Last week the Canadian Cartographic Association held its annual meeting here in Charlottetown. By way of a delightful cartographic coincidence, I made the acquaintance of the program chair, Roger Wheate, from the University of Northern British Columbia, and over the weekend I got a chance to spend some time out and about with Roger.

This morning, after he returned to Prince George, Roger sent me an intriguing photo, wondering whether I knew what the symbol represented:

I knew enough to know that the starfish represented the Points East Coastal Drive and that the “56” represented point-of-interest № 56, the Forest Hills Multi-Use Trail.

But what of the “sunshine over upper case A with an line over top of it” symbol?

No idea.

I searched online in vain.

I looked in the Prince Edward Island Visitors Guide for clues.

I phoned 1-800-565-7421, but the friendly agent there had no idea.

As a last resort, I sought out Hubert MacIsaac, Compliance Signage Officer with the province’s tourism department. Hubert, it turns out, is one of the friendliest public servants you’ll ever meet.

And after I emailed him Roger’s photo he quickly got back to me with this helpful signage key:

It turns out that Roger had encountered the symbol for “Day Adventure,” the symbolic representation of which confounds me: is it a happy picnic table person enjoying the sun, having an adventure in daylight?

As near as I can tell, using Google Image Search as my guide, this symbol is unique to Prince Edward Island – perhaps unique to eastern Prince Edward Island.

And it is not alone in its mysterious quality.

Referencing the chart above, one wonders why the symbol for “Farm Market” (№ 55) is of a lobster and a fish trapped inside a cabin.

Or why № 32, Botanical Garden, presumably an outdoor attraction, is represented by a flower inside a house.

Would tourists from away, in search of a bottle of slivovice, know that the symbol of the stylized “PEILCC” (№ 46) means “liquor store”?

Are their really that many “Iron Works” (№ 54) on the Island that a symbol needs to be dedicated to them? And can you really hold an anvil in your hand like that?

And wouldn’t symbol № 64, “Distillery,” be more appropriate for symbolizing time travel?

Symbols are useful when they transcend language and allow for quicker communication than words allow; if Roger, an experienced cartographic expert, couldn’t deduce the meaning, then perhaps it’s time for a change?

On June 19, 2014 – almost a year ago – we were driving from Düsseldorf, Germany to Enschede, Netherlands as part of our early summer trip to Europe.

We got lost – or perhaps “misdirected” – and ended up going much too far west for our own good, the victim of a navigation system based on an Android phone with as-then-non-working data plan.

But the misdirection caused us to have a fortuitous brush with history as our corrective route east took us through the outskirts of Deventer:

Deventer, as Samuel Holland acolytes will know, was the birthplace of Samuel Holland in 1728. Holland went on to conduct the first modern survey of Prince Edward Island in 1765, an event that’s being commemorated here on its 250th anniversary.

At the time, as we were rushing toward Enschede, we had no idea of this, and it was only in retrospect, while reading Holland’s biographical notes this year, that I thought to myself “hey, I’ve been there before, haven’t I?”

If only we’d known, we could have popped into town and taken a look around.

I’ve launched a new “early intervention program” to help combat a perpetual social problem: someone new starts working here at The Guild and I never get introduced to them.

And then weeks pass, and I see them often, without really knowing who they are.

And then it become too late to introduce myself to them because, well, we’ve said hello to each other innumerable times, and to admit that I don’t know who they are would be embarrassing.

So today, upon seeing a new box office staffer in place behind the desk, I took action.

“You’re new!”, I said.

“I’m Olivia,” she said.

“I’m Peter,” I replied.

We shook hands.

So now I know who Olivia is.

Early intervention FTW.

Last week while visiting Saskatoon, our friends took us out to Calories, a restaurant on Broadway. In the back, en route to the washrooms, I found a Bitcoin ATM, which is something I’d never encountered before.

Mindful that the opportunity might not come up again soon, I inserted $20 CDN, and out popped a “Temporary Bitcoin Wallet,” a paper chit with a public key and a private key that represented my $20 turned into bitcoins.

Today I managed to figure out, after considerable thrashing around, how to transfer this paper wallet into a Blockchain.info digital wallet.

And so, in theory, I now have about $18.00 of bitcoins ready to spend.

