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.

Day 10 on the Trans-Canada, Borden, PEI

By Mark Richardson - Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 11:19 PM - 0 Comments

Trans-Canada distance: 1,317 km

Actual distance driven:  2,531 km

A car turns left from University Ave. onto Grafton Street.

THEN: The Trans-Canada Highway used to come right through the middle of town in Charlottetown, along Grafton Street and up University Avenue. This was common practice across the country in 1962, because merchants wanted the inevitable traffic from tourists.

In Montreal, for example, the Trans-Canada Highway was officially placed right on St. Catherine Street downtown. But the merchants also got the inevitable truck traffic that comes with hauling goods around the country, and there are now bypasses to redirect traffic around commercial centres.

The Charlottetown bypass did not begin construction until the early 1980s, but today it loops around the island’s capital city. Some 200 trucks use it on average each day, staying well clear of the centre of town.

NOW: At the risk of over-alliteration, Prince Edward Island is an impossibly pretty, postcard-perfect province, and the Trans-Canada Highway dips and winds its way directly through several communities on its way between the bridge and the ferry. This may be pleasant on the two-lane portions, but it’s not efficient – and it’s dangerous. More accidents occur along the 6.1 km stretch near New Haven than anywhere else, and so as I wrote in yesterday’s blog, the province is widening and straightening that portion of road. Thirty-five properties will no longer have their driveways opening directly onto the TCH.

Miller Choi, beside his gokart track

But not everyone is happy about this. “It doesn’t make any sense,” says Miller Choi, who owns the Bonshaw amusement park. There’s a small go-kart track on the 10 acres of land, as well as a pool for bumper boats and a mini-golf course, and it fronts directly onto the Trans-Canada. When the new road goes through on the other side of the trees behind, the amusement park will be cut off completely by the forest and drivers won’t see that it exists.

This was the first go-kart track in PEI and has been there for 42 years, says Choi. He doesn’t understand why the road is being directed behind his property and not in front of it, where it would continue to remove the sharp curve at the top of his hill.

The existing highway is blue, the new route is red and green

“I bought this place (in 2005) for its exposure onto the highway,” he says. “In the summer, we get more than a hundred visitors a day, but we’ll lose that. It will all be terribly worse, but the government doesn’t care.”

Choi wants the government to compensate him for lost business, or buy his property at a fair current price, but he’s heard nothing from enquiries he’s made. And he’s not the only person who’s affected by the new routing.

This 1862 house will be demolished for the new road

“I really don’t want to talk about it – everything’s in negotiations,” says the man who comes to the door of the white house on the other side of the hill. The house was built in 1862, and the new road will go right through its living room. He says he’s lived there for 47 years, but he doesn’t know where he’ll move to when his home is demolished for the road. As for protesting, he says he has no choice – when the government wants to do something, they just do it.

He does acknowledge, though, that the current stretch of road is dangerous. “There’s at least two, three, four times a year that people come knocking on my door and say they’ve put a car in the ditch,” he says.

Alex Calder is also losing part of his property’s lawn, but he’s circumspect about the situation.

“I can see the positives in it,” he says, pointing out how the new route will flatten the hill and remove two sharp S-curves. “Water drains down the road here and then freezes on the curve, where it’s in shadow, and cars, trucks hit the glare ice and that’s it for them. It’ll be a lot safer when it’s done, and that’s what’s important, isn’t it?”

Finding my way through PEI

SOMETHING INTERESTING: No, this isn’t just a beauty shot of the Camaro convertible (though it does look pretty good). It’s a photo that illustrates what happens when you rely on a GPS mapping program to find your way around.

If everything’s bigger in Texas, then everything is smaller on Prince Edward Island. That extends right down to its country lanes, including this one, Peters Road, which started out as a regular two-laner and then, well, petered down to this.

Earlier, I’d stopped in to visit the office of the Canadian Automobile Association in Charlottetown and the helpful staff had offered to give me directions and a TripTik to get to Green Gables country, but I turned them down because I’m a guy and guys don’t ask for directions. Should’ve listened… They say it’s fun to get lost and it can be, but I was worried for the wide tires on the rocks in the mud, not to mention the low-slung chassis.

