It being January 1, 2018, it was time to go a-leveeing, and Oliver and I decided to take a different tack altogether this year, eschewing the chichi urban levees altogether, and heading west for a loop that took us along the south short of Prince Edward Island from Canoe Cove to Borden-Carleton to Kensington to Summerside to Miscouche, and then back around to Long River and New London.

Traveling this “rural levee loop” gave us a chance to experience a whole different kind of levee, to suffer some unexpected disappointments and some singular pleasures.

To guide us, we prepared a handy cardboard map showing the levees and their scheduled times, along with the travel distances between each. Careful readers will note that, as per my 25 year habit, I got the position of New London wrong on the map, at least relative to Long River.

Along the way we covered 182 km on what might perhaps be the most beautiful New Years Day weather I’ve seen in 25 years: bright, sunny, crisp; large, you might say.

All told we visited 7 levees (plus the Premier’s Levee, once we got back to town), and by way of shedding some light on each of them, to encourage you to follow the loop in future years, here are The 2018 Levee Awards:

Levee of the Year: Canoe Cove

I’ve been putting the Canoe Cove levee, held in the hall in this rural community 30 minutes south-west of Charlottetown on the south shore, on the list for many years; this was my first time to visit, and I’m so, so glad we did, as it was just lovely.

The stuffy formality of the city levees was nowhere evident: instead, everyone just wished each other “Happy New Year,” anarchist style.

We met new friends–many of whom we had connections to already, this being PEI–and enjoyed a bountiful spread of food and hot coffee and tea, all in the congenial confines of a well-preserved historic building.

If you only go to one levee, make it this one.

The Unexpected Delight Award: Borden-Carleton

When you’re headed to a levee hosted in the “Industrial Mall,” you don’t get your hopes up, but Borden-Carleton was also a delight. It was only slightly less informal than Canoe Cove, and that only because the Mayor, in full mayoral regalia, offered up himself as a receiving line. But he also found us napkins and forks, and told us where the coffee and tea were. There was a small but hearty group of Borden-Carletonians, young and old, gathered around a board room table piled high with food, and, despite being outsiders from town, we immediately were made to feel welcome.

I learned a few things in the process. First, you don’t leave off the “-Carleton”–apparently this causes offense to those on “the Carleton side.” Second, if you’re referring to “town”–like “we’re not going to any levees in town this year”–it’s assumed you mean Summerside, not Charlottetown as that’s what “town” is that far over the Prince-Queens county line.

We’ll certainly be back to Borden-Carleton’s levee in the future; and, indeed, my entire opinion of the community was raised by the reception we received. Well done!

Best Awards Award: Town of Kensington

Things got a little more formal at the Town of Kensington levee, with a receiving line, and a guest book. But, being hosted at the stunning Broadway 45 restaurant downtown, it was decidedly more casual after that, with folks gathered around tables chatting, and a selection of sweets and savories on offer.

Kensington was unique in that in addition to the usual business of the levee, the opportunity was taken to hand out awards to citizens in several Christmas-related categories (best Christmas lights, etc.). This was done with appropriate pomp and ceremony by the mayor, with official certificates and cheques presented. It made for a good opportunity to bring the town together in celebration, and it’s something other communities may want to consider.

Best Levee Receiving Line: City of Summerside

I hadn’t been inside Summerside City Hall in a very long time, and I’d forgotten what a beautiful building it is. Gathered in the second-floor council chamber we found the mayor and members of council, each accompanied by their spouse, as well as two Summerside Members of the Legislative Assembly, gathered in an impressive horseshoe-shaped receiving line. Oliver really upped his receiving-line game for this one, greeting each person with a hearty “Happy New Year” and a firm handshake.

Despite the presence of so much elected glitterati, Oliver was most star-struck by Lynne Lund, Deputy Leader of the Green Party of PEI, who was huddled in conversation across the room from us, and I was chastised for rushing him back to the car before he got a chance to wish her well for the year.

Summerside also deserves credit for serving the best punch of the day, dispensed from a silver pot in a light-filled front room overlooking downtown.

Biggest Levee Disappointment: Miscouche Legion

When it comes to determining what goes on the levee schedule, I’ve always used the “if you call yourself a levee, then you’re a levee” rule, and that means that a wide range of formats and facilities end up on the list.

The levee at the Miscouche Legion looked like a rollicking good time, with a live band and teaming revelers in attendance; alas we were turned away at the door, as it was a “19+” event, due to liquor regulations.

