Personal

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Last Day at Home and Off to London

My last day at home wasn’t the flurry of activity one would think. I’m absurdly organised and good at managing my time. I methodically ploughed through my to-do list, including getting three loads of laundry done by noon. I was so on top of things that when Charles came to ask me to run an errand with him in the late afternoon, it didn’t throw a wrench in my plans at all.

When we came home from that, with me taking a good long last view of my beloved valley as we came down the hill into the hamlet, it was time to shut down the internet and power and do one final sweep. I almost forgot my toothbrush and… computer charger!

I trundled down the street with my two travel bags as well as a bag filled with what I needed to get me through the night at C&C’s. I’d brought a few things over earlier in the day, including a tote of things I didn’t want to freeze, and would stow the bag in that tote.

Caroline made me an extra special going away dinner. We started with Greek salad, then had roast pork tenderloin, beets, yellow beans, and rice. They bought a whole live pig last year and butchered it themselves, and boy was it delicious! There was a maple syrup glaze on it that was succulent! The beans were home grown, of course, as were the beets that Caroline canned last year. So good! The extra special part of dinner was that she’d made dessert, a strawberry rhubarb pie (with vanilla ice cream). I’m so spoiled!

Needless to say, the food and wine put me into a coma and I slept pretty well from 10:30 to 3, then, thankfully, I managed to fall asleep for nearly another three hours.

It was pouring rain when I stumbled downstairs, enjoying coffee on the porch with Caroline as we looked at our damp green hills. I forced myself to have a bit of breakfast, just some toast with peanut butter and honey, and then got ready, changing into my airplane outfit, closing up my bags, and stowing what wasn’t coming with me.

The plan had been to leave at 7:00 and we pulled out at 7:15. The drive to the airport in Regina took almost 2.5 hours, but they flew by! As we approached the exit for the airport, I once again expressed how grateful I was for the lift and Caroline replied, “We just wanted to get rid of you and the surest way to do that was to make sure you got to the airport all right!” Bwa ha ha ha. I love her and Charles so much.

We only had a few minutes at the unloading point at the airport to say goodbye and then off I went. I’d checked in the day before and had my boarding passes on my phone, so I went straight to security. There was a bit of a lineup, but it went quickly. It was rather a pain to get my electronics out of my computer bag since it was packed so tightly, but I got it done by the time it was my turn to put stuff in bins.

I got through the scanner without it beeping and then came what felt like an interminable wait for my stuff to get through the X-ray machine. But everything scanned okay and they didn’t make me open my bags or take off my shoes.

Then, came a wait. There’s not much at the Regina airport terminal. I got a second breakfast and a really good coffee and spent some time doing online stuff before calling SaskTel to cancel my service. That was painless and the reps I spoke to were very excited about my trip.

We boarded on time. It was very quick flight to Toronto and I bought a sandwich on board to eat. The airplane sandwiches are always good and fresh and no more expensive than what you get on the ground, so I don’t see the point of trying to juggle a bag of food onto the plane with my gear. Speaking of which, my gear was perfectly sized. My computer bag was really at the limit for under the seat stowage, but I could actually have expanded my suitcase if I wanted to.

My layover in Toronto was really short. We landed at about 5:10 and my next flight was departing at 6:00, which meant I really only had at most 40 minutes to get to the gate. It took forever to deplane and no one else appeared to be in a hurry. I was way at the back of the plane and pleaded to folks to let me through, but no one cared. By the time I got into the terminal, it was 5:30. There was no signage, no departures board, no one to give directions, nothing. I had no idea where I was supposed to catch my flight to St. John’s and didn’t want to risk going too far in the wrong direction looking for assistance. I finally spotted a WestJet agent who was in no hurry to help me. She was chatting with someone else about her plans for the weekend and gave me a dirty look when I said, “Excuse me…”  If there was a time for rudeness, this was it and I firmly said that I needed my gate info. She finally brought it up and the gate was pretty much clear across the terminal. OMG. I raced off and with Pearson being under renovations, there were detours. It took forever to reach the gate, where they were at final boarding call! According to the agent who checked me in, I was literally two minutes from missing my connection. PHEW.