All turned out OK, but next time I’m on Peters Road, it’ll be with a dirt bike.

Day 9 on the Trans-Canada, Charlottetown, PEI

By Mark Richardson - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 10:51 PM - 0 Comments

Trans-Canada distance: 1,262 km

Actual distance driven:  2,302 km

THEN: When the federal government passed an Act, in 1949, to “encourage and assist the construction of a trans-Canada highway,” it proposed splitting the cost 50/50 with the provinces for the construction of a road that would be built to a uniformly high standard.

Quebec and all the eastern provinces were reluctant to agree, however, because they would have to spend money to improve existing roads they already considered good enough – with the exception of Prince Edward Island. PEI was pleased to sign right away on the dotted line. It wanted a bridge or a tunnel to connect it to the mainland, and it saw this co-operation as only beneficial toward that.

Of course, it also had by far the least amount of highway to construct: just 120 kilometres between the New Brunswick ferry at Borden and the Nova Scotia ferry at Wood Islands. Its relative costs were higher, though, since all gravel for the base had to be imported from Nova Scotia.

Robert Vessey, PEI Minister of Transportation and Works

NOW: PEI’s transport minister runs his finger along a smooth line on the map. “This is the new route the highway will be taking,” says Robert Vessey. He doesn’t need to waggle his finger along the other line, which twists sharply on the paper and is the current position of the road.

At Churchill, it needs realignment, he explains. People don’t like change, especially here on the Island, and there have been numerous public meetings to determine the new route that the Trans-Canada Highway should take in this area. It has to be done, though – there’s a higher accident rate on this stretch than anywhere else on the highway, thanks to the relatively tight turns and steep grades.

“We’re trying to avoid expropriation (of private land),” says Vessey. “We’re dealing with all the landowners and so far, we don’t have all the deals done, but we’re close.  We’re negotiating–some are tougher than others, but so far, we haven’t expropriated any land.”

The existing road surface needed to be replaced anyway, thanks to the significantly increased heavy truck traffic from when it was first constructed in 1952. That would have cost the province $9 million. But if the Trans-Canada Highway is reconstructed, rather than just maintained, then the 1949 agreement still holds true and Ottawa will pay for half. The 6.1 kilometres of new road is estimated to cost $16 million, which means PEI need pay only half that, saving the province a million dollars and providing a safer highway, too.

Two peas in a pod?

SOMETHING DIFFERENT:  This 1989 Volkswagen Golf Cabriolet is “ a good little car,” says owner Scott Dawson, but he’s bought a newer model, a 2001, so it’s not needed anymore. If you’re not sure with the photo, the VW is the car on the left…

“It’s not a car I’ll let my children drive,” he says. “They’ll get somewhere and then some little hiccup will happen with it and it won’t start and I’ll have to go get them and fix it. I’m always driving my kids to sports, so I said I might as well drive something fun. I didn’t buy it for the roof – I only drive it with the top down.”

Scott’s asking $4,750, which is about one-tenth the price of the 2012 Chevy Camaro I’m driving, but he says he’s open to offers. Interested? Give him a call in PEI at 902-853-7784.

Day 8 on the Trans-Canada, Charlottetown, PEI

By Mark Richardson - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 5:25 AM - 0 Comments

Trans-Canada distance: 1,262 km

Actual distance driven:  2,017 km

Kevin MacDonald, at the Canso Causeway today

THEN: The causeway that links Cape Breton to the rest of mainland Canada is only a few years older than the Trans-Canada Highway, opened officially in August of 1955. Kevin MacDonald remembers being there as an 11-year-old boy, while his mom sold hot dogs to the crowd and his father, a train-ferry engineer at nearby Port Hawkesbury, worried about losing his job.

“I remember the bagpipes,” he recalls. “They were loud!”

Perhaps not quite as loud as they might have been, though. There’s a story, which nobody can prove true or false, that says one of the 100 pipers who marched across the Canso Causeway that day refused to actually blow into his pipes – a protest against the perceived loss of his island’s independence. He was, apparently, a proud Cape Bretoner named Roderick (Big Rod the Piper) MacPherson, and some people say it’s true and others state it’s a misty-eyed fantasy.

