Our US Tour Week 5: ON QC NB NS

2006-10-29

Dear Friends,
Leslie Chevalier wrote to ask me, after Week 4, if there were going to be a test after these epistles are done! Here is the new week, wherein we complete the Eastward portion of this journey of the four directions....

Thursday Oct 5/06, Kingston ON:
It really depends on who you are and how you think, whether you can stand on the glass floor at the top of the CN Tower. The logical, scientific person will assure themself that the opaque floor they have always been standing on is no more stable than the layers of transparent material before them now. Parents might look down through the floor of the observation deck, hundreds of feet above the minute city streets below, and imagine their children plunging to their deaths. The four-year-old with no fear of heights (and perhaps little perception that there is a world below him) walks all over the glass fearlessly, and his mother has to eventually walk out and pull him away from the tourist photo-taking.

Nancy and David had a serene, meditative hour and a half (I think - knowing them) in the van while Patrick, Nicole, Isaac, a hundred Italian tourists and I took two sets of elevators up the exterior of the Canadian National telecommunications tower, to stare out over the city (but mostly to marvel at our own bravery).

We broke our drive east only once to stop and make lunch along the banks of Lake Ontario, popping the camper top in the lake breeze. Nancy and David had conversations about things of great import, but so did we in the back, as we worked on our Road School. We have traded American geography for Canadian for the short while that we will be in this country.

Hours later, we were rolling in to the parking lot of Edith Rankin Memorial United Church, in KinGST/HST in Canadaon - a building that sits so gorgeously along the St Lawrence that the river-side window is not stained glass. Wayne Soble, the congregation's minister, tells me the church land was gifted to the congregation on condition that it be named for the benefactor's cousin. Edith, so dear to her cousin's heart, was tragically lost decades ago - hit by a train just before her wedding day. Today, the church is large and busy, outgrowing its sanctuary walls.

Wayne and Al Pickering, our host, helped us set ourselves up for our evening, with Nancy's storytelling rocking chair and the piano hoisted high on the chancel. A team of cooks served us lasagna, Patrick took up his usual position to work the LCD projecting and we shared an evening with a small and enthusiastic group. In our late-night conversation back at the Pickerings' home, we discovered that Al, an energetic man in his late sixties (who drove Patrick back in his convertible), had served in the Canadian air force and, under its auspices, had co-ordinated the production of the Apollo lunar modules! Cinnamon toast does not provide enough conversation time to learn what it was like to be involved in such a project.

Friday Oct 6/06 to Montreal QC:
The Trans-Canada Highway took us along the St Lawrence River a while longer, as we headed for the francophone province of Quebec. Nancy had stayed in KinGST/HST in Canadaon with her archaeologist sister (such extraordinary people we keep meeting) and would fly out to the Goods on Sunday.

I do not travel as much as I would wish in Quebec, because, as our French-based province, it has a dearth of UCC churches. But, I dearly love the French language and the change in culture is striking when one enters the province. I could see both Patrick and Nicole's look of intrigue as the signs changed from mainly English around them to mainly French.

On a turn-off toward Montreal and then the Eastern Townships (a portion of the land that is south of the St Lawrence), the roads began to meander, and the trees were immediately, radiantly yellow-orange. Storybook houses of brick sat on every turn of the road. We were invited into this fairytale land to visit my old friend, Louise Johnson and her partner Gina Georgeousis, overnight in a cottage in the woods.

Louise and Gina's friend's cottage was a mix of new and old, with huge beams running the length of the ceiling, a stove in the middle of the house and wooden walls you could feel a bit of breeze through. But, Gina was cooking up a big pan of a Greek pasticio casserole in a neatly renovated kitchen, while we hung over the pine beam pass-through to talk and catch up. As the sun just began to sink toward the tops of the trees, Louise announced that if we were going to walk to the canyon, we had better do it now. It sounded challenging.

The canyon was a narrow and fast-moving creek through sharp and steep stone, in the heart of the woods. The hiking was wonderful, but with moments, too, when we came up over a ridge to look over a precipice that caught my heart in my throat. Later, Gina berated Louise for taking us on the Fatal Hike; "You mean you took the family over the cliffs..?!" It was great.

Later that night, we sat around the wood stove in the gloaming and both Gina and Louise grilled me about the institutional church and its negative role in North American politics. Louise and I have known each other since a summer French language programme at Laval, Quebec. At the age of 19, we debated on dorm beds whether religion was an anti-intellectual means of crowd control or a force for good - or both. This was a hard conversation, in which I felt called to account for my own part in evil that I know the church is contributing to (although I don't think Louise was asking me for that so much as asking again, after 25 years, 'just why are you in the church..?')