Having made my flight to St. John’s, I could finally relax since I had a longer layover there and now knew that I would very likely get to London on schedule.

There was frost on the window near the end of that leg of my journey:

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Here’s how my two bags stack for easy transport through the airport. I do have to say that this got really heavy by the the time I got through Gatwick and I was happy to have a backpack.

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My layover in St. John’s felt like it took no time at all. I was disappointed that there was no food to be bought that late at the terminal. I knew I could get a sandwich on the plane, but had hoped for a “real” meal.

I was a little freaked out when I got paged, but it was because they wanted to make sure I was there since I hadn’t checked any luggage!

Before I knew it, it was time to board for the last leg of my journey. I’d hoped to sleep, but the 5-hour flight wasn’t conducive to that. There was a lot of turbulence, so there were constant announcements, plus I was famished and it took almost two hours to get our first beverage service, when I could get a sandwich. But like with my previous two flights, I did nothing on the plane, but close my eyes and at least attempt to doze.

The clouds were thick like snow as we pushed east:

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For the second time in my life, I watched the sun rise over the Atlantic.

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Sometimes, there was enough break in the clouds to see the ocean:

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Ireland!

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We flew over what felt like the whole of the south of England, coming up the North Sea coast. I was struck by how rural the country appeared, with so much farmland and only small clusters of cities. Gatwick Airport is well outside of London, so I didn’t get a first glimpse of the city from the air. We landed right on schedule at 8:20am local time.

All I wanted after we landed was to wash my face and brush  my teeth. The first bathroom I encountered was over crowded, but the second was empty. Feeling a little more human, I was ready to face passport control. The long lineup moved quickly. I’d already filled in my tourist card on the plane, so there wasn’t much to do when I got to an agent. I just confirmed how long I was staying and why and that was it, and got my first stamp in a passport since the last time I got to the UK!

Next was customs, but I had nothing to declare, so I just breezed through that. And then, I was in the main part of Gatwick airport and it was time to figure out how to get to London, then across London! Yes, I’d done my research, but it was contradictory and I’d made the decision to figure it out on the spot. To be continued!

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Why I Am Fighting for My Haven

I started this blog to record all aspects of my life, including my ferocious love for this little slice of Canada that seems so distant, in the best of ways, from the rest of the country. To the many of you who have told me to stop whining about the internet situation here and move, I feel so sorry for you. I feel sorry that you have never lived somewhere that you love as much as I love my Haven and I feel sorry that you have been brainwashed by this country’s government to believe that status quo is best and that nothing can or should change. I need to record this fight against the ultimate Goliath as I use links to posts in my missives to various companies, politicians, lawyers, and media outlets. I invite you to use your back button if you don’t want to read these posts.

For those of you who want to keep reading, this is my fourth summer at Haven, so it’s time to do a recap of why there is nowhere else in Canada for me to be.

In no particular order here are the things I love about my Haven.

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My cosy little homestead. I might have started off camping at Haven, but now it’s a proper home.

It’s right on the US border. There is nowhere else left along the Canada/US border but southern Saskatchewan where properties are still affordable. I lived near the US border nearly my whole life and that was important to me when began to look for a place to buy. I save a ton on shipping fees by having things sent to my parcel service in Montana and the proximity to inexpensive US fuel is a perk when heading south.

Haven is also right smack in the middle of the continent. All roads converge here, really. I’m never more than half a continent away from anything. I can get to BC and to Montreal in about the same amount of time. When I go Mexico, I don’t have to travel very far in Canada and I save a ton on fuel. Roads to Haven are really good and I’m close enough to the more traveled highways, like the TransCanada, that it’s not a huge detour for friends traveling between the eastern and western parts of the country to visit.