Whatever the case, it is true that several hundred people lost their jobs when the  causeway was completed and the ferry service ended, including Kevin’s dad, but Charles MacDonald’s position at CN was transferred instead to Sydney the following year. Kevin says he and his brother sister received a better education for it. And in the end, the towns of Port Hawkesbury and Port Hastings saw more industry come to their area for the improved connection, and more jobs.

The opening of the Canso Causeway, 1955

Does Kevin have a favourite memory of that August day, 57 years ago? Sure he does.

“The Premier responsible for the causeway, Angus L. MacDonald, had died the year before and so his brother gave a speech for him. His brother was Father Stanley, and he spoke in the traditional Gaelic to the crowd who all understood the language. And he gave them his opinion of what he really thought of the politicians. The people all laughed and cheered and so the politicians, who were sitting behind Father Stanley, all laughed and cheered too. They weren’t from Cape Breton and couldn’t understand anything he was saying – just as well too. And that’s a true story. There’s lots of verification for that one.”

NOW: Peter the truck driver parked his haul of gravel among a dozen other gravel trucks in the line to enter the PEI ferry at Pictou, Nova Scotia. “We haul gravel and sand onto the island, and we’re taking contaminated soil out,” he says. There’s really no sand and gravel on Prince Edward Island that’s good enough quality to build roads or mix concrete, and it must all be imported from quarries in Nova Scotia. But the contaminated soil – what’s that about?

“They found an oil tank was leaking into the ground in Charlottetown and they don’t know how much oil is there. Enough to keep us busy anyway. They’ve dug down eight metres so far and they don’t know when they’ll stop.”

Gravel trucks line up to enter the PEI ferry in Nova Scotia

Peter is one of the drivers who take the oily soil to a landfill in Nova Scotia that can process it properly, and their trucks fill the lower level of the ferry. It’s expensive to cross, he says – nearly $130 round trip. Vehicles driving to and from PEI only pay when they leave the island, not when they enter, and it’s more expensive to use the seasonal ferry than the Confederation Bridge – about $20 more. Because of that, people in the know who need to make a round-trip loop will leave the island on the bridge and return on the ferry.

Like the ferries to Newfoundland, and the BC ferries between Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay and Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, the 22 km-crossing of the PEI ferry is considered to be a part of the Trans-Canada Highway. There’s been a ferry here since 1937, 20 years after the first regular ferry to the island was established near the current site of the Confederation Bridge.

Today, maybe half the 100-or-so passengers are watching Ellen Degeneres on the small ship’s large TV. Reception is better than when two friends of mine crossed on their honeymoon to the island, on the morning of Sept. 11, 1991 2001. It was horrible, Simon told me later. Everyone knew something terrible had happened but they really couldn’t make it out properly on the news with the snowy reception. When they got to PEI, he said, people heard on their car radios as they disembarked that New York’s Twin Towers had been destroyed, and everybody seemed to drive away in shock.

SOMETHING INTERESTING… They didn’t have Camaros in the 1890s – not even the originals. For that matter, they didn’t have Jeannie Campbell either, but they did have the character she plays, Mrs. Clarke of the general store. Jeannie is an interpreter at the Orwell Corner Historic Village, just off the Trans-Canada Highway about 30 km east of Charlottetown.

Jeannie Campbell - or is that Mrs. Clarke? - gets comfy in the Camaro

Jeannie took the time at the end of her day today to check out the 2012 car and decided she liked it, though she’s going to keep her Honda Civic for now. She says she likes her job, too, and the people she meets every summer, and she’s no stranger to having her photo taken.

“We get a lot of Japanese visitors here,” she said. They come to see Anne of Green Gables and then they come here, too. “They like this place because it’s the same time period (as Anne), and it’s real, too. These are the original buildings from the 1890s.

“They all want to take my picture, and I tell them they can take as many as they want, but I don’t ever want to see them.”

