 | CANADA |
| CANADA |
CANADA AGAIN
I'd left the USA behind by now and was back in Canada. And as I climbed up over yet another Appalachian ridge, it started to snow again, really heavily this time, and the driving started to become quite precarious. For quite a long time my car was the only one on the road and I was taking it easy. But then again, in my previous existence as a ski bum and coach driver, I'd been over roads like this before. I remembered particularly 7th December 1990 when I took a coach loaded with tourists along the M6 around Birmingham in a blizzard, and I was the only vehicle moving.
I soon crossed the ridge and began to descend into yet another river valley, this one near Magog, Quebec. And seeing all of this made me wish I had
I had a quick lap around the car park to see if I could find a place to park so that I could go for a walkabout, but no luck, unfortunately. No matter. What I saw of the range didn't look a great deal to me.
since writing this, however, I've been informed that this is part of the Mont Orford skiing area, with about 30 miles of cross-country skiing along 13 trails; and four mountain faces to ski down, in a total of 56 trails. Ah well. You live and learn. This reminds me, if you have anything to add or you want to make a comment about anything on my site, then .
A few miles further along the road, I came across this vehicle. It's a GM 3 ton pickup, and it's for sale.
This is the kind of thing that would ordinarily suit me, provided it had a straight six diesel motor, but unfortunately in this case the load bed is a little too short. It needs to be at least 12 feet, 3.8 metres, so that a Cortina estate can fit on the back. A 10 foot load bed is neither use nor ornament as far as I am concerned.
Well, maybe not an ornament - I can use it to haul lumber and building materials around the farm and so I wouldn't turn it down if someone offered it to me. But the straight six diesel is anessential.
A short way further along the road from the GM pickup, at a small road haulage depot just at the side of the road, I came across this truck standing forlornly in the snow on the forecourt. Now to me, it looks suspiciously like it might have originally been a Fordson E83W pickup from the UK and dating from the early 1950s.
It was certainly the last thing I expected to see out here. I can't even remember the last time I saw one in the UK!
I remember these vehicles well. As it happens, the pot had a couple of the van versions of these when we were saucepans and we regularly travelled over the UK in them, all five kids wedged in the back among the camping gear and the old transistor radio hanging up in the back on a meat hook.
I can even remember their registration numbers - KLG 93 and XVT 772, if that's of any use to anyone. In fact, XVT 772 was the same colour as this pickup until my father brush-painted it blue and white.
There were a couple of guys in the workshop working on a modern 18-wheeler tractor unit, so I asked them if they would mind if I could photograph it. Seeing as they didn't raise any objections, I went ahead and took a few snaps.
Having a good look at all of this though, I have to say that I don't have a clue what they are trying to do to it. And I also suspect that neither did they.
Now I noticed that in the workshop one of the guys there was wielding a welding torch. The kindest thing that I could think of to say was that he had been practising first outside here.
I did go back inside the workshop to ask them a couple of questions about it, but they must have seen me coming and piddled off smartish-like before I could grab hold of them.
It wasn't until quite a long time later and after much gazing at some much blown-up copies of these photographs that the penny finally dropped. A close examination of the chassis underneath here leads me to believe that this isn't the original chassis at all, but a much later North-American one (at least, that's my guess) and they are for some reason only known to themselves trying to get the body to fit on. Now why on earth would anyone want to do that?
But whatever it was that they are trying to do, I'd go as far as to say that they've totally knackered this one, and that's a real shame. These trucks are rare enough already these days without someone going about cutting one in half. And it's far too late to do anything about it now, though, more's the pity.
From here, I went off to Granby to do a final bit of shopping. It was my last full day in Canada. I'm sure there would be more things I might need
I'd left Granby and was heading towards Montreal and after negotiating a left-hand bend I happened to glance in the rear-view mirror. And this was more-or-less the view that I just happened to see. In real life, it was much more impressive than this.
It was just one long scarp slope resembling (as many European historians will understand) the Vimy ridge in North-East France. However the view from the top is of Montreal and its industry, not that of the coalfields of Lens and Douai which were for so long the goal of the British Army High Command.
Effectively this scarp slope marks the end of the mountains and signals the start of the Saint Lawrence flood plain and the symbolic end of the journey
MONTREAL
Pretty soon I was back in Montreal. The snow had stopped and it was early afternoon so I went for a drive around the suburbs at the northern side of the town for a good look around, and to see if I could find a different motel from the Metropole Motel where I stayed the last time I was in Montreal.
I didn't find a motel, but I did find this, which took me by surprise.