If you are feeling generous, and want to show me what it’s like to receive bitcoins from someone else, my Bitcoin Address is:

19RjGRsPMyv7X67F2amaKpiVyPbSJdUm46

or, in QR code form:

Almost every morning, since Oliver started at Prince Street Elementary School eight years ago, we’ve run into Gary MacDougall, Editor at The Guardian newspaper, on our way up Prince Street to school in the morning. We’ve shared a hello, or a bit of news, and gone on our ways to start our days. I suspect Oliver’s been left with the impression that it’s normal to have almost-daily interaction with the editor of the local newspaper. And surely it should be.

I got to know Gary a little better in recent years as he was instrumental in the establishment of IslandNewspapers.ca – the project simply wouldn’t have happened without his support as a strong believer in the power of the digitized archive of the newspaper as an educational and cultural resource.

Gary’s retiring at the end of this week, we all learned today, and it will be a great loss to the newspaper, the city, and the Island.

I’m going to miss chatting with Gary on the way to school every morning. I sure hope his replacement plans to walk to work.

The first real thing I did with Catherine, shortly after our courtship began, was to accompany her to her brother’s wedding. It was fun. And terrifying. “Here, meet my hundreds of relatives in this formal atmosphere” is not an unbracing way to get acclimated to a family much, much larger than my own.

That wedding begat a daughter, and that daughter, Patricia Miller, is getting married this weekend in Regina.

This makes me feel almost impossibly old. And also mindful that Catherine and I have been courting for, well, a good while.

So in a few hours we bundle up the dog and the boy and ourselves and board the Air Canada jet to Toronto where me meet up with Catherine’s parents and fly onward to Regina.

We’ll be in Regina until Sunday, and then up in Saskatoon until Tuesday night visiting our old friends the Hansons on their home turf. I’ve known sisters Cindy and Lori and Yvonne for more that 25 years, since our paths crossed in Peterborough (and, later, in Halifax and Charlottetown), and yet, short of a night many years ago when I crashed on Yvonne’s couch in Saskatoon (while she was, sadly, out of town), I’ve never experienced them “at home.” I’m looking forward to it.

Air Canada, I should mention, has been fabulously helpful in accommodating us for this trip: their Medical Office arranged for extra room in the cabin for Ethan, and refunded us the cost of one of our fares so that we can be Oliver’s “assistant,” an entitlement that he’s eligible for, it seems, in perpetuity. Which kind of makes me think that it’s time to accelerate the “pack it all in and travel the world” plan.

If you, dear reader, have been quietly reading from Saskatchewan all these years and have never raised your hand, please do so; we could have a “blogger meet up” while I’m there.

My friend Dave asked a question on Twitter this morning that produced a veritable torrent of replies:

This got me thinking about the jobs of my youth – summer camp counsellor, computer programmer, Canadian Tire computer and Bondo salesperson – and this, in turn, got me thinking about the first time I learned that one of my friends had turned to a life of crime.

My friend – let’s call him Fred to protect his identity – had a job pumping gas at the Sunoco station across from our high school.

One day at school he told me about this scheme he’d worked out. Most people paid with cash in those days, and it was before the advent of “self serve,” so he pumped gas for everyone. When customers paid with, say, a $20 bill, he would go back to the office for change, and return with change for $10 instead, pocketing the rest for himself. If the customer protested, he would simply apologize and hand over the difference, claiming ignorance. I don’t think he ever got caught, and I imagine that his take from each shift could have amounted to a couple of hundred dollars (although I suppose the owner would have noticed the difference in the cash register at some point, so he must have had to moderate his take).

What shocked me about this when I first heard it was not the crime itself.  And although it did surprise me that Fred, who I’d known since we were very young, whose birthday parties I’d gone to as a kid, would engage in such pursuits, it wasn’t that either. It was simply the realization that such things were possible, that anyone would even consider such behaviour. Until that time I’d considered crime – and generalized dishonesty – to be the stuff of movies and other places; the notion that it was possible to simply be garden variety dishonest was a revelation to me.

I had a similar reaction when, on a YMCA youth group trip to Banff, one of our older counsellors shoplifted some sponge toffee from a candy store, and emerged to brag about it, with the implication that he did this kind of thing all the time. This was someone who I’d looked up to for a long time; a model of leadership, I thought.

The notion that this guy – this guy – would be casually criminal is something that I find deeply disturbing to this day.

Was everyone I knew engaged in a part-time life of crime?

In this light perhaps Dave’s next question should be “What was the first crime you committed?”

