Canada Day Eh?

Some friends from the group I joined, Council of Canadians, invited me to join them at Harris Park for the Canada Day festivities. It was a cloudy and gloomy day but by about 5pm the sun started to peek out and we had NO rain for a change! We are so water-logged around here!

While looking for my friends who did I see? My brother, Gord, on his way to watch a ballgame at Labatt's Park.  I could here cheering from the ball diamond quite frequently so assumed London won the game. (They did!)

This youngster was having a blast playing under the bridge but was making me a wee bit nervous about his safety! I'm sure he came away unscathed.

The river that flows through London is called the Thames of course! It's pretty shallow most of the time but all the rain we've had has created perfect conditions for these kayakers.

People really dress up around here for Canada Day. This must be some sort of First Nations garb. He never came over to me but he had something in a bag that he was sharing with people...not sure what it was.

The lights over at Labatt Park where the baseball game was going on. There is a huge osprey nest on top of the lights on the left. We watched as the parents brought the babies food - we could see "supper" dangling from the osprey's talons. We had to wait for the ballgame to be over and the lights turned off before the fireworks could start.

Hard to tell from this angle but this fellow was dressed as a Star Wars storm trooper!

There was live music from 5pm til close to 10pm. in the bandshell which I thoroughly enjoyed.

You can't really tell from this picture but these fellows' hats had flashing lights on them...

One of my all-time favourite singers - Cheryl Lescom. She sounds a bit like Janis Joplin and Melissa Etheridge - throaty, deep and man can she sing the blues!

Finally it was time for the fireworks - the Canada flag was first:

It was hard to take photos of the fireworks so I gave up and just enjoyed them without a camera in between me and the great show. It was very impressive and worth the long wait.

It alway's mayhem on the streets after Canada Day is over - thousands of people walking all over the place and cars trying to navigate their way through the crowds without killing anybody! I parked quite a few blocks away hoping the avoid the traffic jams. The strategy worked and I was home by 11pm which for some strange reason seems really late!! I'm usually in bed by 10!! It's an exciting life I lead :)

Google earth shot of my farmhouse & small forest in PEI

So it's that time of year again when we start getting excited and making plans for this summer's trip to PEI. After my crappy day on Thursday Michael and I had a looooooooooong talk which we then decided to continue at Swiss Chalet. After discussing our days - the good, the bad and the ugly - we switched gears to talk about when we might leave for PEI. I'm finished work by about noon on Friday, June 29th so we're mulling whether to leave that afternoon or wait til the Saturday. Things that influence our decision - driving through Montreal (it's best to drive through Montreal well after rush hour - much quicker) and where to spend the night (usually in Edmunston, N.B.) and what time we'd like to arrive at our house in PEI (before dark!).

Last year's trip was far from ideal so I made a list of what to do differently this year. If you remember my posts from last July's trip we took turns driving/sleeping (hah!) and didn't spend the night anywhere - we drove straight through. That was mistake #1 as it ain't easy sleeping in a compact car which is so packed with stuff that we couldn't recline the passenger seat!  When we started up our .4km laneway to our house in PEI it was DARK (mistake #2) AND the laneway hadn't been cut yet (yes, it's a red dirt and grass road so that was mistake #3).

Our laneway

Mistakes 4 & 5 were doozies:  the electricity wasn't on of course so we headed to the basement and flipped the breaker switch - great!! We had light!! (I had called Maritime Electric before leaving London, ON so they would turn on our electricity before we got there - see, not everything we did was a mistake...sort of...)  Then we tried to get the pump going because we have a well and had the house winterized before leaving last August. Sounds like a good plan right? Nope. We didn't have a clue about "priming the pump" so decided we could live without water for one night and then see if we could find a plumber the next day. Meanwhile with the electricity turned on the element in our hot water tank was all fired up but the element burned out (unbeknownst to us) because there was NO WATER in the tank!

Of course, we didn't find out about that until we finally got the water going which was not until the following evening. Plumbers aren't that plentiful in our area - especially on the Sunday of the Canada Day holiday weekend. Can you imagine their rates if we had found one??

There are a lot of friendly people in PEI

What happened next is one of our BEST friendly PEI people stories: while trying to locate a plumber we had driven to a neighbour's house. He gave us a phone number to try but when we got back to our house we found that the number was incorrect. After many more phone calls and attempts at figuring out the plumbing problem ourselves our neighbour showed up with his father in tow. He was feeling absolutely mortified because he'd realized he'd given us a wrong number. Between him, his dad and Michael they had our pump going within the next half hour. We were thrilled at their kindness and thanked them profusely. They were a bit overwhelmed at our gratitude because to them they'd done nothing out of the ordinary by lending us a hand.

Of course now that we had water we wanted to take showers and this is when we realized we had no hot water. Hoo boy. The next day was Monday so we were able to get in touch with a plumber/jack-of-all- trades that we had met the previous summer. Now this guy does quality work but only on his schedule. He's over 70 and doesn't like to get up too early in the day. Then, like the other guys his age, he hangs out at the local Esso station drinking coffee and jabbering away about the events of the day (and likely making fun of those folks "from away" who don't know how to prime a pump and who don't know enough to make sure the hot water tank is either filled with water or turned OFF before turning on the electricity!)

The view that makes it all worth while!

Anyhoo he finally showed up sometime Monday afternoon and declared the element in the hot water tank to be pooched. So off he went to the local Kent store (about 15 minutes away and another favorite spot to catch up with his buddies).  Just when I thought he'd forgotten about us he came back and replaced the element.  Finally, two days after arriving we had electricity and cold/hot running water. Now I know how the PIONEERS felt!

Our stupidity didn't end there. Michael wanted to show his gratitude to our neighbour in a more tangible way so we drove to O'Leary and bought a Tim Horton's gift card. The look on our neighbour's face when Michael gave him the card was one of complete bewilderment. Why on earth would we give him a gift?? He kept repeating "you don't have to do that" and he really meant it. We had offended him by thinking we had to give him something to repay him for his kindness. To him he was just being neighbourly, in fact, I don't even think he gave conscious thought to his reasons for helping us out - it's just what you do. If there comes a time when he needs help with something he'll know he can come to us. But a gift card? Big NO NO!!

Where our road -Butcher Rd. - meets Mill River East Rd.

So we learned many valuable lessons within our first 48 hours on the island last summer. We were there for another seven weeks and learned many more which I'll share in another post. This one has gone on long enough!