PEI gets a princely sum for the Diamond Jubilee

By Tamsin McMahon - Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 9:37 AM - 0 Comments

Considering it’s the only Canadian province named after a member of the royal family, perhaps it’s fitting that Prince Edward Island received a windfall from the Canadian government for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. Canada’s smallest province is to receive nearly $170,000 for tea parties, concerts and picnics. It’s the second-largest slice of the government’s $2-million budget for community celebrations, behind only Ontario.

Nearly all of P.E.I.’s local celebrations were approved for funding. The town of Souris received nearly $7,000 to offer a free picnic lunch. Revellers get to keep both the lunch bag and the ice pack put inside it to keep it cold. Federal bureaucrats approved Alberton’s $500 request for a tea party, but rejected one for $300 to plant shrubs and trees at the town hall. “It just seemed like a good idea to commemorate the anniversary and get what we needed done as well,” Mayor Michael Murphy told the CBC. The town still plans to go ahead with the project with plants donated from the provincial nursery.

Continue…

Heavy times in hockey Babylon

By Dave Bidini - Monday, February 13, 2012 at 4:28 PM - 0 Comments

For the last handful of Maple Leafs games, I have found myself away from the hive: driving around the Maritimes doing gigs en route to what the Scotiabank and CBC potentates describe as a signature event in the Hockey Day in Canada proceedings: Stolen From a Hockey Card, a concert I have curated and played in for two years running. This year’s event took place in Charlottetown, PEI, a city that, in the winter, reccommends itself in small measures: some narrow colonial streets, an elegant shoreline, lively publicans, one great record store (Back Alley Music), and an amazing folk club, Marc’s Studio. Of course, there’s Anne of Green Gables this, Anne of Green Gables that, but if Charlottetown—at times, the sleepiest of east coast capitals—proves anything it’s that the Maritimes are the Maritimes no matter what province you’re in. Walk outside and you’ll find a good time hewn in the people, and, after three days, your holiday will be about escape rather than rest from early nights and long mornings.

We arrived on Wednesday for rehearsal in a meeting room in the corridors of Confederation Hall, a provincial theatrical monolith with Orange Crush coloured seats fanning wide to meet an enormous space. Here, we collected six performers, all commissioned to write original hockey songs for the event: the sleepy-faced Rustico balladeer and longstanding Acadian musical heavyweight Lennie Gallant; Sarah Harmer, the small giant with whom I’d played hockey two weeks earlier, at the Lake Ontario Cup on Wolfe Island; Chris Murphy, estranged for the weekend from his boyhood band, Sloan; fellow Morningstar, the Lowest of the Low’s Stephen Stanley; Maritime minor midget MVP runner up (to Sid Crosby) and songwriter Liam Corcoran; Carmen Townsend, the dynamo of Sydney, Cape Breton; and former New York Islander captain, Bryan Trottier, who vowed to play two songs with us before they soon morphed into three: Folsom Prison Blues, I Walk the Line and Truck Drivin’ Man. Halfway into the rehearsal, Lennie Gallant showed us how to play his original composition, When I Get My Name on the Cup, only to have the Hall of Fame’s Phil Pritchard appear with the Cup itself, presented on a cloth table in the middle of the room. We put down our weapons for a moment and posed for photos with the sparkling chalice, standing great and heavy in the once-noisy room. Continue…

Election night in PEI and the NWT

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 7:49 PM - 1 Comment

The Liberals appear set to be reelected in Prince Edward Island with 21 22 seats to six five for the Progressive Conservatives. Here’s the applicable Rick Mercer skit.

The Northwest Territories also votes today. Results will be presumably posted here once they are available.

Ottawa calls for investigation into PEI immigration regime

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 11:43 AM - 6 Comments

The federal government has asked the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency to look into Prince Edward Island’s immigration program, after alleged fraud and bribery allowed hundreds of people—mainly from China—to buy entry into the country. Premier Robert Ghiz has been dogged by such allegations for years since some of his relatives, as well as those of other ministers and MLAs, benefited from the province’s immigrant investor program, wherein immigrants invest in local companies. The federal Citizenship and Immigration Department called in the police after a provincial official described an incident at a Hong Kong hotel where PEI bureaucrats accepted cash filled envelopes from would-be immigrant investors to have their applications approved. Ghiz questioned the timing of the allegations, which come three weeks before Islanders head to the polls for a provincial election. “Although there are clear political motivations to these allegations—which have been raised repeatedly in the past and have been shown to have no substance—government will cooperate fully with any formal inquiries into these matters,” he said in a statement to the Globe and Mail. The province has never released a full list of companies that received investment through the program.