I’m not sure it would produce the same torrent of replies, but whatever it did produce would no doubt be compelling.

One of the first things to go is spontaneity.

In my 20s I would think nothing of hopping in my Datsun 510 and driving to Vancouver if the opportunity presented itself. Indeed I did just that, once.

But then mental atrophy sets in. And the need to have the breakfast cereal out of the same bowl every morning becomes increasingly important. Part of this is simply complexity: it’s harder to coordinate a small platoon of two adults, one teen and one dog into a sudden outburst of spontaneity. But there’s more to it than that: well-worn ruts, as Bembo showed us, can prove very alluring.

Which is why sometimes having someone email you, at the very last minute, with a “Hey, we’ll be in Charlottetown tonight, can we park in your driveway” can be an welcome shock to the system.

Which is exactly what happened yesterday: my friend Julie is acting as aide-de-camp for her friend Nicole while Nicole makes her way from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Montreal, stopping every 50 km to paint the Trans-Canada Highway. They are now 15 days in, having made their way across Newfoundland (twice, actually, as they had to first get to St. John’s) and Cape Breton, and opting to take the more interesting Prince Edward Island leg of the highway over the less interesting Nova Scotia one (who knew the Trans Canada had forks?).

So not only was there an unexpected injection of spontaneity into our life, but it had an right-up-my-alley artistic hook to boot.

And, so, this was the scene in our driveway this morning:

By all rights Nicole and I should know each other: we lived in Peterborough, Ontario at the same time for a number of years. Hung with a similar crowd. We even went to the same high school, albeit in different years. But, as near as I can determine, our paths never crossed. At least in a way that I can remember. (It’s also possible the we were roommates and that I’ve just completely forgotten several years of my life; this is not as far-fetched is it reads).

This morning Nicole will backtrack toward the Wood Islands ferry, stopping 18 km this side, which, added to the 32 km on the Nova Scotia side since her last painting, makes an even 50. This will put her, I reckon, in downtown Pinette. And would make PEI painting number two land somewhere around the North River causeway. And painting number three almost exactly at the end of the bridge (how convenient our kilometerage is!).

Along the way I’m hoping that she can intersect with a Guardian photographer and a CBC crew – hastily arranged late nite emails went out that the journalistic community yeomanly responded to quickly – and so Islanders will be able to learn a bit more about the project too.

In the meantime, we had a nice dollop of spontaneity land in our midst, got to renew ties with Julie, and start ties with Nicole.

As you’re making your way from Wood Islands to Borden today, watch out for painter.

I am a big fan – and a daily user – of the open source Kodi media centre. I run it on an inexpensive Raspberry Pi computer hooked up to our 20 year old Sony television and, thanks to video services that have Kodi plug-ins, like USTVnow and YouTube, I have a rich pool of content to use to supplement our steady diet of Netflix (which we watch via our Nintendo Wii).

Something that I’d been missing, though, was a way to watch Compass, the local CBC evening news here in Prince Edward Island. As a vocal Compass advocate, this absence from my supper hour seemed downright unpatriotic.

I’ve been able to bodge together a solution that works via an iPad, AirPlay and Kodi’s ability to receive AirPlay streams. But it only works some of the time (most noticeably and helpfully on provincial election night), and, for some reason, seems unable to play me Compass.

And thus I was happy to encounter news of a CBC plug-in for Kodi, which held the promise of native-to-Kodi access to Compass (and a range of other CBC programs I’ve been missing).

And the plug-in works.

I was able to watch Dragon’s Den with my breakfast this morning and it was rock solid.

Unfortunately, Compass seemed to be missing from the mix.  Navigating through the Kodi UI to News, and then Local News Shows, results in just a single program, Here and Now, from St. John’s, Newfoundland:

This isn’t the fault of Kodi nor the CBC plug-in, though: if you navigate through the CBC’s own (dreadful) video gallery, following the same path, you end up with the same result, showing a single local news program:

Navigating to video from the Compass website ends one up at a page with breadcrumbs that look like this:

Which suggested that if, rather than following News > Local News Shows, I instead followed News > Canada > PEI, I might find the promised land. And, sure enough, it’s all there:

And here’s Kodi happily playing last Thursday’s episode of Compass:

I am again a happy Compass patriot.

