A drive to Tobermory in winter

I've been making a slow rebound from that nasty flu that's been going round, and the Farm Manager's been keen to get out of the house, so this morning she says, hey why don't we take a tour up the Peninsula.

I'm as sick of my company as she is, so I said, why not?

And away we went! First stop Wiarton, to ransom my Globe and Mail from the Korean extortionist. We were hardly out the drive when the CBC news comes on. Top story; Donny J admits to making shit up in his meeting with Justin a few months ago.

How is this the top story? How is Donald Trump pulling a whopper out of his ass even newsworthy? According to the Toronto Star's official Trump Fib Tracker Daniel Dale, Trump is up to 1,314 whoppers as of today. Trump lying is the top story? Surely there are more newsworthy goings on in the world.

Got our Globe, grabbed a pie at New Orleans, and up the Highway 6 we went. Turned off at Colpoys Bay road and headed for Lion's Head.

A hundred years ago the north shore of Colpoys Bay was totally built up all the way from Wiarton. This area was home to a major fishery at the time. In fact, fish from here went all over the world in those pre-globalization days. Entire trainloads of frozen fish departed Wiarton multiple times per week, in an era when you froze fish by storing ice from the bay year round.

Then another unintended consequence of global trade, the sea lamprey, decimated the fishery. Wiarton has yet to recover.

But it's hanging on. It's the last chance to pick up a Globe and Mail before you head up the Bruce. And while there's a couple of liquor stores further north, the Wiarton Foodland is an essential pitstop if your diet gets fancier than hotdogs and KD.

Went through Lion's Head, circled back to Highway 6 because I wasn't keen on trying the Forty Hills Road in winter, and ended up in Dyer Bay. That's a quaint enough cottage community just past the middle of nowhere. Still, a half decent waterfront shack is gonna run you half a million or more.

From there we made our way to Tobermory. I popped into the local grocery and came out with a bag of plums from Chile. $1.99/lb. Under five bucks for a bottle of Aquafina (tap) water and a bag of plums in the dead of winter.

Is this free trade thing  great or what!?

In the Globe there's an opinion piece by Jeff Rubin called "Has global trade liberalization left Canadians behind?" Rubin used to be the top economist at CIBC. He's saying today what I've been saying since the middle eighties... "left behind" is way too kind... left for dead is more like it.

But then, it's one thing to figure this out in 2018 as a big-time economist. Maybe somebody will pay attention.

When I was saying the same thing in 1988 I was a shop-floor workee... what the fuck would those guys know? Anyway, the horses are so long out the barn its beyond ludicrous to think you're gonna corral them now.

Stayed on the no. 6 all the way back. The FM remarked on what a boring drive it was, and she wasn't even driving. She's right though. I've done this drive a hundred times and the only time it's interesting is if you're the last car off the ferry in Tobermory but the first car to reach Wiarton.


That's how accidents happen, she says.

Putin's hackers take down Bruce County internet

No, as I matter of fact I don't have any "proof," but we live in the post-proof era, don't we?

I'm pretty certain with a high degree of confidence that it was probably Russians, acting on the direct orders of you-know-who. Three of my neighbours and a guy I ran into at the liquor store think I might be right. That's pretty much a consensus, wouldn't you agree?

Me and the Farm Manager and the hounds drove into town this morning, blissfully unaware of this attack on our freedoms. We were looking forward to breakfast. Had to stop at the bank first, and that's where we ran into the first inkling of trouble. As I'm strolling towards the ATM, debit card in hand, a bank employee intercepts me.

I'm sorry sir, the ATM is down.

Oh, guess I have to stand in line at the counter.

No, I'm sorry, the whole system is down. We can't give you your money.

Bummer!

We go to The Korean's. His ATM is down too, and so is his debit machine. We don't have enough cash between us to buy our Globe and Mail!

We head to the Topnotch. Been a while since we had breakfast without the paper. Years... maybe we'll have to talk or something.

Get to the Topnotch. Guess what?

Yup! Nothing works there either.

By now we're a little frazzled. The Farm Manager figures we should try the liquor store. Surely they've got a bullet-proof system.

Damn! Out of luck again!

Grasping at straws I figure let's try Foodland.

The FM goes in and comes out a minute later waving a fistful of twenties.

Phew!

I run in and stock up on cash too. That machine ain't gonna be spitting out cash for long once folks realize it's the only working ATM in town.

After all that, there wasn't much worth reading in the Globe, the FM's BLT came drowned in mayo instead of with mayo on the side, which always makes her grumpy, and both dogs shit in the park where we take them for their traditional after-breakfast feast of left-overs...

So all in all it was not a successful trip into town, but it did hold a lesson. We have no idea how dependant we have become on this invisible infrastructure until we lose it for a couple of hours.

What would happen if there were a real cyber-attack and it was gone for a month?

The torists are back

Yes, I know they are properly "tourists," but in these parts that's pronounced tor-ists.

Torists are the folks who have million-dollar summer shacks on the Bruce. That would be the Bruce Peninsula, if you're not from around here.

You can have a leisurely breakfast at a window seat in the Top Notch and watch them roll by all day long. Range Rovers and BMWs and a never-ending caravan of $80,000 pick-ups pulling Sea-doos and ATVs and BBQs and summer fun accessories of every description.

They clog up the Timmies, make the Foodland parking lot into a nightmare, and hog all the good seats in the local dining establishments.

But they're more than welcome.

Our new Foodland was built and stocked with the affluent summer crowd in mind. They're not carrying Sambal Oelek chili paste and Kitchen of Love Spicy Quinoa for the benefit of the locals, I can assure you of that.

Couple of things you should know about Wiarton. They tore down a school to build that Timmies. Speaks to our priorities around here.

Also, right up until the sea lamprey found its way into the Great Lakes almost a hundred years ago, Wiarton was a major commercial fishing hub. Wiarton's population was higher a hundred years ago than it is today.

Up until very recently, that fact translated into very reasonable real estate prices. That's changing fast.

The Muskokas are pretty much built out, but you can still get quality Georgian Bay waterfront on the Bruce for well under a million. And once you factor in the inevitable traffic jam on the 400 heading out of town on the Friday of a long weekend, we're really not any farther away from Toronto than is Lake Joe.

So forget Lake Joseph and come take a look at the Bruce.

Tribulations of a pot-addled hillbilly

I remember, a few years before the Big Crash of '08, there was a scrapyard for sale down Hanover way. Might have been quite a few years... the memory gets a bit hazy as the years go by. Coulda been five years, maybe even ten.

Anyway, the point is, at the time the scrap-yard came up for sale, scrap metal was so low you got next to nothing for it. When scrap was worth next to nothing, Buddy down Hanover way put his scrapyard up for sale for a half million.

For $500 thousands you got the scrapyard, all the relevant permits and licenses, and 50 acres of scrap. If I recall correctly there was a house and a shop on the property as well.

So what's that got to do with pot-addled hillbillies?

Well, first of all, this particular pot-addled hillbilly understands that the market for scrap metal is, like every other commodity, cyclical.

Oil goes up, comes down, goes up again...

Same with everything else from copper to gold to pork-bellies.

Which reminds me; I had a absolutely terrifying incident at the liquor store today.

I've noticed for a few years now that I'm widening out a bit in the middle. If I could be a little more honest with myself I'd probably go so far as to admit that I'm getting fat.

But since I'm still very much in denial, and am getting neither fatter or older, I was shocked at what happened today. Even in denial I should not have been shocked... but let me explain.

For a few years now, it's become evident that as I get bigger around the middle, pants and belts and all that stuff don't fit the way they once did. I used to feel comfy with a 32 waist. Now a 40 feels a bit snug.

But here's where it messes me up; that 40 may feel snug, but give me a couple grocery bags to carry, and for some reason that load makes you inadvertently suck in your gut such that your 40 waist Wranglers want to start sliding down... there's been many a time when I feared the drawers were gonna completely slide off my ass before I got to the car.

Well, today was the worst case scenario, but it was even worse because it happened in the liquor store parking lot instead of the Foodland parking lot.

I've dashed in and grabbed a two-four of Keystone Light. As I'm heading out to the car I can feel the pants starting to slide down. I shift into straddle-walk mode where you try to do that cowboy walk in the hopes that your belt and therefore your pants are gonna stay up.

Almost made it to the car... and then I can feel the belt sliding over my hips... oh my God!

As my drawers are falling off my ass I reach down to catch them, with a hand that was previously holding one end of my case of beer. Wouldn't you know it, the beer case tips wildly and starts spilling bottles all over the pavement.

I don't know whether to save my pants or save the beer, so I'm doing this jig in the liquor store parking lot where I'm trying to do both... and of course, when otherwise reasonable people see you doing this madcap jig in the liquor store parking lot, they immediately jump to all the wrong conclusions.

But I digress.

I saw value in that scrapyard, but I was short about $499 thou on that half million asking price at the time. I tried to interest my pal Kipling, because his daddy had once been in the scrap business and I thought maybe nostalgia would prompt him to take the plunge.

No luck.

I tried to convince my buddy Jimmy Lippert to take a flyer on the scrapyard. I knew he had the resources. All he had to do was sell his country estate and move his family to the scrapyard.

No luck there either.

That scrapyard went to someone else.

About a year later Lippert was telling me about how they took our pal Greg's Ford Exploder to the scrap yard and walked away with over five hundred bucks.

Yup, scrap had gone up. Way up. From next to nothing to well over two hundred bucks per ton.

Fifty acres of it would have been worth tens of millions...

Damn!

Missed the gravy train again!

At least my debacle in the parking lot had a happy ending. Standing in the midst of broken glass and spilled beer with my pants around my ankles, I thought, hey, this is a do or die moment.

The best defense is a good offense. So I hitched up my drawers, cinched that belt up a couple extra notches, marched back into the the store with the empty cardboard case in my hand, and gave them the what-for on their shitty packaging.

Sure enough, I walked outta there with a fresh case of beer.

Never give up!

Wiarton Foodland

For me, the best part of shopping at Wiarton Foodland is shopping at the LCBO across the street. I often have occasion to do that when the Farm Manager is on one of her two or three hour hunter-gatherer forays into Foodland.

These happen all too often for my liking, but what can you do? Sit tight in the parking lot and hope for something interesting to happen, I guess...

Sometimes I'll wander over to the liquor store and take care of that part of the shopping while the FM is taking care of the meat and cheese and produce and breakfast cereal. That's what I did today.

Other times I'll meander around the corner to Sullivan's Butcher Shop. That's a genuine old-school butcher shop, except everybody who works there wears a hair-net these days. I remember when I was a kid, people used to not have to wear hair-nets in the butcher shop. Is there a single case of anyone becoming ill because there was a hair in their ground beef?

Besides, I don't go there for the ground beef. The Farm Manager takes care of that at Foodland. I go there for the fabulous smoked sausages. I usually pick up three; one honey-garlic, one hot, and one maple. It's me and Boomer and Lucy in the car, so between me and the hounds we can easily have these cleaned up before the FM is any the wiser.

She's got a thing about what I should eat for my "heart health," and regrettably, smoked sausages are not on the list.

My understanding is that the Sullivan clan smoke these puppies in their home smoker and bring them to the shop... (apologies in advance if I got that wrong, fellas). How do I know if they're wearing their hair-nets when they're tending the smoker in the back yard?

Point is, I think this hair-net hysteria, along with those gloves everybody wears now when they handle food, is just more bullshit from our $350,000/year "Chief Medical Officer" to justify her extravagant salary... after all, she probably makes more than all the butchers in Grey and Bruce counties combined!

Not that I begrudge her her job. After all, supervising the anti-smoking bylaws and making sure the food-service folks wear their hair-nets and gloves is important work. To say nothing of keeping Michael Schmidt's non-pasteurized milk away from a gullible public...

I mean, I kinda get it in a way. You don't want to be chowing down on a corned beef sandwich if the kid who fixed it just picked his nose. So thank God and the Chief Medical Officer for those latex gloves!... but how do you know the kid didn't pick his nose with the gloves on?

But I digress.

There's big changes in store to how we shop in Wiarton. Foodland-by-the-bay will soon be a distant memory. They're building a new Foodland at the south end of the Flats in the Timmies parking lot.

Ya, I don't get it either. No longer will I be able to wander across the street to the liquor store or around the corner to Sullivan's. I'll have to drive everywhere. Wonder how the Chief Medical Officer feels about that?

Has she not heard of "global warming?"

And that Timmies was in itself a dodgy affair. How many towns have torn down a school to put up a Tim Horton's? Just wondering where our priorities lie...

So me and the hounds have finished off the smokies, and I figure I've probably got time to pick up the medicine at the liquor store. It's super-busy today on account of all the tourists.

Who do I run into but Tommy Chong!

Well, I guess there is a possibility it wasn't him, but if you watch Up in Smoke and then look at this guy you'd see where I'm coming from

What tipped me off is Chong is right behind me in the checkout line, and right up by the counter where they've got the "staff picks" seductively situated for your impulse purchasing pleasure, there's a bottle of something called "Homegrown."

From behind me I hear, "Oh wow man!"

Had to be Tommy Chong.

Showdown in the Foodland parking lot

As the half dozen or so regular readers already know, I'm a sucker for driving the Farm Manager to the Wiarton Foodland.

So this morning I was busying myself with the latest Thomas Friedman screed in that "International Edition" of the NYT that comes with my Toronto Star every Sunday, while the Farm Manager was busying herself with trying to decide whether to get the low pulp, regular, or extra pulp grapefruit juice, which takes about an hour and a half.

Mind you, we're well into the shoulder season in Wiarton now, the tourists are for the most part gone till next year, so I'm not sure why the parking lot was so busy.

It was busy like July.

The International Edition of the New York Times is just chock full of stuff I read on-line a week or two ago. Thomas, bless his soul, has discovered, much too late in the day, the ephemeral "two state solution" to the Israel-Palestine mystery...

While I'm reading this happy news, out of the corner of my eye I'm seeing a blue car backing out of the parking space in front of me... out of the other corner of my eye there's a red car backing out of the space beside me... oh my God!...

Crash!

Two cars trying to occupy the same real estate... hmm.. this could get interesting. I pretend I'm still reading Friedman, but really I'm wondering what's going down next...

This is hunting country, and deer season opens tomorrow. Damn near every other person over the age of 12 has a fully loaded deer rifle in the trunk of their car, ready to go.

Blue car Buddy gets out of his car first. Older white dude, looks like he coulda been in a bar-room brawl or two in his day, and held his own. Steps back and surveys the damage to his car... then he moves for the trunk.

Red car Buddy gets out. Big fat biker type with a cigarette hanging off his lip. Must have just put his Harley away for the winter. Out of the other side steps biker mama, a plump tattooed woman who would make very short work of me in a arm rassle. Red car Buddy heads for the trunk of his car...

Oh my God!

This could make the headline news!

I slouch down real low in my seat, still pretending to read the paper. At least any of the deer rounds that are gonna be flying in a few seconds will be slowed by sheet metal...


Buddy and other Buddy by-pass their trunks and head to one another's cars.

I'm sorry!

No, I'm sorry!

I checked my mirrors...

Ya, I checked my mirrors too!

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

Sorrysorrymyfaultsorrysorry...

I'm expecting a shoot-out in the Foodland parking lot and these guys are seeing who can out-apologize the other!

For fuck's sakes! It might be a bunch of hillbillies in the hood, but are they ever civilized! They recognized within 30 seconds that they were more or less equally culpable and more or less equally wounded.

Nobody called the police and nobody called a lawyer.

Whew!...

Now, back to Friedman...

Fear and loathing at Wiarton Foodland

I used to work with a guy at the Sandvik plant in Guelph, back when Sandvik had a plant in Guelph. The pre-NAFTA era. He hailed from a small town in the foothills of Alberta, right in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.

I'd lived in Alberta for a spell, and I loved the mountains and I loved knowing those snow-capped peaks were on the western horizon even on the hottest days of summer. I couldn't imagine anyone turning their back on that geography if they didn't have to.

One day I asked Buddy if he ever misses the mountains.

No. They're just background. Don't ever give them a thought.

That's the sort of attitude the folks in Wiarton had when they built a concrete block supermarket on the shore of Colpoy Bay. Facing away from the bay, of course. The God-given geographical bounty was not just taken for granted; it was willfully ignored.

Wiarton was at one time, before the arrival of the sea lamprey, one of the top commercial fishing hubs in North America. Her population was more one hundred years ago than it is today.

Today it's a struggling small town that owes most of its existence to the fact that it's the last place to shop for all the seasonal folks who have summer homes on the Bruce Peninsula.

They pop into Wiarton Foodland to stock up and pop into the liquor store across the street to stock up before heading on up to the cottage.

Absent the tourists, the lion's share of commerce comes courtesy of locals from Georgian Bluffs, the town itself, and the native population at the reservation twenty minutes up the road.

As small town grocers go, Wiarton Foodland is exceptional. It's got a decent in-store bakery. It's got a selection of cheeses and sandwich meats that would do a big city grocer proud. Overall, it's a happy place to shop.

Or it was, until the Farm Manager began to monopolize my Saturday morning trips to Wiarton.

It started out innocently enough. I'd be heading into town on a Saturday morning to pick up my Saturday Globe and Mail and she'd be "oh I just want to pick up a couple of things at Foodland."

The thin edge of the wedge...

You give in to that, and pretty soon that Saturday morning trip isn't about your Globe and Mail; it's about her trip to Foodland.

It eventually leads to the disaster I experienced today.

We've been well and properly snowed in around here lately. It's been one blizzard after another. You barely get shoveled out from one before the next one hits.

I'd plugged the old Ford diesel tractor in bright and early this morning, with a view to getting the drive cleared before noon, so I could fetch my Saturday Globe.

Per expectations, the Farm manager was hot for the trip so she could "pick up a few things."

Fine! I'm good with that. After all, I can sit in the Foodland parking lot and read my Globe and Mail while she shops...

Get the drive cleared, get to Wiarton... and there's NO GLOBE!!!

The roads between here and Toronto were closed all night on account of the blizzard...

I'm trapped in the Foodland parking lot, with no Globe and Mail to distract me, while the Farm Manager is "picking up a few things."

I sit. I sit some more. I sit watching. Pondering...

Cars come and go. Toyota RAVs seem to be popular. A guy in grimy orange work coveralls steps out of a new Land Rover. Somebody else waiting for someone picking up a few things is playing rap too loud on their stereo.

Every vehicle has their license plates obscured by snow. There's actually a law about that. Around here everybody goes weeks at a time in winter with the plates buried. Never heard of anyone getting a ticket.

I watch as one vehicle after another pulls in and pulls out. Their occupants enter Foodland fifteen minutes after the Farm Manager and come out fifteen minutes before. It happens again and again and again.

I am oh-so-tempted to wander in and help things along.

Luckily I have the maturity to realize that's a really bad idea.

Murder in the frozen food aisle.

I stay put. I count the cars and vans and 4X4s  coming and going. I sit. I watch...

I doze off.

I awake to the Farm Manager pounding on the back of the car, signalling me to pop open the trunk.

She comes round to the window.

"You'll never guess what the cashier told me!..."

She's right. I'd never guess. Not only that, but I don't care. I'm just glad she got out of Foodland alive.

Memo to the deli counter; liverwurst is NOT gouda cheese

Last week the Farm Manager came home from the Wiarton Foodland with a pretty impressive block of goulda cheese.

Three bucks and change.

I didn't think anything of it. I know the Farm Manager is a pretty astute shopper. She knows a good deal when she sees one.

So today she's in shopping and I'm out in the truck reading the Globe and Mail with the dogs (ya, they are especially partial to the Arts & Entertainment section) and she comes out with a story.

No news in that. She generally has a story about why it takes 45 minutes to come out of Foodland with five or six items.

But this was different.

"I had to tell the deli manager that they've been labelling the gouda as liverwurst," she says.

Well, all I could say was I hoped she'd bought up all the gouda in the store before she told them that.

No such luck. But at least we got one last block of gouda at the liverwurst price.

Fishing then and now

The Farm Manager brought home some "planked salmon" that she'd caught at the Wiarton Foodland last week.

It was on sale, which gives cause for a lot of forgiveness on my part.

"Planked salmon" for those who don't know, is a slab of salmon fillet on a chunk of cedar that, according to the instructions, is to be put into the BBQ right there on top of it's own cedar-slab cutting board.

I remember years ago on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, I saw a guy fishing in the surf down by the beach. Figuring I'd make some small talk, I went down there.

Hey, how's the fishing?

Cum see cum saw the guy says. Holy shit, I'm asking a simple fishing question and the guy breaks into Latin?

Back when we were simple German immigrants who got to Canada from Poland via Denmark, I remember that we'd go on family fishing expeditions along the Grand River between Fergus and Elora. I remember we'd catch a lot of Perch and a few Catfish, but according to my parents everything we caught was a "smelt", and catch and release was an unknown concept.

If we caught it, it went in the fry-pan.

So I was mightily discombobulated when buddy on the beach answered my next question. Have you caught anything?

Ya, but I let them go.

Say what?

This made no sense, no sense whatsoever.

After a moment of head-shaking I said, so why are you standing here all day?

I swear, the guy looked at me like it's me who's retarded.

I looked at historical data from the fishery in the Saint John river out in New Brunswick, and according to the stuff I saw, back in the old days the  fishermen could make a year's wage in a few days when the herring or the salmon run was on.

Of course, greed being the way of things, the herring are scarce to non-existent and the salmon haven't run the Saint John River for years. They still run the Mirimachi and a few other rivers, but today the only people fishing there are foreigners who hire a local guide at $800 a day.

I should say those are the only people fishing legally, because in New Brunswick, just because the law says you can't fish doesn't mean people don't. In fact, one of my buddies at the drydock was telling me about his favorite fishing hole, and I said isn't that the Saint John water reservoir?

He says, ya, and you park your boat-trailer right by the no-fishing sign out by the highway!

And there was a multi-scale approach to fishing and poaching. You needed a tag to catch salmon, which is what the rich tourists got for their $800 a day.

It was only after I'd been there for a time that I found out there was a price you got for a salmon you had a tag for, another price for a totally illegal salmon, and yet a third price for a salmon that had a tag but the customer gave the tag back to you.

But this is now.

There's a case flailing through the Ontario court system where some local oafs beat up some Chinese fishermen somewhere north of Toronto.

The Chinese fish for Carp. I guess it's an acquired taste, because even long before the niceties of "catch and release" Carp was a throw-back.

I'm thinking most of the "smelt" my immigrant family was catching back in the early '60's was probably throw-back material too.

Luckily, we stayed under the radar of the local immigrant-beaters and we had some mighty fine fish feeds.

As for the "planked salmon," it comes from fish farms in Norway, and sale price or not, I don't imagine it will be returning to Falling Downs anytime soon.

Wiarton Foodland

Had to take the farm manager into town the other day for a spot of shopping.

She's perfectly capable of driving herself into town of course, but it seems to be a point of honor among Jewish women to never drive themselves if they can corner somebody to drive for them.

So I endure this ritual several times a week, which raises another question.

How is it possible to spend an hour in Foodland on a Saturday, and then need to return on Sunday because the orange juice and the milk are running low?

Could that not have been forseen on the previous day?

But I digress.

By mutual agreement I don't ever actually enter the Foodland with her. From my point of view, I have already suffered enough.

From her point of view, my presence would unnecessarily becloud the shopping experience.

That ten minutes standing in the snack aisle deciding between Regular and Salt 'n Vinegar is much more pleasant without some old crank making it perfectly clear it doesn't matter one way or the other.

So I sit tight in the parking lot.

The other day I was absently eye-balling this elderly Japanese straight four parked across from me. No decals showing and it could have been any of the major brands. After Honda brought out the 750 in the early 70's they all got into the act. So I don't know if it was a Suzuki or a Honda or a Kawasaki, but it was old and a little rough.

Had the low bars, no bags, no carrier, and I wondered how much shopping a person could do and still ride that bike home.

In the fullness of time an elderly gentleman carrying two Foodland bags emerges from the store and heads for the bike.

Well, this will be interesting...

When I say "elderly gentleman" I mean he's got at least a decade and a half on me. He's sporting a ratty leather jacket, white shorts, white socks, and sandals.

Right away I realize the man uses the same fashion consultant as I do.

He cinches up the leather jacket at the waist. Then he starts pulling stuff out of those plastic bags and stuffing it down the front of the jacket.

Out of one bag he's fetched an 18 pack of eggs and a packet of bacon and and out of the other I see him lifting a quart of milk and several small items I can't identify.

Unhooks a bright yellow and orange Shoei from the side of the bike and fires 'er up.

That burble from the four-into-one header says 900 Honda to my ear, but I could be wrong.

He exits the parking lot. Thirty seconds later I hear him banging shifts at a good nine or ten thousand as he tears up the North Hill!

Worth the trip to Wiarton...