Some Reflections Upon Flying Home from Sydney

After visiting Louisbourg Fortress I decided to head home. I overnighted in Sydney, awoke at 3:00 to be at the airport at 4:30 and fly out at 5:35 for Halifax. Touched down in Sidney, BC at 12:15 PDT. Total elapsed time airport to airport – just under twelve hours. It was a long day. My sleep pattern is disrupted so I’m still waking in hours way too early.

Canada is amazing. What’s a country? It’s borders? It’s terrain? It’s people? It’s certainly all of that and more. Thousands of generations of people have returned the substance of their bodies to the ground over which we walk and drive every day. The soil of Canada is rich with the ancient bodies of porcupines, squirrels, grizzly bears, sea gulls, worms, fir trees, alders, orchids and grasses. I feel something deeply human when walking over the grasses of our earth. When we drive on pavement, walk on the concrete of our sidewalks, even tread the floors of stores and offices, we miss a deep connection.

Canada is a photographer’s paradise. There is beauty and magnificence every place I look. Grand sweeping vistas of the Rocky Mountains, the seemingly endless prairies and the rocky bluffs, waterfalls and forests of the Canadian Shield in Ontario. The red mud of the Bay of Fundy, the red cliffs of Cape Breton, the rolling hills of Lower Canada and New Brunswick. All of this is familiar and foreign. There is something about travel that allows me to open my eyes in a different manner, to see things afresh. Returning to Victoria is not an act of complacency. I am changed.

Travel takes us out of our familiarity, our routines and our patterns of daily existence. Some of us become more curious, perhaps even bolder. We now have time to talk with people that we might otherwise have avoided in our busyness. There are so many kind and generous people I met in our travels. Owners of campgrounds who clearly enjoy meeting people from around the world and are delighted to engage in conversation. A lovely woman in a tiny hamlet in New Brunswick who rescued a dilapidated community hall and created a small café and a revitalized meeting place for the elders in the area. A mountain of a man with a gentle voice who tended his community’s cherished attraction, Prince Alfred’s Arch. A petite woman who started a curio, craft and gift shop in another community hall in a tiny hamlet that is dying as the fish disappear and the younger folk move to the city. Her lifelong friend and her husband having both passed away in the past two years. Her grief painted on her elfin face and within her need to talk if anyone would listen. A gentleman who pulled off the highway to inquire if we were having mechanical difficulties and offered his property and garage if we couldn’t find a spot to camp in Antigonish. There was a NASCAR event on this weekend, and he thought there might not be room at the two campgrounds. A fellow RVer and mechanic who chatted about the possible causes of our fuel challenges. When departing he offered his phone number and told us to call if we got into mechanical trouble. He was known across the Island and if he himself couldn’t come to assist he knew all the good garages and folks all knew him. And dozens more folks who engaged with us in a genuine, human fashion. This too is Canada.

Thanks for following the blog. I hope it offered some entertainment and kept you in the loop of our travels and adventures.

Here are a few more photos and then I’m signing off.

Centre of Canada, eh?

Detail From The National War Memorial, Ottawa

Murray Beach Provincial Park, NB

Burnt Coat Head, NB