This will prompt me, in future years, to add a “are you an all-ages event” question to the yearly query I send out when assembling the list; I’ll still include all the levees, I’ll just have a column on the schedule to indicate which aren’t friendly to everyone.

Getting kicked out (by very friendly bouncers, who we wished a Happy New Year on the way out), and having a long stretch of driving until the next levee on the list, we had a good opportunity to chat about the ins and outs of PEI’s draconian liquor laws, especially as we’d been in New Brunswick in early December, seeing a concert, at night, in a bar, and benefiting from that province’s more progressive attitudes (minors must be accompanied by an adult; that’s it).

Miscouche was only a disappointment to us, of course: everyone of age, inside the levee, appeared to be having a good old time.

Most Intriguing Levee Award: The Kitchen Witch

The Kitchen Witch is a summertime restaurant and gift shop in Long River–I wrote about it when the business changed hands in 2008.  A few years back it started opening up on New Years Day to host a levee. It was in exactly the right spot on our way from Miscouche to New London, and the warm reception we received from the extended family that wraps around it did much to stanch the disappointment of Miscouche.

The food on offer was second-to-none: there was a special gluten free section, pots chili and soup, sweets and savories of all kinds, including some very good cheese balls and dips, and an especially interesting dish called “Texas caviar,” which, despite the name, contains no caviar at all (but does contain black-eyed peas, which, Texas lore says, it is good luck to eat on New Years Day).

December 31, 2017 happened to be the first birthday of young Gemma, granddaughter of the owners, and so cake was offered up, as was a bowl of water for Ethan, and pleasant conversation with a diverse collection of north shore residents.

Most Musical Levee: New London Community Complex

This was the first year that the New London Community Complex levee appeared on the levee schedule, and I wasn’t sure what to expect.

It turned out to be more in the Miscouche style than the Canoe Cove style: a “let’s continue the party from last night” rather than a “let’s greet our community together” opportunity.

But they let us in the door, and although there was no food on offer, and we received instructions at the door to not let Oliver have anything to drink, we did enjoy a couple of songs from Midlife Crisis, the crack oldies band on stage providing the entertainment.

So, perhaps not a highlight of the day, but a good pit-stop on the way from Long River back to town.

By the time we got back to town it was just after 4:00 p.m., and we decided to make a quick duck into the Premier’s Levee in the Confederation Centre of the Arts.

As we were late, this afforded us an opportunity to avoid the long lines that generally afflict this levee: we just marched right up to the starting line, were issued № 234, had our photo taken with the Premier and Duncan, shook the hands of the Liberal MLAs in the receiving line (including Hon. Tina Mundy and Chris Palmer, who we’d seen, hours before, in the receiving line in Summerside).

Also as we were late, most of the food had already been gobbled up, so we reconciled ourselves to the crumbs that were left, and enjoyed chats with several of our chichi urban neighbours.

I’m so happy that we took this year to see what levees look like outside of Charlottetown: we met many interesting people, had some good food and drink, got a solid tour of Central Queens and East Prince, and I learned a few things about how to make the levee schedule better for 2019.

The fates conspired against me for my prideful “it’s not so cold here and I’ve fixed the dishwasher” post yesterday by arranging for our furnace at 100 Prince Street to stop working.

Everything was fine when we got up Saturday morning: a pleasant 19ºC. Oliver and I headed off to the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market and to run other errands, not returning home until mid-afternoon.

When we arrived home I noticed there was a chill in the air, the thermostat was showing only 17ºC, and the radiators were stone-cold.

I did the usual checks of the furnace: was the red emergency shut-off switch at the top of the basement stairs accidentally switched (no), was the furnace itself accidentally switched off (no).

I tried the pilot light reset switch, and there was something of a springing-to-life, but although the furnace appeared to be running, there was no hot water circulating, and the water temperature gauge on the furnace remained at about 30ºC:

At this point, going into a long-weekend and facing very cold temperatures overnight, I placed a service call to Kenmac Energy, the first time we’ve needed to call in their cavalry since we switched from Coop Fuels in late 2015.

Kenmac proved very-responsive, with a helpful person on the other end of the phone who walked me through most of the basic things I’d already tried, and, none proving successful, promised to have a service technician at our door once they were finished with other calls.

About an hour later there was a knock at the door, and a very friendly and accommodating technician presented himself, got the details, and headed down to the basement.

About 20 minutes later, the furnace sprang to life, hot water started to fill the radiators, and the house started to heat up.

I wasn’t paying enough attention to get the specific details of what had conked out, but it was something like two electrical “control boxes,” if memory serves.

