Making It Up As I Go Along #429

Fall Traditions
One tradition still goes on... while the other is in jeopardy.

Since my move to Ottawa, Thanksgiving has become a different type of holiday for me. For my parents as well. Every Thanksgiving since 2003 has occurred in Ottawa. My parents flying here to join me and the Ontario Thanksgiving has taken hold over the Newfoundland one.

My memories of Newfoundland Thanksgiving is of cool drizzly days... perhaps a continuous drizzle for the entire weekend. In younger days, it would be time for a street hockey tournament. Sometimes with a group of teams, gathered in a closed business’s parking lot, running through the drizzle... eternally damp in the game. Other times, it would just be our team from Wedgewood Park taking on the guys from a mile away... meeting at a neutral site lot to do battle in a best of seven series. The turkey of Thanksgiving awaited us. And if overtime came about in the deciding game, family would have to wait a little longer.

In later years, the hockey ended. And Thanksgiving became more of a family weekend. Sitting about the house watching a movie or football on TV while turkey smells drifted from room to room.

A game of yahtzee with mom, interrupted when basting time came about.

After my move, Thanksgiving came with me. Mom and dad flying to Ottawa to bring the family time to me. And drizzly days have given way to bright, cloudless ones. And where the conifers of St. John’s did little in the way of the changing foliage of Fall, the maples, birch and ash of Ottawa glow red, yellow and orange. I imagine mom and dad’s view from the plane, looking down as they descend and seeing the colours as a patchwork quilt of landscape.

We’d go to the market, downtown most years and one in the west end once as we explored the city. But either way, we’d sort through local vegetables and get a local turkey, and fill my kitchen with the food that will last us all the long weekend... and me, by way of frozen soup, much of the winter.

A trip to Quebec... either in Gatineau Park or on to Wakefield by way of steam train. A venture to Upper Canada Village, complete with a side trip to an orchard for cider and a variety of apples. Thanksgiving has been a highlight of my Ottawa occupation.

This year, the plan is for no Thanksgiving get together. Mom’s work makes their coming to me difficult, and uncertainty at my work means a return to Newfoundland would be a roll of the dice that could result in insufficient leave at work... leave needed for a Christmas trip.

But another tradition shall continue.

Over the last four or five years, I’ve taken to short trips home in early September. The September trip being less about a visit to my home city and more about a visit to my father’s home island.

It’s becoming the annual Fogo Island trip. A flight in to St. John’s followed by a car trip the next day. We’ll drive the three or four hours it will take to reach Gander. Complete with a probable stop for lunch at the Irving gas station in Clarenville. This is a statement that must sound silly to those who know nothing about Clarenville. But that gas station has great bowls of home made soup or, as I’m often finding myself ordering, home made hamburgers like no other.

From Clarenville, it’s only a short drive until we reach Terra Nova Park. And here is the broadleaf trees that St. John’s misses. And the orange, red and yellow glow of the world that Ottawa Thanksgiving offers is seen here as well. Only, for my September trip, it’s too early to catch the spectacle of it.

None-the-less, it’s a fine drive through the park and only a short while further to reach Gander. From there, we leave the highway and drive towards the coast. Through small communities that perch along the shore. Communities no wider than a few hundred yards. Those homes on the coast side of the road... and those on the forest side, making up for the lack of seaside real estate with a hundred yards with of forest, there supplying winter firewood.

A stop at Uncle Bert’s for a bite to eat and a visit with family. Depending on the rush, we may leave Bert’s that day or may stay overnight. Sometimes a bonfire on the beach highlights the evening.

From Bert’s, we go to the ferry terminal in the middle of nowhere. Little more than a gravel pit along the side of the sea. But a nice place to be due to the anticipation for where it leads us.

When the ferry arrives, a long line of traffic piles off. Driving as a caravan of cars for miles of road... slowly dissipating as this pick up turns off here and that transport truck pulls over there.

