What did You do on Tuesday Morning?

I was in a pickup truck when it lost control on black ice and crashed into a ditch.  I remember going into a spin and thinking "this is it". 

I don't scream or brace myself, I am not tense, I sit still and wait for whatever end is coming.  There is violent shaking and dark objects fly around in the cab; then blackness and calm.  Warm, wet coffee coats my face and head.  I am buried with luggage and equipment in the back seat.  My elbow feels cool against the frozen ground through the shattered window.  I hear someone calling my name.  He sounds panicked, so I quickly answer “I’m here, but I can’t move.”

I wait an eternity in a few seconds.  Someone moves the luggage and a light shines in from above.  There is blood everywhere, my blood.  I can feel part of my lip hanging in my mouth.  “Is that blood?” I ask for some reason; I know it is, but it seems like much more than from a cut lip.  I struggle to undo my seatbelt and I stand up in the cab.  The truck is on its side.  I brush cubes of glass out of my hair.  There is a man with a flashlight above me and our driver is already outside shouting for me to climb out of the truck.  I am disoriented, my neck hurts and I am bleeding.  I can’t find a foothold to climb out the passenger window.  The other passenger is somehow unhurt and still in the truck with me.  He provides a foot hold for me and I climb out of the truck.

I walk slowly up the bank in a daze and watch the northern lights dance in the sky.  I’m supposed to take a photo for my daughter, but it's not going to happen on this trip.  I look back at the pickup and notice my bag of PPE is still in the pickup truck box.  Someone hands me the bag and I carry it up onto the road.

Three cars have pulled over to help and someone tells me to get into a car with a woman named Maria.  A dog in the car is sniffing my hair.  Nobody has a first aid kit, so I am given a brown-stained paper towel to use for my lip.  I hope the brown stain is chocolate.  We start the drive to Whitehorse General Hospital.  It’s the longest 30 minutes of my life, and while Maria is hurrying to get me to the hospital, I am worrying we’ll hit black ice and get in another accident.  I can feel my cell phone in my pocket, but every time I think of my wife and daughter I feel tears well up in my eyes, and I don’t make the call.  I need time to get myself together.

It is daylight when we get to the hospital.  Maria and I walk into the ER and they ask for my Care Card.  I hand them my wallet and they tell me to head straight through.  They clean me up, take X-rays of my neck, and stitch my lip.  I have been in the Yukon for 12 hours when they discharge me from the hospital. 

I rent a hotel room so I can have a shower and wash off the blood and coffee.  I don’t even like coffee.   

I finally call my wife.  It is an emotional call, but I keep it together.

There is an accident debriefing meeting at their office.  They ask me if I received first aid treatment.  I didn't.  They asked if I felt I should have been taken to the hospital in an ambulance.  Probably.

I catch a plane home that afternoon.  My wife cries when she sees me at the airport. 

I am home.

First Hole They Dig at a Mine

The Commute

If you take a 2 hour flight, then drive for 4 hours to a heli-pad, fly for 30 minutes in a helicopter, then take a 2 hour ride in a snow cat, you can have your photo taken here:

The helicopter can't take you all the way because of the fog.  Yesterday it was freezing fog.  Freezing fog coats the seats and steering wheel of the ATV with layers of ice.  If the ATV had windows, it would coat the windows and then you'd have to scrape the windows; and nobody likes scraping windows.

Mining

"Mining is complicated.  First you drill, then you blast, then you muck.  Drill, blast, muck; drill, blast, muck; that's it."  (The muck is the rubble left over from the blast.)  "It's called muck when it's in the shaft, and when you take it out of the shaft it's called ore."

Cafeteria

The view from the camp cafeteria, if only it had windows.

Helicopter

This project site, high in the mountains of North Western British Columbia, is remote; helicopter remote. So I had my first ride in a helicopter, crammed in with 3 other guys and a bunch of gear. The pilot, a surfer type, gave us a quick orientation on helicopter safety, which mostly informed us how to avoid damaging the helicopter doors, and then we were off.

The 20 minute flight took us over massive glacier fields, between mountain peaks, and even included a quick circle of a bulldozer stuck in a crevasse on the ice road. When we landed in camp we unpacked and hunkered down until the helicopter flew away again, and like that it was over.

That was yesterday and I’m already eagerly anticipating my flight out.

Duck?

The ringer on my iPhone is set to quack like a duck, and every time it rang the good people of Masset looked up in the sky to see the duck. I love that about Haida Gwaii.

Turn Right at Guud k'yuuwaas

Way down south in the North, far from the mainland but close to the pan handle, where there seems to be more eagles than seagulls, and a Chinese restaurant for every 300 people, is the town in which I have spent more time than any other place in our country outside of home. This town, (village really, because the population is only 900 people), is on an island called Graham, and is part of what was once called the Queen Charlotte Islands but is now called Haida Gwaii.

