Back at the beginning of August, we ended up taking an accidental trip to Quebec City when a “short weekend away” got out of hand. We travelled to Moncton, then up the eastern side of New Brunswick through Campbellton into Quebec, then to Rimouski, and from Rimouski down the St. Lawrence to Quebec City. 

Highlights of the trip were:

• Savonnerie Olivier
• Amqui, Quebec (especially the playground)
• Museum in Rimouski
• The Quebec City Zoo
• Old Quebec City

My last visit to Quebec City was when I was 19. I’d just dropped out of university, and I was hitchhiking to the east coast. Catherine had never been, and she’d always dreamed of it, so when the weekend opportunity arrived, and we were pointed in the right direction, we seized the day. It’s a wonderful city, well worth a visit for anyone within a couple of days driving (which is a lot of people in North America). It’s about as European a city as you’ll find without crossing the Atlantic.

Most of my family has left now, though Johnny and Jodi from Vancouver are around for another 12 hours until they fly back in the morning at the insane time of 5:50 a.m. Thus closes a family-packed week, most of which was spent at a rented cottage in Canoe Cove.

Highlights?

We all enjoyed go-carting, both at North River, and slightly zippier and slightly longer, at Burlington Amusement Park. The Do Duck Petting Farm was its usual wonderful self — this is, I think, the single best attraction for children on Prince Edward Island.

On the same trip to the north shore, we walked along the beach at Cousins Shore, had dinner at the New London Seafood Restaurant (excellent service, good food).

Otherwise there was a lot of walking along the beach (and, for Oliver, swimming around, tethered to one uncle or aunt or grandparent or another), drinking of beer (recommendation: get a keg from the Gahan House; good, handy form for beer, and works out to about a dollar a pint, Johnny says) and eating both in and out (including an excellent pasta meal cooked by Johnny and Jodi).

Perhaps the wisest decision was to rent a cottage duplex rather than One Big Cottage. This gave everyone their own personal space, and let us split into sub-groups when it made sense. The cottage we rented is owned by the Trainor family (their main base of operations is in Hampton, where they’re known as Hampton Haven Cottages). The duplex was clean, well equipped, and had uncommonly comfortable beds (better than most hotels). The location, about 500 feet from the beach, across from Camp Keir, can’t be beat.

Sometimes it’s good to slip into the tourist role for a while, even if you live here fulltime; helps put the tourism industry in perspective. Having been in Boston, New Hampshire, New Brunswick and Quebec in the past month, I can say without hesitation that the people and facilities of the Island tourism industry are a cut above the rest.

Now, onwards and upwards towards fall…

Maybe I’m late to the party on this scam, but here’s what happened to me tonight: my cell phone rang, with a very long number showing up as the “caller ID” on the display. When I answered it became obivous from the echo that it was an international call, and looking up the number later, it looks like it might have come from Ghana.

On the other end of the line was a fuzzy voice, asking me to call another number, also seemingly in Ghana. After telling me to call the number, the caller rung off.

I called Aliant Mobility, and poked around the Internet a little for more information, and the general idea here seems to be that if I were to call back the number in Ghana (or whereever), I would incur incredible long distance charges.

Oddly enough, a few minutes later a call came in on my office line from a number seemingly in France (country code of 33, or maybe 133), and the caller hung up without leaving a message.

Aliant took the call details, and promised to report the call to the fraud department there. They did advise not to return the call, which is common sense.

And it used to be just email we had to be afraid of…

Halfway through my first (and ultimately only) year of university, I stopped attending classes so as to better facilitate reading every one of Robertson Davies’ novels. This was less exotic than stopping to drink large quantites of beer, but healthier.

Getting turned on to Davies’ Jungian thing was hardly very useful when it came time to take my Psychology 101 exam. Sample conversation with professor: “What would happen if I wrote my essay about Jung rather than Freud?” I asked. “You would fail,” he replied. “If I failed, could I appeal?” I asked. “Yes, to the head of the department,” he replied. “Who’s that?” I asked. “Me,” he replied.

In any case, Davies turned on the “wonder of coincidence” switch in my brain, and I’ve been a coincidence addict ever since.

Today a big coincidence hit my email box — actually an interlocked set of mini-coincidences. I’m still parsing. The entire continent is involved. I will document, diagram and post as soon as I can digest it all.

Which has got me thinking that it would be very interesting if coincidences were reported like the weather. I would love to see a coincidence map of the world that would allow coincidental happenings to be tracked, outbreaks of coincidence to be monitored, etc.

Have I missed something? I’m getting flooded with spam titled, variously, “Thank You,” “Re: Details,” and “Re: Wicked Screensaver” with a message body of “See the attached file for details” and an attached Windows .PIF or .SCR file that appears to contain a DOS program. I’ve received 166 copies of this email, from people all over the world, in the last 24 hours.

You wouldn’t believe how much more fun go-carting is when you are racing against your three brothers. We all did 12 laps at North River causeway this afternoon. Maximum fun was had by all.

Speaking of travel, Edward Hasbrouck, who has good weekly commentary on the Amazing Race, has a page called I couldn’t take a big trip like that, because… on his website which is a good roadblock buster if you’re secretly itching to travel, but always manage to find reasons not to.

Like my mother says, “the last shirt has no pocket.”

My man in Bangkok, Harold Stevens, writes about the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok. We visited the house when we were there last year; well worth the visit. When we were done at the house, we took a canal boat from around the corner, and almost ended up in the drink getting on (boats don’t stop for very long, and there’s a complicated “over the rope and in” dance you have to do, which is hard when you’re balancing a one year old). Oddly, we didn’t take any pictures at the house, but here’s a view up the klong:

Later in the afternoon, after walking around the area surrounding the Giant Swing for a while, we encountered a Thai man and his son rolling along in the opposite direction in a stroller, and he and Oliver had a wee cross-cultural moment:

From Aliant:

…Atlantic Canada is home to Aliant. The company is built on a strong 100- year plus history in each of the region’s four provinces. It is here that the company pursues innovation to enhance and simplify the lives of fellow Atlantic Canadians, and to give businesses a competitive advantage.

As well, Aliant’s e-mail system went down Thursday and was still out Friday morning. Aliant says the company’s e-mail servers are in Ontario, and were affected by the power loss. Callers to Aliant were greeted with a message saying the wait time for assistance could be as long as an hour.

Irony of ironies: I’m sitting here in Dublin, New Hampshire, where the power goes out all the time, especially in the winter, and often for hours and even days at a time. Dublin, after all, has “the highest elevation of any village center in New Hampshire.”

And the power is on.

Meanwhile, in New York, Boston, Toronto, Kenora, Timmins, Detroit and all points between the power is out.

Ha!