Day 11 on the Trans-Canada, Sackville, NB

By Mark Richardson - Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 10:18 PM - 0 Comments

Trans-Canada distance: 1,392 km

Actual distance driven:  2,817 km

THEN: There are many who still keep fond memories of the old ferry that linked Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick, and which was officially a part of the Trans-Canada Highway.

MV Abegweit

The original Abegweit ferry could carry almost a thousand passengers (though only 60 cars) while it also broke ice during the winter on the Northumberland Strait. It was replaced in 1981 by a much larger ship that could carry 250 cars; it was also called Abegweit, the local Mi’kmaq word for Prince Edward Island, meaning “cradled on the waves.” However, as journalist Walter Stewart observed in his book “My Cross-Country Checkup,” ferrygoers often preferred to call the ship “A Big Wait,” which was frequently appropriate.

The newer ship was disposed of when the 1997 completion of the 13-kilometre Confederation Bridge made a ferry service redundant. According to Wikipedia, the ship was sold to a broker in Texas who eventually sold it to a buyer in India, and it was sailed across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean on its last voyage, to be scrapped in India in 1994 2004.

Abby in Chicago

But the older ship found a much better fate. It was bought by the Chicago Columbia Yacht Club in Chicago, which had been refused permission by the city to construct a clubhouse on its stretch of waterfront. The club bought the ship, now called the Abby, and moored it permanently at its property to serve as its clubhouse.  She was even given a fresh paint job a couple of years ago, so she looks good as new.

NOW: The ferry may still be remembered fondly, but Islanders won’t trade their Confederation Bridge for anything. It’s a remarkable feat of engineering that turned 15 years old on June 1.

Confederation Bridge

It took four years to build the bridge, and at 13 kilometres long, it’s officially the longest bridge in the world that crosses ice-covered water. Among other bridges over water, though, it doesn’t even make the top 15 – it’s dwarfed by the longest bridge of them all, the Qingdao Haiwan bridge in China, which stretches almost 43 kilometres, followed closely in the stakes by the Lake Pontchartrain Bridge in Louisiana, at more than 38 kilometres.

The bridge is 40-to-60 metres high and 11 metres wide, with one lane each way and no overtaking allowed anywhere. Pedestrians and cyclists must travel by shuttle bus, but the guardrails are just 1.1 metres tall, giving enough space to still allow drivers a view of the strait.

It was built by the private consortium Strait Crossing Development Inc. at an estimated cost of $840 million dollars – $210 million over its initial budget. The federal government still has to pay for it, though, sending annual cheques to the consortium of $41.9 million until 2032, at which time it takes over ownership. And the consortium gets to keep the tolls till then, too.

Mark of Green Gables

SOMETHING DIFFERENT …  When tourists think of Prince Edward Island, they think of beaches and potatoes – and Anne of Green Gables. When Japanese tourists think of Prince Edward Island, they don’t even bother with the beaches and potatoes.

Anne is huge here, and there are thousands of potential mementoes of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s red-haired, freckle-faced creation. As Walter Stewart also wrote in his book, “we have been able to avoid Anne vibrators and Green Gables garbage bags,” but pretty much everything else is available, including straw hats with built-in pigtails.

Leave Anne alone!

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 37 Comments

Doug Wilson / Corbis

As if the red-haired orphan hadn’t already endured enough, Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables has been criticized for being an inconsistent feminist role model and for harbouring lesbian urges, a claim made in 2000 by Laura Robinson, a professor of the Royal Military College.

But these allegations pale next to Helen Hoy’s new claim in Anne’s World: A New Century, a collection of scholarly essays about Lucy Maud Montgomery’s most famous creation and the global cult she spawned. In “ ‘Too Heedless and Impulsive’: Re-reading Anne of Green Gables through a Clinical Approach,” Hoy concludes that the very traits that have endeared Anne to generations—her flights of fancy, her loquacity, her theatricality, her impulsiveness—suggest she suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FASD. It’s an analysis destined to incite Anne fans and stir discussion when “Anne geeks” descend on Charlottetown later this month for the biannual L.M. Montgomery conference.

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A tale told by facts alone

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 1 Comment

Jane Urquhart’s biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery opens with the Anne of Green Gables author on her deathbed—her body failing, her mind wracked by grief, rage, and a “crushing disappointment.” From the start, this is a poetic work: we are guided through the emotional terrain of Montgomery’s “dark side,” her frustrations and disappointments.

“I don’t write non-fiction,” says Urquhart. The celebrated Canadian author began the task with some misgivings: “I didn’t know whether I was going to be able to manage with facts alone—and rein in my own imagination.” But she has succeeded. And it is fitting that these two noted female novelists have been paired together—especially given what Urquhart describes as her “multi-generational” connection with Montgomery. Urquhart credits Anne with having “opened [her mother] up to a world of books and literature.” Later, the book enlivened her own literary passions.

Urquhart often reads her copy of Anne of Green Gables, a first edition that was passed down by her grandmother and made its way through all the women in her family. “What I think about Montgomery,” she explains, “is that she was responsible for giving us a kind of permission . . . And that permission had to do with being a creative young woman who wanted to achieve something in the world of the imagination.” Continue…

What they're thinking on Queen Street and what to make of it all

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 4:18 PM - 12 Comments

In Toronto for the weekend and picked up the current issue of Now magazine. It is very—and very explicitly—in favour of the coalition. (Eye is pro-coalition too, if less rabidly. They also provide this helpful line graph.)

None of this is terribly surprising. 

One interesting sentence, though, from Now’s Memo to Michael Ignatieff: “The real message about a different kind of politics in the Canuck context is coalition.”

This coalition’s inherent problems are obvious and have been expounded upon at length. There are real problems here that cannot be entirely diminished. But, in the coalition’s mild defense, you could say it is something different. And, in fairness, you could point that just about everyone has pleading for some time for just that—something different.

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