Most of the people in my community are likeminded non-conformists. They are self-sufficient people with a lot of common sense who don’t think I’m peculiar for living in my RV or wanting to travel. Conformists would ask me why I do these things. Non-conformists just ask how they can make my unusual lifestyle easier. We’re having trouble with our RM (rural municipality) management trying to bring in stupid rules like building permits (when we don’t even have building codes) or that we can’t have RVs on our lots or that we have to mow our lawns to certain standards. My neighbours’ and my response to that was laughter and resistance. If we wanted that kind of nonsense, we would have bought “in town.”

These are salt of the Earth people who measure their wealth as I do, by the joy they get out of their lives, not by the things they buy. There is no “keeping up with the Joneses” here. Nowhere else in all my travels have I landed somewhere with such a motley group of folks, not all of whom I like or like me, who so fiercely make me believe that I have found my people. I can be myself here without censorship and when people make fun of me, there is such affection in their tone that I cannot do anything but feel protected and nurtured, something I haven’t felt very often in my life.

Internet notwithstanding, Haven is a really great place to stop and work. There are so few distractions here. It is super quiet and town is just far enough away to not be an option most days, but close enough if I need a change of scenery. This is by far my favourite place I’ve parked the RV and worked. I have an amazing view of both the sunset and the sunrise. I enjoy watching birds and bunnies and gophers all day. Other than the odd lawn mowing during the day, I can count on quiet to do my transcription work. I wake up to the song of the mourning dove, fall asleep to the soothing howl of the coyote, and in between, the mooing of cows is a joyful melody.

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I was amused this morning by this bird sitting right on top of my internet antenna pole.

Haven has a post office. As long as I can get folks to ship through Canada Post or USPS to a PO box, I can get almost anything delivered here and I can ship things out.

The two nearby communities, Willow Bunch and Assiniboia, provide the essentials. Willow Bunch is less than 15 minutes away and has a bigger post office, a small food store, a great thrift shop, a good pub, and an awesome museum, to which I have a lifetime membership. Assiniboia is 35 minutes away and has a bigger food store, a CIBC (my main bank), an art gallery, a liquor store, and many other services, including a small cinema. Movies are a little slow to come here, but main ones do and a viewing is inexpensive. I don’t go to our cinema often, but I also never feel a need to figure out how to schedule myself around showings in Moose Jaw.

Which brings me to the fact that bigger stores, while 150KM away, are easily accessible from Haven. It’s a boring (but scenic) drive to Moose Jaw, but an easy one. There’s no such thing as traffic out here. I hate driving in cities like Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, and their suburbs. Here, driving is a pleasure over long flat stretches of mostly good roads.

Haven is in a proper community with streetlights and all services but internet and cable television. I could have had a lot of the things I like about Haven itself, maybe even the price of the property, on an acreage in another province, but there are advantages to living in a proper community. I have neighbours to watch over my place when I’m gone, I have fire service, and it’s not insanely expensive to get hooked up to utilities since everything is to my property line. This is the only proper community that I found that would let me use my lot as an RV pad with no promise of building a house within a certain amount of time, and then add in the piddly amount I paid for my lot.

Keeping Haven even if I’m not here a lot isn’t a huge financial burden. The property is paid for and I have $450 a year in property taxes as well as a token amount for water and garbage pickup. Even if I had been able to find another community that would let me have an RV as a residence, I would have had to take out a mortgage to buy it and pay much higher property taxes and service fees.

The climate here is the best in Canada by my standards, mostly dry and sunny, with very little humidity and bugs. A winter here at 50 below with sun beat a winter in BC at 5 above with intense humidity and no sun for six months. Our little valley is in a microclimate of its own and our weather is always better than Assiniboia, Moose Jaw, and Regina. While we do get horrible wind and hail storms, our valley protects us from tornados.

This part of Saskatchewan is incredibly scenic. I know that rolling olive green hills and bright blue skies are not to everyone’s taste, but they are to mine. I walk daily to the post office and I alway pause both ways to fill my soul with the beauty of our hills. I cannot take the views here for granted because I never had such a profound sense of “coming home” as I did the first time I arrived on the Prairies.

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This is the view from my picture window at the rear of my office. The sky is ever changing. The grass won’t be that lush and green for long!

This is what I wrote about this area my first time through here, nearly eight years ago, when I hadn’t even yet seen the BC coast, Vancouver Island, or Yukon. I already knew where I was going to land one day and I got shivers rereading this:

Being out here on the prairie fills me with such peace. There is something about the plains that has always made sense to me. When I first encountered them in North Dakota back in 2005 I found myself wondering if it’s possible to come home to a place you’ve never been before. Everything out here is amplified: the blue of the sky, the warmth of the sun, the sound of the wind… Mornings and evenings are bitterly cold in the fall, but the days are hot. Yesterday in Moose Jaw, I could have have closed my eyes and sworn I was in Las Vegas in June, it was that dryly hot out.

Regina is a nice little city, comparable to Winnipeg. It confirmed to me what it is exactly that makes Winnipeg so special to me as Regina has all the same criteria but one, no strong French community.

The ideal year, it would seem, would be a summer spent in the Prairies, an early fall spent on the Shield, and then a winter somewhere warm and dry.

Which reminds of one final thing about Haven that makes it so remarkable: I have a French community here. While we French-Canadians (them fransaskois, me québécoise) tend to do business in English, if there’s something weighing on us or we’re tired or we’re frustrated or we’re angry, we know we can offload in our mother tongue.

Haven does have four disadvantages. Two would not be an issue if I was here pretty much year round. One is only an inconvenience. And one would be a deal breaker if everything else about Haven wasn’t just about perfect.

The first disadvantage is that the food store in Assiniboia is absolutely terrible. If I was here year round, I would do like my neighbours and grow a garden. I’d have Charles fill a freezer with deer meat. I’d befriend the neighbour who sells organic chickens. I’d do quarterly supply runs to Moose Jaw or maybe Regina, which has a Costco. And I’d stock up in Assiniboia when there are good sales.

The second disadvantage is that while I can get mail addressed to a PO box, I can’t get anything else. A lot of businesses won’t ship to a PO box and insist on using a courier service, with no courier companies currently servicing my hamlet. Purolator is examining the possibility of changing its Assiniboia to Willow Bunch route to go through the hamlet as that would actually be a cost savings for them. But for right now, when I absolutely cannot avoid dealing with a supplier who won’t ship to a PO box, I have things shipped to a neighbour’s place of work in Assiniboia. If I was here year round, I’d make a deal with a business in Willow Bunch.

The third disadvantage is that I’m 2.5 hours away from the airport and there’s really no way for me to get there and back under my own steam. I’m always going to have to find someone to at the very least drive me to Assiniboia to grab a bus or to pick me up in Assiniboia. That’s not a huge deal when I have friends who work in town every day. And for my upcoming trip, C&C offered to drive me right to Regina! So the airport isn’t convenient, but it’s not a huge pain to get to.

The fourth disadvantage is, of course, the lack of internet access. When I add everything up, it makes more sense to me to fight for internet access than to start all over somewhere else where I will be unhappy and have even more to complain about. I know I will get this figured out. It won’t happen overnight, not when we have been totally forgotten in all technology development plans in this province, but I’ll find the key to getting it done.

My Haven is a truly special place. As I have said many times, it is a well of infinite energy from which I can draw when I feel drained. It is the only place on this planet that is mine. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t put down solid roots very often. I tend to be happy somewhere for a few months, maybe even a few years, and then I’m ready to move on to that greener pasture around the bend. Well, I’ve traveled enough of this country to know that there is no greener pasture around the bend. This is it for me in Canada. So if I can’t work here, of course I’ll go somewhere else, but it won’t be in this country. And yet, no matter where I go, however many sunsets I enjoy in foreign lands, I will always know that I can come back here to rest and be renewed.

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This is the view to the west on my way to my water hydrant. I catch the beautiful sunsets over these hills from the passenger side window in my office.

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Tuesday Was Memorable

Life at Haven tends to be rather idyllic. But the break-ins over the winter have really changed the atmosphere here, with doors getting locked even when folks are just wandering around the hamlet. My outbuildings are normally unlocked during the day when I’m here, but now I’m getting used to carrying my keys with me. It’s sad.

I awoke to lots of rain on Tuesday, which has turned to sleet today, Wednesday, a perfect day to power through the bit of work on my plate so that I could focus on looking for more today. I was making good inroads when the phone rang just shy of ten. “No number” came up on the display, but I still answered assuming it might be the RCMP calling me back. It was. I spoke to a kind-sounding constable who asked if he could come right down to Haven to take my statement about my attempted break-in. Yes, of course!

About 40 minutes later, the phone rang again. Wow, twice in one day. That has to be a record. It was Scotiabank doing a “courtesy call,” wanting to know how I like my account (a lot), more about my business, and curious about whether I’d consider changing to them as my main bank (not a chance in hell). It was a pleasant conversation and I didn’t mind answering the questions because most of my products are with CIBC right now and it would be good to have a backup. For example, if Scotiabank were to offer me a a credit card, might as well take it. Also, the woman wasn’t trying to sell me anything or convince me to move to Scotiabank. I was about to tell her I had to cut the conversation short as I was expecting a “visitor,” but, thankfully, she kept the call short.

Minutes after I rang off with her, there came a knock at my door. I checked that it was the constable and let him in. I’ve transcribed I don’t know how many statements over the years, so I knew the drill and he noticed that. He offered me victim counseling services (I’m not traumatised, so let’s leave the stretched thin resources to folks who need them) and to provide a victim impact statement. I accepted that because I knew that absolutely nothing was going to happen regarding my own break-in so I wanted something in her file about how she has destroyed the fabric of our community. The constable discovered he didn’t have the form on him but said he would “pick up” my neighbour and when he came back in a few hours to drop her off, he’d bring a form for me. I could then fill out the form and bring it into the detachment next time I was in town. Well, I hadn’t planned to be in town for a bit, so I’ll be doing a special trip for that as soon as the weather clears. Since I’m going through propane for heating, I’ll pretend it’s a propane filling trip not a “my neighbour sucks and is making me waste gas” trip. 🙂

He was back mid-afternoon and said that she denied everything, including stealing a pallet from my property, for which there was an eye witness. Unfortunately, rain destroyed any chance we might have had for fingerprints, which were a long shot anyway since the way the door is damaged makes it look like it was only touched with a tool. There’s no witness. The constable said that he knows she’s lying and that she did it, but he can’t do anything. He seemed incredibly relieved to be dealing with someone who knows the system and wasn’t expecting a miracle. I said to him that what I wanted to accomplish was done — she knows I won’t take her bullshit lying down. Apparently, she broke into some other neighbours’ places and they forgave her since she’s “sick.” Maybe she thought that would happen with me. Not a chance. The constable did say she is willing to take a polygraph, to his immense surprise. That’s not admissible in court, but sometimes the truth can come out in other ways that are admissible. He was surprised that I knew all of that. What can I say, I’ve transcribed the odd polygraph interview too.

I thanked him for his time and then came in to keep working since an unexpected job for Wednesday came in from a client I normally only work on weekends for.

And then, another email came in that really brightened my day.

There is a transcription firm I’ve wanted to work for since I started doing this five years ago. I had a chance to interview for them around that time and was deemed to need more experience. Just before I left Mexico, they emailed to give me a chance to interview again. Just like that, out of the blue. I did the test and then didn’t hear anything back… until yesterday. Soon as I get through my current workload, I’ll start with this new company on a probationary period. Too soon for exclamation marks, but I’m rather chuffed. They are another firm like an existing client of mine who would have as much work for me as I want as long as I meet their standards. I’ve had a run of bad luck with clients this year and I hope the tide is turning. We’ll see how the month goes with them. I’ll feel more comfortable leaving for Bulgaria if I feel I’m solidly in place with them.

The only progress I’ve made on Bulgaria is I’ve set up a price alert for airfare. Soon as I get something around 800CAD all-in (which I saw come up periodically over the winter) at the end of June or sometime in July, I’m buying a ticket. I haven’t decided yet where I want to settle in Bulgaria, but I’m narrowing it down based on the best places in the country to hike. I’ve been reading a lot about hiking in Bulgaria and am getting really excited about getting there!

So that was my Tuesday at Haven. Wednesday is starting off cold and snowy. Pretty strange after landing in summer weather! But things should start clearing up this afternoon and we’ll be back into the 20s by the weekend.

It’s still good to be home. 😀

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The Heart Mountain Interpretive Center – WWII Japanese American Confinement Site

Vicki’s and my plan for today was not going to be much fun, but it was necessary. We visited the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, which was a Japanese American confinement site or concentration camp, depending on who you speak to, during WWII after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. More than 130,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two thirds of whom were American citizens, were uprooted and displaced away from the coasts. The northernmost camp was at Heart Mountain, near Powell, Wyoming.

The centre is privately run and really well laid out, giving a full portrait of the injustices and racism the Japanese Americans faced that culminated in their internment. I had a lot of prior knowledge and Vicki almost none and we both felt that the material was at our level. I alternated between anger and grief as I moved through the exhibits and then went above the centre to do the walking trail and tour the ruins of the hospital complex.

The internees spent three years in the camp, which sounds like so little time, but their lives were destroyed. Even release from the camp did not bring freedom because there was still such a strong anti-Japanese sentiment. The younger folks did better than the elders since they were sheltered from the harsh realities of camp. They were able to be children while the adults fought against boredom and scarcity. There were many suicides before and after release.

Some internees tried to return home after the war, but found there was no home to go back to. With just $25 and a ticket to anywhere in the US, they were released back into a world that did not want them. Wyoming’s governor went on record to say that he did not want the Japanese to stay in Wyoming. The stigma of internship has remained through the generations, with these American citizens passing on to their children that they were somehow inferior to the Caucasians. Most of the adults interred in the camps chose to pretend those three years did not happen.

What the United States did to the Japanese during World War II is not unique. Canada did the same thing, a little known fact that the lady at the centre said she had only just very recently found out. What distresses me is that the current climate in the United States feels very ripe for this sort of thing to happen again. Please, please, please go visit Heart Mountain if you are in the Yellowstone region or the Manzanar National Historic site in California.

This post was fact checked by Vicki. Thank you!

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Lunch at The Irma

The ladies at the Cody visitors’ centre told me that I really should “do lunch at The Irma,” the restaurant attached to Buffalo Bill’s Irma Hotel. I checked the menu online and found prices very reasonable, so I decided to do that today. I had to stop at an optometrist’s first to have a screw replaced in my sunglasses (free service), so by the time I got to The Irma, it was almost 2:00.

I started by ordering a beer since I haven’t had one since Moab. The Irma offered a number of beers brewed at the nearby (60 miles away) Red Lodge Brewery in Montana. I went for the very “grapefruity” Bent Nail IPA, which was delicious!

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The restaurant was updated in the ’70s to meet health codes, but would have fit in 100 years ago.

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The ceiling is an exact reproduction of the original:

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I had a fantastic patty melt with “Irma fries,” which are cubed and sautéd red potatoes with seasoning. Much better than frozen fries! At $9.99, this meal was priced right around what I’ve paid for a patty melt in many locations, but the potatoes really elevated the dish. Excellent food at a fair price. Rather unexpected for such a touristy location.

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I went upstairs to check out the hotel:

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This is the original bar, which was a gift from Queen Victoria:

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And here’s a random shot of the pest who has insisted on cuddling with me all week:

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