The Globe and Mail

Where will P.E.I. Muslims go to pray?

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 50 Comments

Call it Little Mosque on the Island. Last week, the CBC ran a news story about a Muslim doctor whose efforts to build the first mosque in P.E.I. have thus far come to naught. The “disappointed” doctor asked the province for financial assistance, only to be “turned down.”

The CBC story also suggested that there was reason to believe the city might step in. It quoted Charlottetown Coun. David MacDonald as saying he would be willing to meet with Muslims and “see if the city can assist in building a mosque.” But when Maclean’s spoke to MacDonald, he said, “We wouldn’t give any assistance to a religious group any more than we would to anybody else. We don’t provide financial assistance to any kind of developer.” The meeting, MacDonald says, will be little more than an “information session.” Continue…

Megapundit: Inside Stephen Harper's big tent

By selley - Monday, September 15, 2008 at 2:34 PM - 6 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: James Travers on the wilderness-bound Liberals; Haroon Siddiqui on pulling out of Afghanistan; Greg Weston on Dion’s green math; John Ivison interviews Stephen Harper; Dan Leger on Tory hopes in Nova Scotia.

Welcome to Week Two
In which serious policy discussions replace the media’s collective obsession with gaffes. No, really!

The Conservatives’ basic election strategy is “to defang Mr. Harper among swing voters,” Jeffrey Simpson argues in The Globe and Mail, and they’re doing a fine job of it in spite of the gaffes committed during week one of the campaign—or maybe even because of them. Hardly any of those swing voters are paying attention to the campaign yet, Simpson suggests, and those that are may well have been impressed by Harper’s uncharacteristic humility in dealing with his war room’s excesses.

The Prime Minister spews forth various talking points in an interview with the National Post‘s John Ivison, but also provides an interesting status report on his plan “to make conservatism the natural governing philosophy of the country.” Mission accomplished on the “market economy and fiscal responsibility” front, Harper suggests. And he also thinks Canadians are gradually realizing that “the protection of law-abiding citizens, their families and their property” has to take precedence over rehabilitation in the criminal justice system, that Canadian unity can’t be solved by consolidating power in Ottawa, and that focusing on the “social fabric of the country” doesn’t necessarily point to any “theological agenda.”

Continue…

Megapundit: Young, broke and Liberal

By selley - Thursday, August 7, 2008 at 2:04 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Don MacPherson on the magic of legislation.

Media matters
National Post attacked from the left! CBC attacked from the right! All is well at The Globe and Mail!

If the Post were to fall into liberal (or Liberal) hands, the Globe‘s Lawrence Martin says “it would be like the Liberals losing the Toronto Star.” No more daily bashing of Stéphane Dion; no more giving “the Harper government the benefit of the doubt on every issue imaginable”; no more gross caricaturization of other newspapers’ editorial positions… oh, wait, that’s Lawrence Martin. In any case, we’re not totally clear on why Jerry Grafstein (or anyone else) would necessarily turn the paper hard to the left just on principle, if there was a business case to stay in bluer territory. The current owners aren’t exactly right-wing ghouls, after all—heck, as recently as 2005, David Asper himself gave $5,000 to the Liberals!

The Toronto Sun‘s Peter Worthington isn’t surprised to learn CBC employees are profoundly unhappy with their jobs, because unlike private sector media, there’s no “accountability” to the viewers, listeners and readers, and no chance to really make a splash. “The Mother Corp. knows best,” he sneers. “It forcefeeds listeners and viewers with what it thinks they deserve. If the public doesn’t like it, let them write letters or phone Rex Murphy on CBC Radio Sunday afternoons.”

Continue…