Masset is the town where military personnel lived when they weren't at the listening station, listening to the Soviets during the cold war. Masset is where a local coffee shop dug in it's heels against the might of the Starbucks Empire when Starbucks didn't like the name Haida Bucks. Masset is where, if you're lucky, you can catch a 300lb halibut or collect scallops on the beach. And just down the road from Masset is Old Masset where the street signs are shaped like canoes and only printed on one side, so you can find your way in but not out.

I still remember the first time I arrived in Haida Gwaii years ago and was shocked to find the locals already knew all the "secrets" about the project I was about to start. And when I rented a truck at the airport they told me explicitly not to bring it back with blood in it.

On my second visit I found Englehart's Oceanview Lodge and the Hidden Island RV Park, the best places to get breakfast and dinner respectively.

Now, three.

The Big Smoked

I'm back in the Big Smoke and "The Big Smoke" has gone teats up, which both saddens me and makes me concerned about the future of our domesticated animals.

Domesticated animals aren't like wild animals. If they were wild animals they could be released into their natural habitat, but they have no "natural" habitat. The natural habitat of a domesticated animal is human made. Livestock have been created by humans from wild animals for the sole purpose of feeding humans. If we do not eat those animals, humans will stop raising them and they will become extinct. It is very important for us to eat these animals to preserve their species. I don't care if you're a vegan, extinct is forever.

Like domesticated animals, humans also do not have a "natural" habitat. We do not function well in the forest which is why we convert the forest into cities. The result is a food chain basically like this: farmer grows grain, cow eats grain, farmer eats cow, grain eats cow shit. It is a simple food chain and it works for us. Don't screw with it by hunting; that is not our food chain. We don't live in the forest so we shouldn't get our food from it. Think about it, there are 1 million moose in Canada and there are 15 million cows; hunting is not sustainable at the earth's current human population.

We all must pull together to eat pulled pork and preserve the future of livestock and human kind alike. Support your local BBQ pit!

Antichrist-mas

On Boxing Day we battle (Wrath) crowds of crazed (Anger) shoppers desperately trying to obtain (Lust) a better deal (Greed) than everyone else (Envy/Pride); or we just sit around watching football (Sloth). So, why in Hell do we celebrate Boxing Day?

Snow Plow

I woke to the sound of a slow plow blade scraping the asphalt on the road outside my hotel room window. It sounds a little like a jet engine. I lay in bed for awhile wondering how long it would be until they plowed the road next to my job site and I think about how much damage snow plows have done to the site over the years. I plan my escape route in case I see a snow plow bearing down on me and then get up for breakfast. Pancakes.

Vernon

I've been staring at the screen trying to write about Vernon, but nothing seems to...

It snows here in winter, which is great for skiing, but not so great for work. We've been lucky so far; once when I was out here the snow plows buried the door to our equipment building and I had to dig it out by hand. Heavy, brown, slushy, snowplow snow.

They have a bike park nearby, but it is closed for the season. This makes me feel sad.

I had dinner at Kelly O'Bryan's. It's a very Irish sounding place and there is a shamrock on the menu, but the waitresses wore kilts which is very Scottish. I thought "maybe the waitresses all attend the same Irish Private School and they came to work straight from class", but I noticed a waiter wearing one too; and it pushed the thought out of my head; and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get it back in.

I'm staying at the Village Green Hotel and my toilet has a square seat. This time I decided to unpack my suitcase and put my clothes in the dresser. It is a single deep drawer which makes unpacking very easy. Clothes in the dresser; what a trip.

....come to mind.

Flying Baby

Someone cut in front of my wife who was next in line for a bathroom stall at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. She exchanged horrified looks with a girl who was sporting a purple mohawk and also waiting in line. A 50-something woman was rude enough to disgust a girl with a purple mohawk. This sums up our overall experience at YYZ.

When you fly with a baby they make you hold her in your lap because she is too small to wear a seatbelt and they haven't come up with a better idea. Think about it; if you held your baby in your lap while you were driving in a car, an angry mob would appear and stone you to death. You're not even supposed to jog with a baby strapped into a jogging stroller with a 5 point harness until she's a year old. HEADLINE: "YUMMY MOMMY CRASHES INTO SWAMP, KILLING ALL PASSENGERS ON BOARD, WHILE JOGGING AT THE BEACH". Maybe air travel is safer than jogging.

On the plane a flight attendant instructed me to hold the baby against my chest during take off and landing, but you can't hold your carry on baggage against your chest during take off and landing. For the safety of passengers please stow carry on baggage under the seat in front of you. After all you wouldn't want carry on baggage flying around the plane, someone might get hurt.

Luckily the plane didn't crash on take off, oxygen masks didn't drop from overhead, and I wasn't struck by a flying infant. During the flight I held the baby on my lap, as instructed, and she seemed to be having a fine time. Then without warning and very rapidly, the guy in front of me lowered his seat back and struck my daughter on the head. Fun times over.

The Big Smoke

Clever name for a Torontario BBQ restaurant. The food was pretty good too.

Most Canadian City

Sometimes you visit a place that truly makes you feel Canadian, in fact it oozes Canadiana like maple syrup. During this Eastern swing of business meetings, I was lucky enough to visit a city that oozed just like that.

It is the birthplace of Confederation and the site of the first organized hockey game.

It was (and is because he’s buried here) the home of our beloved drunken forefather Sir John A MacDonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada. The man who after throwing up during a debate, uttered the famous words “ I get sick sometimes not because of drink or any other cause, except that I am forced to listen to the ranting of my honorable opponent."

It is where Canadian National Rock & Roll Anthem writing The Tragically Hip hail from.

It was the first city to be named the Capital of Canada and is the location of prestigious Queens University.

The famous ice skating canal Rideau has its mouth here.

It is the location of Fort Frontenac which survived a 2 month Iroquois seige in 1688 during the Iroquois War and was later captured by 3000 British Troops in 1758 during the Seven Years War. Destroyed and rebuilt both times, the fort is still occupied by the Canadian military to this day.

Put it all together and Ottawa comes to mind, but it isn't. Quebec City? Non.

This most Canadian of Cities is Kingston, Ontario.

First Flight

It went pretty well. She was easily entertained by all the people moving about on the plane, but all the action also kept her from one of her naps. By the time we landed she was exhausted and since all those distracting passengers and flight attendants were in their seats, I laid her across my lap while the plane taxied. She fell asleep just before the "seat belt" light went off and everyone jumped up to exit the plane. I guess a 5 second nap is better than none.

Who Knew There Were Caribou?

Who knew there were caribou this far south?

On our way to Banff we drove through the mountains between Salmo and Creston, and at the top of the mountain pass we briefly entered caribou territory. We didn't see a caribou, but we did see a yellow sign with a silhouette of a caribou reminding us not to run over a caribou.

Grizzly in My Parking Spot

The wife was swimming at the Nelson Community Center one evening. When she came home there was a grizzly standing in the spot where we park the car. It was mightily startled by the headlights and ran up the road, back to the forest.

We decided rather than stay in a hotel, we would rent a house in an area of Nelson called Mountain Station. It is a beautifully renovated 100 year old farmhouse on a half acre of land high above the City. The view from the kitchen window is spectacular and there are fantastic walking and biking trails right out the front door. Although there are a few houses above ours, there isn't much between here and the Selkirk Mountains, and we had heard on the radio earlier in the week about a grizzly sighted in our area.

When she finally got up enough courage to come inside after scaring away the great silver-tipped bear, the wife somewhat testily asked me if I received her text message. I guess she didn't want to phone and wake the baby, and apparently I was supposed to rush out there to rescue her, but I hadn't noticed the text which simply stated "Grizzly".

Placenta Descenta

Days off in Nelson are for mountain biking, and Nelson delivers with more than 80 trails including Placenta Descenta.


Nothing like ripping down a steep, jagged rock-strewn trail through a bear infested forest to help one forget how many times Van-Kam Freightways has screwed up a simple materials delivery.

Nelson

Nelson B.C. has somehow packed in all the good things you might find in the downtown core of a large city yet still kept the feel of a small town. How are they able to sustain 4 or 5 high-end restaurants, independent coffee shops, and organic bakeries & grocers in a town with a population of about 10,000 with no major industry? They even have their own police force.

Two answers to the question come to mind. The first is City council fights tooth and nail to keep franchise restaurants out of Nelson, which gives the independent shops an advantage over the Burger Kings, Tim Hortons, and McDonald’s, none of which are in Nelson. A few unfortunate slip ups have occurred; the Subway, A&W and Starbucks (you can’t stop the evil empire), but for the most part Nelson is refreshingly original. The second is the people of Nelson have money, and it isn’t from working in a mine or cutting down a forest, it’s from growing marijuana.

All of a sudden the Nelson Police Force makes sense. A town that thrives on the profits of the Devil’s Lettuce, and collects taxes from the influx of money generated by growers of the Giggle Bush, and furtherly uses that tax money to pay civil servants, has a police force that is technically being paid by Jungle Juice. To me, a guy who does not partake in the Mary Potter but is otherwise not opposed to it, this is sheer genius. Stage a few phony busts to make the squares think the fuzz are on their game and otherwise leave the urban farmers and the City of Nelson to prosper.

Apparently, Nelson was one of the few places in North American that wasn't hit at all by the economic disaster that crippled the U.S. I guess even when people are short on green, they still buy Green.

So was Nancy Reagan wrong when she told us to “just say no”? I think the people of Nelson might just say yes.