After a brief chat with the tech about his 40 years inhabiting the basements of Charlottetown, he was off to his next call, and we were off to run some more errands, and to grab pizza at Casa Mia for supper.

When we returned home at 8:30 p.m., the rads were still warm, but the temperature was only 18ºC, despite the thermostat being set to 20ºC.

Oh no!

I ran the same set of checks, only to find that, this time around, even the burner wouldn’t start.

Another call to Kenmac’s after-hours line, where I spoke to the same helpful person, who promised to dispatch someone soon; about 10 minutes later I had a call from the same service tech who’d visited earlier, and he sent me down to the basement to gather a sit-rep, and when nothing obvious presented, said he was on his way.

He arrived a short while later and headed back into the basement, emerging about 45 minutes later with the news that one of the control boxes he’d installed earlier had inexplicably stopped working. He’d replaced it, and then ran the furnace through several off-and-on-and-off cycles to make sure it was working as it should.

When I went downstairs to review the situation, I found the temperature gauge in the expected 90ºC range, and all the pipes hot to the touch:

I’m happy to report that when we woke up this morning, the temperature was again a a pleasant 19ºC, despite the -19ºC temperature outside. The rads were toasty and all was well with the world.

There’s nothing like having your furnace stop working to remind you how lucky you are to have a furnace.

As much of North America has been plunged into a deep cold snap, we’ve gotten off relatively easy so far; it’s been cold, but it hasn’t (yet) been cold.

Nonetheless, we’ve suffered our first bout of “the tiny pipe to the dishwasher has frozen” of the season.

The space heater that we’d used in previous winters to help cure this broke down last year, so I was off to Canadian Tire after supper to find a replacement (those dishes aren’t going to do themselves).

Fortuitously, Canadian Tire had a sale on oscillating fan heaters (regularly $32.99, on for $19.99), but the signs advertising this were missing from the shelves, so there were still plenty of heaters in stock (13 left after I bought mine).

The under-cupboard is warming as I type, and there’s hope that the dishes will be washed by bedtime.

In his post Digital devices for world travellers, Edward Hasbrouck contrasts the appeal (or lack thereof) of tiny devices in the USA vs. the rest of the world:

Most travellers in the USA go by car, not by plane, and have plenty of room in their vehicle for a full-sized laptop if they need it on the road. As a result, keyboard devices smaller and more expensive than a “standard” laptop have been niche products in the USA and many other parts of the world — except in Japan and to a much lesser extent in Europe, where more business people travel by train and by mass transit. Few models or even product lines of smaller devices with keyboards — again, except for some that are distributed only in Japan — have been widely available or remained in production for very long.

“Tiny” in the USA connotes “toy-like”, and people expect toys to be (a) cheap and (b) not suitable for doing real work.

Not so in Japan, where “tiny” connotes “finely crafted” and “precious”.

In the same vein, I’ve never owned a mobile phone that I liked the size of more than the diminutive Nokia N70.

Ivan Reitman, prolific producer and director of films (and of filmmakers), was born in Komárno, Slovakia in 1946.

Komárno has an interesting geographical history:

Komárno is a town in Slovakia at the confluence of the Danube and the Váh rivers. Komárno was formed from part of a historical town in Hungary situated on both banks of the Danube. Following World War I and the Treaty of Trianon, the border of the newly created Czechoslovakia cut the historical, unified town in half, creating two new towns.

So Komárno is on the Slovakian side of the Danube, and Komárom is its Hungarian twin on the other side.

Scotty Allen has crafted a small collection of YouTube videos on his hacking adventures, the most well-known of which is How I Made My Own iPhone - in China. His latest video, however, is by far the most interesting yet: a 20 minute documentary about the San Francisco anarchist hackerspace Noisebridge.

I’d never heard about Noisebridge, but after watching the documentary, I fell in love.

Even better than the video, however, is the Noisebridge Wiki; my favourite page there is the one about the elevator, which starts:

The elevator is perhaps the jankyest and most dangerous thing we have at Noisebridge. Please do not use it unless absolutely necessary.

In Scotty’s documentary, one of the people he interviewed said that Noisebridge was reason enough to visit San Francisco; given that I have a brother and two nieces in the Bay Area, I think I’ve all the excuses I need to make a trip soon.

 

Prince Edward Island hit a new peak electricity load of 280 megawatts yesterday at 5:00 p.m.: Islanders were collectively using more electricity at that point than ever before in history. 

In fact the load, measured every 15 minutes from 5:00 p.m. all the way to 8:40 p.m. was more than the previous peak of 264.66 MW reached three years ago on January 6, 2015.