"Eh alors, qu'est-ce que c'est que je vois? Lulu! Qu'est-ce que tu fais içi? Le travail en noir, on dirait! Est-ce qu'ils sont au courant au bureau, heh?"
The drive around the suburbs was really nice, and I enjoyed it immensely. I could quite get used to living here. It was really nice.
Now, I said "three relatives I haven't seen" and although I've briefly mentioned Gary, I haven't introduced him. Yes, Gary Jewell is the third. I don't know what relation he is to me but it goes back quite a way. He's some sort of distant cousin a few times removed.
Later that evening after a chat on the telephone we met up, went for a meal, had a long talk, found we had similar tastes in music and so on. He even plays bass guitar! It was quite a pleasant evening all told and it was a real pleasure to meet him in person instead of on the end of an e-mail.
After a long e-mail correspondence for a period of 18 months afterwards, the communication came to an abrupt halt. I learnt much later from my niece that some time in the summer of 2003 Gary had died. I knew he hadn't been well for quite a long while, but this was so unexpected and so sad. He was such a nice guy. A similar age to me, too
Knowing that I was coming to Montreal, my aunt had set me a task to prove that I was worthy, so next morning it was off to the Mount Royal Cemetery, grave hunting.
In Mount Royal Cemetery is a section that is reserved for military personnel, those who died while on active service or died subsequently from wounds. My family on my mother's side come from Canada, Montreal in fact. My great grandfather Thomas W Cooper had fought in the South African War for one of the Wiltshire regiments of the British Army, and signed up in 1914 for the Canadian Army in the First World War at the outbreak of hostilities, even though he was well over the age limit.
What his military history was during the First World War I've not been able to find out, although I have tracked down copies of his enlistment papers. He died in the 1920s when he was in his 50s, presumably of symptoms relating to his army service, and was buried here in Mount Royal Cemetery.
I'd come to find his grave and photograph it, and it is here on the left.
An interesting anecdote that was recounted to me was that after my aunt had tracked down her grandfather (my great grandfather), she made her way over to visit his grave. Standing here was another group of people. She engaged them in conversation, and it was at that moment that she realised that she still had living relatives over here. The rest, as they say, is history.
I mentioned my distant cousin Gary Jewell earlier. He had family who served in World War I, and I stumbled across the grave of Arthur Jewell, one of his relatives, quite by accident.
You can see by the design of the headstones that they are military graves. This is the traditional Commonwealth War Graves pattern, that was designed by a committee of artists led by Mr D.S. MacColl, who was Keeper of the Wallace Collection and Sir Charles Holmes, who was Director of the National Gallery.
The font was the work of Mr Macdonald Gill, a caligrapher and architect better known for his work on the London Underground maps and in the House of Commons.
While I was up on the Heights of Montreal I took the opportunity to take a few photographs of the city. You can see that the view is really impressive from up here.
I didn't want to waste the opportunity of seeing the city, so I took quite a few shots to give a sort of panoramic effect of the view that you have. You can see the really good view of the city and the St Laurence River from up here, as well as a really nice girder bridge in the photograph on the left. I'm into bridges and industrial archaeology by the way, in case you are wondering.
In fact, this view had me thinking. I could easily imagine the damage I could inflict on the city from up here if I had a couple of cannon at my disposal. There isn't any finer example of the old saying "height is might" than the view from here, that's for sure.
Yes, give me three or four field guns up here and I could paralyse the entire city. There'd be no traffic at all coming up, down and over the river, and the port would be at a standstill.
Even better, how about being holed up here with a Stinger Missile launcher or two. There are credible reports that there was one that went missing in Afghanistan in the early 1990s and was traced as far as Rotterdam in 1995.
All sight was lost of it just before a container ship set sail from Rotterdam to Halifax, and it was strongly suspected that the Stinger Missile Launcher was on board that ship.
When the ship arrived in Halifax, there was no trace of the Stinger Missile, but there was also no trace of several of the containers that were known to be on board either. This is of course not unusual. Shipping containers regularly fall off ships and as they float very well when sealed, they are a known hazard to other shipping
Speculation is rife that the particular container that housed the Stinger missile was deliberately pushed overboard off the North American coast and picked up by a smaller boat. From there, it was smuggled over to the USA on the Bar Harbor ferry. It was round about this time that normally reliable airline pilots reported themselves as being under rocket attack when landing at or taking off from JFK, and there have long been allegations that TWA 800, that crashed off Long Island on 17th July 1996, was brought down by a missile
Not of course that any of the foregoing is ever likely to be proved, and you may dismiss it all as conspiracy theory gone mad. And who knows? But don't let yourself be misled. The point of conspiracy theories isn't the fact that they exist, but the fact that so many people have lost so much faith in their governments that they are quite ready to believe even the most outlandish theory rather than believe a single word that their governments tell them. That's the real issue that is behind conspiracy theories.
