PLACES I REMEMBER

“The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice ; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.” (Psalm 97:1)

It’s easy to get in a rut. It can be a rut of what you’re DOING, or, YES, it can be a rut in what you’re writing. The last piece I wrote on this blog (about revival from Psalm 15) is very powerful and in the right sense of the word, I’m really quite proud of it. Yet, I also know that the way I’ve reacted to surprising and challenging events of my life in 2010 is to write some pretty intense and introspective pieces. I WANT TO TRY TO GET AWAY FROM THAT STUFF, at least for awhile!

This is the VACATION season of the year. I may not get much more than an “overnight” this year, but I HAVE been on some fabulous trips and vacations in my life. It occurred to me that I could take a few postings and share about them. It may give some of you vacation ideas...if not for THIS summer, then for the Fall or maybe for sometime next year. Hence the title “PLACES I REMEMBER”. I intend that this piece will be “PLACES I REMEMBER- PART ONE” and that there will be others like it forthcoming. Today, I want to put in a good word for Prince Edward Island, Canada.

I think Prince Edward Island, Canada is a COOL place. I don’t suppose I’d visit it during the winter. They DO get brutal winters there. Year round residents of places like P.E.I. are pretty hearty, healthy people to survive those winters. The other seasons of the year are great times to visit there. All four of my grandparents were originally from Canada: two from Quebec, one from New Brunswick, and one from Prince Edward Island. It was my mother’s mom who came from P.E.I. Her maiden name was Mary MacDonald. Her mother’s maiden name was Effie MacPhee. So, contrary to what most people think, I’m actually NOT a pure Frenchman. There’s a lot of Scottish and a little English in me!

Mary Ann and I were very curious to check out Prince Edward Island and we did so over Columbus Day weekend in 2002. In Canada, our “Columbus Day” is their Thanksgiving Day. That year we took Tuesday off, as well. We used Saturday and Tuesday as our travel days. P.E.I. is farther away than you might think. Charlottetown, P.E.I. is actually as far away from Framingham as is Akron, Ohio!
As I recall we drove to the Bangor, Maine area, then we picked up Maine route 9 which goes through miles and miles of mostly woods and unincorporated townships. The border crossing is at Calais, Maine and St. Stephen, New Brunswick. Keep in mind that now you need a Passport to travel to Canada. It took at least 5 hours to drive on the highway across New Brunswick. There are MANY Christmas tree farms along the highway there. Many, many of the Christmas trees used in the northeastern U.S. are grown in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In the Moncton area, we got on a road heading toward Shediac where you pick up the Confederation Bridge.

I’ve already mentioned how far away this area is from Boston, but the Canadian maritime provinces, in fact, are VERY oriented toward Boston. Boston is the nearest REALLY BIG metropolitan area for them. At a Shediac fast food restaurant, Celtics and Red Sox logos and paraphernalia were in evidence. The maritimes are LOADED with fans of Boston teams. At our motel in Charlottetown, PEI, we got several Boston channels on cable TV: 2, 4, 5, 7 and 38. It’s the Atlantic time zone there so all the shows are on an hour later than we’re used to at home!

Up until 1997, you could only get to P.E.I. by ferry. There are still ferries which run between Nova Scotia and P.E.I. but the state-of-the-art Confederation Bridge (9 miles long) connects Shediac, New Brunswick to Borden-Carlton, P.E.I. You pay the toll when you’re LEAVING the island. I believe in 2002 it was $37 Canadian/$26 American. I would guess it’s gone up since then. The bridge has cameras all along its span and a control center that monitors everything going on. If you break down, for instance, a tow truck will be dispatched to you. If conditions get too windy, the bridge is closed.

Prince Edward Island is the “coolest” place! It’s Canada’s smallest province in area. I’d guess it’s maybe half the size of Massachusetts at most. There are only two “cities”, Charlottetown and Summerside. Charlottetown only has around 30,000 residents. The island is quite rural. Most of the villages are tiny. It’s probably a lot like Cape Cod was a hundred years ago before the building boom.
There are a lot of potato farms on the island...mostly on the northwestern end. The central and eastern parts have varied agriculture and are a little more “touristy”. There’s shellfishing for mussels EVERYWHERE along the coast. Mussels are a big P.E.I. export. Much of the interior of the island is GREEN like you’d think of Ireland. The dirt and sand tends to be RED and I mean RED.

The children’s “Anne of Green Gables” books were based on a house in Cavendish, P.E.I. and that’s possibly the biggest tourist attraction there. Believe it or not, “Anne of Green Gables” is HUGE in Japan, and Japanese tourists throng the place. Mary Ann and I visited the “Green Gables” house. It’s set up to be just like any rural Canadian house of the late 1800s. It was interesting to me to see the kind of home my grandmother would have grown up in. Cavendish is on the waterfront, and what a waterfront! There are CLIFFS! In fact, there are also signs warning you to NOT get too close to the edge because the cliffs “let go” at times, and if you’re too close to the edge, you’ll get killed!

On Canada’s Thanksgiving Day, we drove out to the East End of the island, very close to where my grandmother came from. There’s a lighthouse there. Wow, was it windy there! If you like maritime scenes, though, that was a great spot!
There are lots of nice restaurants in P.E.I. No, we didn’t have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. We went to a Canadian chain restaurant and had our dinner there...more like the kind of stuff you’d get at a T.G.I. Fridays. The scenery was beautiful. The atmosphere was restful. It was hard to leave. If you’ve never been there, I recommend a visit to Prince Edward Island!