You know how you sometimes rundown a mental checklist on your way to work or play? Have I called so-and-so? Have I got all my ducks in order?
This week, on my way from Halifax Airport to deliver an audio-visual presentation at a bookstore in LaHave, Nova Scotia, I suddenly wondered if I’d asked the bookstore proprietor to supply a digital projector for my talk.
“No,” said the LaHave bookstore owner. “We don’t have one.” (more…)
He didn’t look much like a pioneer. But J. Frank Willis sure was. Dressed in tall boots, a long coat and scarf, wearing a fedora – typical of the 1930s – he was a reporter. Hearing news of a coal-mine rescue underway in a remote corner of Nova Scotia, he made his way to a place called Moose River.
There, he found the only available land telephone line and got permission to broadcast from the mouth of the mine. Miners were trapped 50 metres underground and their would-be rescuers had been digging for days to reach them. Willis held his primitive microphone in front of one of the rescuers.
“Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the captain of the rescue team from Stellerton, Nova Scotia,” Willis said.
“Hello Stellerton,” the captain said. “We’re getting’ along fine. We’ll have those men up in a couple of hours.” (more…)
On Sunday, April 19, after as excruciating a night of pursuit as any known to her force, I’m sure, RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson made the toughest decision of her life. She’d heard radio calls from a fellow constable nearby that he’d been shot by a murder suspect looking like an RCMP officer, driving what looked like an RCMP cruiser in Nova Scotia. She must have recognized the object of the all-night manhunt was taking deadly advantage of RCMP insignia to approach innocents and shoot them. She must have decided to at least try to take away that advantage. She spotted the impersonator and took drastic action.
“She rammed him,” Brian Sauvé of the National Police Federation told the Toronto Star, “and probably saved countless lives.”
Not, however, her own.
I’d waited patiently – keeping my two metres of distance. Then, I was next in line to cash out at Zehrs. I started placing groceries on the conveyor, and the young cashier began processing my purchases. Problem was, the sensor that stopped the conveyer automatically at the cash register, suddenly failed. My bananas, sour cream, chips and meats all tumbled together onto her code-reader. She couldn’t scan the barcodes fast enough. We both shrugged and took advantage of the moment to smile at the jumble of food. And I couldn’t resist.
“Have you ever heard of Lucille Ball?” I asked, thinking she was far too young to know.
She looked skyward for a second, “Oh, yeah. Sure,” she said. (more…)
The big day is less than three weeks away. We’ve had plenty of snow (if a bit tamped down by this week’s rain) to keep things reasonably white until Dec. 25. All over town, homes have sparkled with flashing or cascading lights (and some with gaudy decorations) since we switched back to Eastern Standard Time in early November. And yet I’m still having trouble coming up with the right gift for some of my friends and family.
Me? I’ve found what I want for Christmas. I learned about it in the Globe and Mail a couple of weeks ago.
“A pond at the heart of hockey,” the story was headlined. “Nova Scotia property claims a historic tie to Canada’s game.”
And it’s for sale! (more…)
About 25 years ago, I travelled to the town of Windsor, in the Annapolis Valley region of Nova Scotia. I’d read about a local personality, a 19th century judge and member of the provincial legislature, Thomas Chandler Haliburton. Among other things, I’d learned that Haliburton had studied and grown up there, written local history and published under the nom de plume “Sam Slick.” But Haliburton had also kept a factual diary, which around 1803 had solved the great Canadian riddle: Where was the game of hockey first played in Canada?
“And boys let out racin’, yelpin’ hollerin’ and whoopin’ like mad with pleasure (on) the playground,” Haliburton had written as a student at King’s College, Windsor, “and (played) the game of hurley … on the ice.”