Anyway, lets get back to the tourism bit.
In the photo on the left at centre middle distance you can see the Montreal Olympic Stadium. Montreal was the host of the 1976 games, which were famous for being mired in controversity.
There were allegations of wholesale drug use against many teams. One American critic, Shirley Babashoff, complained about the East German swimming team, accusing them of having taken steroids - pointing out their impressive muscles and in particular their deep, almost masculine voices. This led to the world-famous quote from an East German official, who said "my girls came to swim, not to sing".
Furthermore, 26 mainly African teams boycotted the Olympics due to the New Zealand team having played rugby against the ostracised South Africans a short while before, and Taiwan was excluded.
If this wasn't bad enough, the province of Quebec had spent over 2 billion dollars on construction projects and the like for the games, which became a financial disaster. The Quebecois were plunged into a financial crisis that lasted for decades.
Now, just suppose I had enormous pockets and an unlimited baggage allowance. What would I bring home from my voyage around Eastern Canada and Northern New England? Yes, absolutely. I'd have to find some room somewhere for this set-up.
In case you are wondering, it's a Ford 3-ton F350 pickup with a horsebox body, and towing a nifty car transporter.
There were quite a few horses and carriages wandering around just here, and I suppose this has brought an outfit along.
I could see myself being extremely happy with this truck, as long as there was a straight-six diesel motor in it. Does anyone know where I can find one? I'm willing to work out an interesting deal over a set-up like this. You can see the Cavalier at the side of the trailer. I'd sneak it on and then disappear into the sunset without a moment's thought if I could get away with it.
Next step was to go into the city to find the registrar of deaths to get some further information about my great grandfather. I spent a long time walking around visiting all kinds of offices, but didn't have any luck at all. And my plane was waiting so I couldn't spend too much time hanging around being insistent.
But one thing puzzles me though in all this. In all my dashing around Montreal, how come I didn't take any photographs? I can't believe it.
So what did I get out of this holiday? Well one thing is for sure - you'll find a list of professions I'm qualified to undertake. If you need me in Canada, let me know and I'm on the next plane. This is where my future lies. I enjoyed Canada so much that I didn't want to go home
DORVAL
But for those of you who are going home, a word of warning.
Montreal Dorval Airport in early 2002 was the site of one of the greatest acts of air piracy anywhere in the western world. After you've checked your baggage in and go to passport control, you have to pass another barrier. Here you have to pay a "airport renovation fee" of $15 CAN in order to proceed further. Can't pay (or won't pay) means you can't go on to your plane, but you can't go back either. You are stuck in permanent limbo. So if you want to catch your plan, you have to cough up.
There are no signs anywhere in the airport or on any travel document that this charge is levied so if you haven't saved the cash and have spent up your credit card you have real problems. But even so, you still have to pay it. The Airport authorities should be ashamed of themselves. Flying (for me and for countless others) is a really stressful business without being made to "stand and deliver" for some modern Highway robbery or blackmail such as this.
This was aggravated by the fact that long-haul flights to Britain are pushed off into a departure lounge somewhere in a lost corner of the airport. When the plane was delayed, everyone wanted a coffee or to use the bathrooms but there was neither available in this departure lounge and the authorities announced that because we'd already been searched once (and because probably they couldn't be bothered to search us a second time) we wouldn't be allowed to leave the departure lounge.
Needless to say, I was so stressed out by this time that I got my coffee and bathroom, in exchange for which a couple of policemen got a piece of my mind and a right ear-bashing. What are these pills that the Americans are giving their Taliban prisoners to "calm" them down on the "extraordinary rendition" flights, and where can I get them?
All in all, I found leaving Montreal Dorval was an unpleasant experience. It is not a nice place to be.
Added to this British Airways forgot my special meal AGAIN so I flew back to Heathrow for 6 hours 55 minutes, starving and hungry. All this seems like good enough reasons to stay in Canada.
So, 8 days, 3108 kilometres, two countries, two ferries, 6 states or provinces. Then back home to rewire, plaster and tile a kitchen with a three-day time limit. When's the next holiday to recover?
This site is divided into three sections.
Choose a section from the links below
There are more links at the top and bottom of each page.
These concern the administration of the site, but you should visit them just the same.
about this site | audience participation | copyright notice | technical issues | accessibility statement | read this | contact me
©