And we drive on. Waved on board by the same people year after year. Easily recognized but I have no idea who they are. They’re as much a part of the trip as the ferry itself. As permanent a piece as those tiny islands we pass by on the way to Fogo.

A stop at Change Islands drops a few cars off and adds fewer more. And we continue to the biggest island of the area. To Fogo.

Fogo Island is my first visual image of Newfoundland when someone asks me about my home. A mass of cold rock sitting within the cold northern sea... yet bringing a warmth to those that go.

Bays and inlets with homes dotting the soil depleted land. And fishing stages venturing out into those bays and inlets. One of the few places one can still see traditional Newfoundland.

Fogo, the largest community on the island, has become the place to sleep each night. A community I barely saw in my childhood has become the Fogo Island home base each September. There with Brimstone Head acting as more of a community sign than any on the road entering town. A mass of rock in the sea, towering above all else... one of the Four Corners of the Earth.

The island’s centre offers gas, food and the school for Fogo Island’s children. An intersection here brings you to the other side of the island. Where trees are virtually extinct. Shrubs and rock dominate... a landscape like no other. Here is where Joe Batt’s Arm sits. Where my father was born and where I’d go each summer to visit my grandmother in her old outport home. Where I’d carry beef buckets with my father as we’d go to the old pump in a community field where sheep may wander and water was pumped from the ground. I was too small to work the pump then. Barely able to life and drop the great metal handle.

Today the pump is no longer in use and homes have water running through them just like in the rest of our homes. And Joe Batt’s is little more than a place to drive through now. There’s no longer a home to go to. But my grandmother’s house is still there... only owned by another. And the stage my family used remains as well. Where I fished for sculpin at high tide... and wandered around the base of it’s pillars at low tide, search for crab to pull from the sea and interact with... me staring at them within my grasp... they with pincer claws held out wide, hoping for a slip on my part... so they could nip a finger.

We still go to the cemetery. Where my grandparents are buried in the back and old, weathered headstones tilt within the sods along the way. Some small headstones, complete with lamb carved within it and marking the resting place of an infant from sixty years ago... these are almost disappearing within the shrubs and sods... blueberries growing up in the shadow of that weathered stone lamb.

And we go Back Western Shore. Where great slabs of rock lead down to the sea. And dad once waded in tidal pools during the summers of his youth. And where I explored the same pool, looking for sea creatures trapped by the tides. Dad and I remember the time we saw a trapped caplin, swimming about it’s pool... waiting for high tide to free it.

The Fogo Island tradition shall go on this year. I’ll fly home in two weeks and head back to Fogo the day after I arrive. Traditional meals and treeless landscapes await... in two weeks, I return to one of the corners of the Earth.

MONDAY...
— Work days. Starts early too as I wake between 4:30 and 5:00 due to heavy thunder.
— Lunch with Shannon and show Stephanie how to do set-ups in quality control. All fairly uneventful.

TUESDAY...
— Ball after work. Goes ok. My knee is a bit tired today... not sore but not much energy in it either.

WEDNESDAY...
— Bless that Columbia House. They gave me some issues yesterday over orders and payments. I e-mailed them last night. This morning I get a reply saying it’s all taken care of and in good standing... and then I get home this evening with my order in the mailbox. Good times.
— Some more training this week at work. I show Melissa how to do the Latent Hit Board. Kind of nice having to share stuff with people this week. Almost like they value me or something... almost.

THURSDAY...
— Work in the old section today... CNI... where I started and then later supervised. Not a bad change.
— Book a flight home this evening. Heading home September 2 and will do a trip to Fogo with the parents on the 3rd. Fly back to Ottawa again on the 7th... so a quick in and out really.

FRIDAY...
— After work drinks and supper with Karl. A nice time at Paddy’s Pub, sitting by the open window.

SATURDAY...
— Home watching movies and playing video game baseball most of the day. Rainy one.