Saturday October 7/06, Knowlton QC:
Patrick, Nicole and I are alumni of the Summerland Polar Dip crowd that stormed the frigid waters of Lake Okanagan on New Years, so we sometimes make dire plans. Last night, the children and I vowed that we would rise early and take a dip in the pond next to the cottage. The morning dawned crisp and near zero temperatures [American translation from Celcius system: "freeze our butts off"] We scoffed at ever having thought of the idea, wiggled into our woolies and left Louise and Gina with hugs and thanks.

Knowlton, I'm telling you, is a fairytale village. With wood and brick Christmas card houses lining narrow streets, it is almost Dickensian in places. We found Donald Patriquin and Knowlton United Church early in the morning as a lively group was setting up chairs and tables in the basement. Raphael slid in through the back and tuned up his stand-up bass, and Tom from the Anglicans down the street pulled out his guitar. "Good luck and B-flat!" I said to them both and David and I sang and played with a good-sized crowd of church choir and clergy folk all morning long.

Donald and I had met via e-mail when he wrote to ask me for a song of mine. I had already known of him from his extraordinary arranging of Canadian folk songs and the psalm responses resource he had co-written, published by my Wood Lake Books. So, it was an honour to have him ask for my song and I was thrilled when he invited us to come to his churches on this portion of our tour. Perhaps I'll just let him describe the weekend, as he did for a colleague later:

"Linnea was with us for two days during which we had two workshops (Saturday a.m. and afternoon, a concert Saturday evening, and an absolutely inspiring Thanksgiving service on Sunday morning in the beautiful old clapboard church known as The Creek. There was not a person in the sometimes-staid congregation who was not singing, clapping, and moving with Linnea’s inspiring music. It was truly wonderful. The workshops were a great success – we had almost twice the number than we had anticipated, the concert was truly inspiring even though it was on Thanksgiving Weekend when many are away and the audience was a little less than we would have liked, and we were left with ideas and spiritual/musical points of view that will continue to sustain us. And – we actually, against all odds, JUST broke even financially! But spiritually we were way ahead and can’t wait for a return visit."

It really was a wonderful day, turning into an all-ages workshop in the afternoon in which the grown-ups were just as fun as the kids. My own children returned from a fun day in a Jennifer Quinn's family home in good spirits. They reported that, despite the morning's pond-failure, they had enjoyed this family's own tradition that, if the temperature of their pool dipped below 16 degrees, anybody who jumped in got a dollar! Jennifer passed Isaac back to us, limp and asleep; he had developed a fever pretty quickly and slept the whole afternoon.

Louise and Gina returned for the concert, our collective choir sang with us on "There is Your Heart", a young musical drama student from the congregation named Meghan Allen sang the song that Donald had originally asked me for - now in Sop-Alto form - "You Can't Pray for the Rain". And Raphael and Tom backed us up on songs we had rehearsed and songs we hadn't - which is a musical bravery I love. An elder man named Arthur sidled up to me at the reception, his eyes twinkling, and said, "Only twelve more hours till we see you again..!"

We carted all our sound and drums over to tomorrow's church, set up for the morning and returned home to Donald's house. There we found his partner, Louisa, up after an evening of caring for little Isaac and Nicole. Louisa is a healer of the intuitive kind (using healing touch) and reported that she had worked with Isaac as he lay sleeping and he seemed improved. Donald played us a piece he had written recently incorporating an Ave Maria; stunning. We sat up signing posters, and eating cheese in the fashion of the French - until we had to go to bed.

Sunday October 8/06, Creek QC:
Actually, Isaac was not just improved; he was better. It was quite incredible. He is the one whose little immune system suffers most from touring (as the others used to) and he woke up saying he felt better, albeit with a bit of a pale complexion.

Well, what Donald said above about the worship service on Thanksgiving Sunday is true. Creek United Church is a small, square church with a few pews squashed together toward a raised chancel. There was no way our sound, drums, two keyboards, stand-up bass could fit properly on the one side of the chancel, so the whole bunch of us in the church must have looked like a crowd scene from a broadway musical. But, boy, could they sing! Pastor Dale Skinner preached a good thanksgiving reflection and then whispered to us how we should foreshorten the service, as he had to make it back to Knowlton for the next service. We dutifully played the quiet ending and sat for a moment in silence that was more like a pregnant pause. Then, as one, we burst back into singing a big, fat gospel sending-out song. Young adults, toddlers, old people stood up to clap and sing, the choir had never stopped grooving from the beginning, and I felt the nudgings of a familiar old feeling - what was it? - oh, it was Hope. Hope that this little, old church out in the country might be the way the church could be most everywhere. Spontaneous. Open to joy. Thanks-giving.

So, I had to ask myself, as we made plans at lunch with Donald and Louisa, why, in all the years I had lived in east-coast New Brunswick, had I always driven the long way from Quebec or Ontario, up-up-up and along the St Lawrence instead of straight through Maine..? It was like the option that never had existed. Now, this time, as folks encouraged us to save hours of driving (DUH), there really was reason to wonder. This time, we had merchandise which we would have to account for (and those of you who have been reading and preparing for the quiz at the end of our journey will remember that our experience at the border on Day 1 was less than inspiring).

However, the forests of Quebec were brilliant, customs didn't bat an eye, and Maine gently rolled along before us for hours in entrancing invitation. We forgot we would lose an hour coming into Atlantic Standard Time at Woodstock NB and called my dad at midnight to tell him we would be arriving late. By one, we coasted through the towering overhead streetlights of the border with their ghostly pink haze - utterly exhausted. When the border guard struck up a friendly line of enquiry about our cute little trailer, I mentally slapped my forehead.

Home for Thanksgiving - made it!

Monday October 9/06, Fredericton Thanksgiving Day:
When I woke up in my parents' home, the next morning, Mom and Dad already had three kids wearing out their cats and corgi, Wellie. And Nancy appeared to be completely at home, having had a day with them before us. Mom was cooking vegetables in the crowded kitchen - ready for the onslaught that Thanksgiving has always been with the Goods.

My friends, it was a day off and all we did was go to the park. Luckily, my parents had warned me that the home of my childhood, Queen's Square Park, was under complete renovation, with the very pool I had got caught swimming after hours by the police torn down and gone. We had to go to a rival park, and the children climbed and hung, while we gave Wellie a run.

Now, I am going to give myself time off and not write all that we did while visiting (who needs it?), but I cannot let the day pass without describing the grand festivities of Monday:

Thanksgiving dinner was just great, with the traditional turkey, squash, cauliflower, creamed carrots, and my Mom's fabulous pie (surpassing my own pastry dreams). However, the best part of the evening was the bubble bath the children had after dinner. Mom tells me she had mentioned that only a little "goat's milk foaming bath" was necessary for the jet bath, but I heard none of it. And, given my experience of children's bubble baths never amounting to anything, I slobbed in lots. And then lots again for good measure. (And come on! Foaming goats milk?!) On came the jets and the kids were awash in bubbles.

I was considering running downstairs to gather the kids' towels for them, when it occurred to me that there were actually quite a few bubbles in that tub. I guess I'm not used to the bubble bath / jet bath factor, because it became apparent in short order that there were really VERY MANY bubbles in the tub. And that they had started to risk overflowing the tub itself. I kept thinking: "These bubbles cannot keep growing; they are going to level off right away," so I simply began to gather up the bubbles that had peaked too high in the tub, catching them in a handtowel and scraping them off into the sink. However, the tub bubbles began to slowly slide over the sides of the tub with an inexorable momentum I last saw on "The Green Slime". I tried to find the off-switch for the jets, but it was now obscured by bubbles! Stepping up the pace of my bubble collection, I felt a growing sense of panic, blank confusion and outright hilarity. I bleated HELP to my mother.

Well, the whole family arrived just as I had finally got my perspective on the whole affair and had torn off my fancy Thanksgiving skirt to wade into the hip-deep tub to pull the plug and find the off-switch. My Dad marched out to the shed to find a SHOVEL to heave the great snowdrifts of bubbles into the shower stall before the water could leak down onto our bed on the floor below. David herded the kids away, though they were having the time of their lives. Mom would have been more helpful if she hadn't taken the time to find a camera.

Tuesday October 10/06 - Thursday October 12/06 Halifax NS:
We planned to return to Fredericton at the end of the week, so decided to leave immediately for Halifax, to visit with my sister, Kim, and "the cousins" Douglas and Katie. However, before we left, Dad invited me to accompany him on a sacred visit - to the Public Dump outside Fredericton. I believe I have mentioned that my dad and I bonded through our common connection to the dump when I was in my teens. So, this was no small pilgrimage. Needless to say, all this has changed too. It's a big, serious operation, now, with multiple buildings for various forms of recycling and conveyor belts taking items in for squashing and compacting, different areas for different trash. AND it costs a fortune to throw stuff out. Imagine the mix of emotions, if you will.

On to Halifax, where Katie (4) and Douglas (6) awaited! Highlights of our days together included:

Meet you in Dartmouth, where we regain Nancy and our careers..!

For more Good News click here...
http://www.linneagood.com/main/01lg/news/index.php

Copyright © Linnea Good and Borealis Music, All Rights Reserved.

Back to our Home Page
Back to Last Page Visited