Here’s what the load, and the wind energy generation, looked like yesterday:

The other story told by this chart is that we were well-served by the wind: between 49% and 77% of our electricity needs were met by wind energy generation over the course of the day.

The increased capacity of the submarine cable to New Brunswick, combined with the wind energy, meant that there was no need to fire up local fossil-fuel generators, despite the peak.

If you’d like to drill into the data in more detail, here are all the samples recorded yesterday as a CSV file.

Show me a rural community that maintains an annual lecture series, and I’ll show you a community where hearts beat a little stronger.

Clyde River is such a place, and the schedule for its 2018 lectures has just been released; judged by the Verna Clow lecture we had the pleasure of attending two years ago these are events well worth attending, and events you should show up early for to ensure a seat.

A tradition we started in 2015 with Episode VII. I’ve nowhere near the Star Wars affiliation that my little brothers do, but I’m a sucker for secular tradition, and the movie was the best one in a long while. One piece of advice for you, gleaned at the snack counter: avoid kale chips; they are a crime against nature.

I wrote yesterday about how Christmas stress gave birth to the crosswords-as-airlocks system, and suggested that 2016 holiday travel “stretched our little troupe to near our breaking point.”

Here’s part two of that story.

After a pleasant week spent between Napanee (Catherine’s family) and Burlington (my family), during which waffles were consumed, Math Minute invented, and a new coffee place discovered, we were set to fly back home to PEI on New Year’s Eve.

For reasons that escape me now, our plane was scheduled to leave Pearson Airport in Toronto at 7:00 a.m. Given that we were in Burlington, 45 minutes drive away, that we had to return a rental car, and that it was a busy travel day, this meant leaving our Burlington hotel at 4:00 a.m.

What was I thinking?

When the hotel alarm clock went off at 3:30 a.m., it became immediately apparent that this wasn’t going to work out: Oliver entered a state of complete apoplexy, and, if only to avoid waking up the rest of the hotel, I sent him and Catherine back to bed and retired to the calm of the washroom to see what alternate arrangements I could make.

Air Canada, bless its soul, rose to the challenge: I got through to an agent on the phone, with no need to hold, and explained the depths of our situation. The agent quickly arranged for us to change our reservation to a later flight, at no charge. Which allowed us to get up at a (more or less) normal hour, and reboot the day.

Mid-morning we made our way to the airport, returned the rental car, and assembled the horses to go through security. Mindful of our challenging experience on the way up, I went ahead and identified the “special services” line we could go through, and beseeched the agent at the entrance to security to wave us right through to that doorway, which he agreed to do. No more than a minute later when we arrived at the line and presented ourselves to the selfsame agent it was like a brand new day, with beseeching forgotten and insistence that we could go through the regular old line like everyone else.

I insisted; they relented; and we were ushered through to the special services line.

We’d had positive experience with special services lines on earlier trips: at Heathrow in 2015 they were a Godsend. And so we had high hopes for smooth sailing.

Our hopes were quickly dashed.

To be honest, I have little memory of the chaos that ensued, but suffice to say (a) Oliver returned to a state of apoplexy, (b) the CATSA staff appeared to have little or know understanding of the anxiety challenges presented by the mix of autism and airport security, nor any sympathy for we supporters thereof, (c) the general vibe was “this kid’s freaking out; are we going to let them through at all,” and (d) in Oliver’s understandable physical reaction to the overwhelming stress of all this, my glasses got knocked off, fell to the ground, and lost their left arm.

Somehow we made it through, got ourselves to a quiet restaurant, plonked ourselves down, and allowed ourselves time to decompress.

A few minutes later, I snapped this selfie:

That’s documentary evidence of me in a state of stress and exhaustion and parental worry.

The flight home, by my recollection, was relatively uneventful. Although looking in my Google Timeline right now I see that we had a four hour layover in Montreal that I have absolutely no memory of whatsoever, so who knows.

There is a silver lining in all of this, remarkably: the stress of Christmas travel, and Oliver’s general late-2016 challenges with stress and anxiety, prompted us to seek help. This resulted in our acceptance, almost immediately, into the Strongest Families program, which was an enormous and transformative help to all three of us.

While 2017 was not without its challenges, the year for Oliver has gotten better and better every week, and we greet this (travel-free) Christmas as a family happier and more resilient.

Oh, and the wonderful Gaudet Optical in Halifax repaired my glasses, under warranty and at no charge, and they sit, restored, on my face as a type this.