(Warning: this really is a very sad story; don’t read it unless you’re prepared to be sad afterwards)

Seventy years ago this weekend, on the front page of the May 9, 1945 edition of The Charlottetown Guardian appeared what is perhaps the saddest story I’ve every read, under the headline “Sad Fatality Mars Day of Celebration” and concerning the death of 9 year old Charles Dalton Stewart in the VE Day parade in Charlottetown:

It’s impossible for me to conceive of the depth of grief that must come from losing a child, especially after living through the war, and on a day on which the rest of your community, province and country is lost in a reverie of joy over the war’s end.

With a haste that, contrasted with current practice, was impressive, the coroner’s inquest was, indeed, held that evening, and the following day’s newspaper contained the ruling:

A coroner’s jury, Inquiring last night Into the circumstances surrounding the death Tuesday afternoon of ten-year old Charles Stewart, brough in the following verdict: “We In find the the said Charles Stewart came to his death in the City of Charlottetown in Queen’s County. on Tuesday, May 8, 1945, by being run over by a motor truck, causing a fractured skull. No blame is attached to Mr. Lord, driver of the truck.

Dr. I. J. Yeo, coroner, presided at the inquest and the Attorney General was represented by Mr. G. R. Holmes.

Dr. I. Rachmel, who was the first witness, said he was called to the P. E. Island Hospital to examine the dead body of a boy. Found the boy had a multiple fracture of skull. There was no other signs of injury to the body. Pressure had been exerted on head from opposite sides and brain tissue had been squeezed out through mouth and other orifices of head. Death could have been caused by heavy wheel passing over head.

Fred McDougall, 320 Kent Street. said he was sitting on truck and felt a jar. Gordon Lord was driving. He was sitting in back with Leo Dowling. Charles Stewart was not on truck. The truck was going less than or mile an hour. Felt the jar when truck was between Frank Hennessey’s and Charlottetown Hotel.

Gordon Lord, 5 Spring Street, said he was driving truck with two others sitting beside him. Witness did not know Charles Stewart, until he saw him lying on the street. Witness felt a jar. He was driving very slowly, There were a lot of children clinging to running boards of truck.

Leo Dowling, 373 Kent Street, said he was sitting with Fred McDougall at back of truck on a car cushion. A few children were hanging on rear of truck and on sides. Witness felt a small bump. Saw Stewart boy lying on street behind and on right side of truck. Thought rear wheel went over him.

Sgt. Allan McInnis, City police, said he was told by an airman that a boy had been killed on Kent Street. Ran down to scene of tragedy, opposite A. A.. Hennessey’s. Found small boy face down on street in a pool of blood. Boy was still breathing and witness lifted the boy’s face out of blood to prevent him smothering. Blood was gushing from both nostrils. Witness thought boy was dead when ambulance arrived few minutes later. Witness said truck was moving very slowly as it was impossible to go faster on account of large crowds of people. Did not know who boy was until brother came up before ambulance left and said, “This Is my little brother.”

Fred McKenzie, 278 Fitzroy Street, said he had one foot on side of truck and was hanging on. Stewart was on other side trying to get on. Witness did not see Stewart fall but saw rear wheel pass over him.

Albert Vincent, 247 Grafton Street said he was on truck with Leo Dowling. Had got on when truck left Victoria Park. Witness was told by driver to try to stop the kids from pulling off Hitler’s boots (truck was carrying an effigy of Hitler). Lot of young lads hanging on truck. Witness felt rear right wheel raise up near CFCY, Witness got off when truck stopped. An airman and a sailor grabbed witness’ hands and formed a ring around Stewart to prevent people crowding prostrate body. Witness wanted to give himair. Witness said it was impossible to get kids off the sides of truck. They would not listen.

Rankine McLaine said he owned the truck. It was of 6000 pounds capacity and had never been out before. There was no body on truck. Gordon Lord was a reliable and careful driver, witness said.

The jury, who only took a few minutes to reach a verdict included Byron Brown (foreman), James Brown, George Berrigan, William Flynn, Ray Steele, W. E. Scantlebury and Alex Lafferty.

The funeral for Stewart was held the following day, May 11, 1945, at the family’s home at 302 Fitzroy Street:

Cross Roads Cemetery is located across the bridge from Charlottetown behind Cross Roads Christian Church. Stewart is buried there, under a headstone featuring a lamb, beside his parents Cecil and Laura who died in 1977 and 1965 respectively: