if I told you I’d have to kill you), periodically persuaded the kids to stop chasing the cat and wished for luck and long life over the year to come. The upshot: the Scrooge in me was banished and we had a great time with new Canadian friends.

And that brings me to New Years Future. Perhaps this lovely relaxed evening in Minden did it, may be it is the fine new land that I find myself in at the start of 2011, but what I have come to realise is that my grouchiness about New Year’s Eve is an anxiety born of how successful, how raucous, how legendary this most celebrated night of nights should be. And you know what, I now see that New Years Future need not be the annoying must-go ‘celebrations’ that always end with heart ache, hangovers and fat lips (sorry Tim).

Instead, I’m looking forward to relaxing into each New Year that my middle age brings; getting firmly acquainted with my new Canadian friends; learning their New Year’s traditions; and, hopefully laughing loud and long at the occasional geriatric drinking game gone wrong in years to come.

Keep it in the family

We, my cousins and I, waited impatiently outside the living room door. “Are you ready yet,” shouted little Jonny, “Oh hurry up!” The door was duly opened and in we scuttled, a cluster of kids, our eyes darting around, searching excitedly. And the assembled oldies, they started to sing: “how green you are, how green you are…” to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. The nearer we got to our prize – traditionally a walnut hidden in plain sight – the louder the singing became, if we moved away the volume decreased.

Childhood Christmas in England meant for me, grandparents, uncles and aunts, plus a scrum of cousins of varying ages descending on our house throughout Christmas Day and my Mother rushing around ensuring no one could ever be described as anything less than absolutely stuffed to the gunnels. The focus of the day would gravitate, almost as predictably as the film repeats in the TV scheduling, from the frenzy of present opening, to a mountainous Christmas lunch and on to after lunch recovery, which can be best described as lounging on the sofa groaning in mock pain while the Christmas pud went down. Fortunately, before pangs of hunger had even thought of panging party hats were donned and Christmas tea appeared: towering plates of turkey sandwiches and mince pies, washed down with cups of milky tea. And then, finally, it was time for the games, the part that us kids and I suspect the adults looked forward to the most.

This was and still is Christmas to me. I do acknowledge the religious connotations; the Midnight Mass, Nativity and all things to do with Jesus (I’m all for anyone who can turn water into wine), and, when still young we would accompany my Mother to church for candle-lit carols and the Christmas Day service. That is until my Father was forbidden from attending any longer. You see, the reverend made the mistake, after a particularly lengthy sermon, of asking my Dad what he had thought of the service. Never one to mince his words, he said simply: “Boring, vicar. I thought it was rather boring.” 

Dad still revels in the fact that he was banned from church, thirty years on.

This year, however, all has been different. Our recent emigration has put 3000 miles of Atlantic Ocean between me, finding that walnut – the singing will be very quiet indeed – and my parents, siblings and relatives. Christmas has instead been an intimate affair. Waking on Christmas morning with just my lovely wife and baby boy, it’s been much quieter (I’m not putting batteries in any of his new toys) and the realisation that we miss our family more intense than at any time since we arrived in Canada.

But don’t think we’re feeling down. Our first Canadian Christmas sees us celebrating our new lives. It’s the first year that little Z set to unwrapping the pile of presents under the tree with gusto; and, we have made wonderful friends who took it upon themselves to show us just how Canadians celebrate Christmas.

And so to everyone, I say thank you for making our time so far in Canada an enjoyable one. I bid you a very Merry Christmas and insist that you play silly games, sing till you’re fit to burst and revel in the best company you could wish for, your family large or small.  

By the way, there was no prize for finding that walnut: other than the elation of plucking it from its hiding place amongst Uncle Robert’s bouffant wig (you could guarantee it was hidden there at least once a year). The singing, which had risen to a cacophony, would explode into a rousing cheer; we kids dancing joyfully around the living room for a just moment before demanding: “PLAY AGAIN! PLAY AGAIN!”