Category: Canada

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New Found Land

Happy anniversary ‘Essence of Water’,

Peter invited me to be a contributor a while back, and I didn’t write for a while as I was afraid of messing up.  In this little harbor of the Internet, the tone is both serious and light.  We don’t need to write about deep thoughts, but we do because we care.  We see the world change in front of our mind’s eye, and we see its people struggle (including ourselves) to find meaning and a satisfying way of life.  I love that we get to talk about it here; and so here I am with my first post.
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Holly, Ontario

(with apologies to Said the Whale)

The sky is filled with high clouds, some white, some grey, some gold as the sun edges behind them toward the west.  The wind pushes the water west to east, on the inner arm of an inner arm of an inner arm of a bay of Lake Ontario.  Willow trees line the shore, stalks of old celery with less water and more time making them stretch towards the sky, the brown green fuzz of spring buds anointing their furthest limbs.  Across the water the birch trees are still bare.  The trees on the south shore get the spring light last; their leaves will take a few more weeks to appear.  Yesterday was bright blue sky, no clouds, but the wind was stronger from the north.  Today is warm and kind, the wind from the west, the sun a little harder to make out.

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Flanneur d’autoroute

The dog and I are going to visit a number of friends in Ontario at the end of the month, and as is my wont, I’ve already planned several different potential routes to get there and back, but I know exactly what route I’m going to take.  I’ll drive south on the Maine Turnpike, through New Hampshire, avoid Boston via I-495, and then take the Massachusetts Turnpike and the New York State Thruway to the border near Niagara Falls, and from there it’s a quick jog to my first stop in Hamilton, Ontario.  I’ll spend a few days there and then head on the 401 on a straight shot to Belleville, where I’ll get off the highway and circle on the winding roads of Prince Edward County til I visit my second stop, visiting my friends (including prolific commentator Viktoria).  Then after a few days of very intense conversation, I’m sure, and lots of hugs, I’ll get back on the 401 until I get to Quebec, where I’ll take the autoroute into Montreal and a steak dinner with my friend from Calgary before loading up a cooler with Montreal smoked meat from Schwartz’s Deli and the final push back to Maine.  Google says it’s 1289 miles, which sounds about right.

Who cares, Freilinger, I hear you all saying.  This is a blog, not a trip planning site. Continue reading “Flanneur d’autoroute”

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It’s so big

Last night I took the dog to Peaks Island for a nighttime walk.  The ferry was cold and I didn’t wear quite enough layers – perfect for the walk, but the wind coming across Casco Bay, combined with the perky pace of the Machigonne II car ferry, meant I was chilled to the bone when I got back to the mainland.  I put the dog in the back of the car – after a three hour walk he curled up and immediately fell asleep – and I popped into a bar for a quick whisky to warm up.   The woman next to me struck up a conversation when her husband excused himself to use the loo.  She was from northern Vermont, she and her husband owned a craft brewery, and they had engineered a few days holiday in Portland around a “business tour” of a couple of breweries in town.

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Valuation

I used to work for a bank called ATB Financial, which was really just a “doing business as” name for something called the Alberta Treasury Branches.  I have some of my fondest memories of my life from ATB, and met some of the best people on earth, period, during my time in Alberta.  ATB is essentially a regional bank (although please don’t tell the Canadian federal regulators it’s a bank) owned by the Province of Alberta, making it unique in North America as a full-service banking institution owned by the people of a state or province (there is a Bank of North Dakota which is state-owned, but doesn’t offer a full slate of banking services and doesn’t have an open-ended mandate).  I loved my time at ATB but a friend of mine reminded me tonight that I really loved the concept of ATB – the bank itself is, alas, just another human institution.

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