Leaving Nova Scotia

My husband sits at the entrance to beautiful Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia.

I’m watching The Last Station in the hotel room and boy, what GREAT acting, such a nuanced view of marriage and love and the scenes with Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren are so, well, deeply layered, I guess that’s the word.

James McAvoy is, also, one of my favorite young actors.

Modern travelling, computers, cells, and tv to feel ‘at home’… it’s bizarre. And this time we Googled the directions to the hotel in Fredericton, and cut and paste it into email. So no need to ask computers how to get there and be misdirected.

I feel good, I guess that’s what a vacation is for. My head is clear.

There’s no way to seque this into Tighsolas, well, except that these people LOVED to travel and took advantage of vast family connections to do so.

In return they harboured visitors, usually at great expense of energy. The Nicholsons had no maid.

They took car trips (but not that far) and mostly train trips.

In 1913, two men endeavored a cross Canada trip. The first ever in a car. There were a lot of firsts in the era.

The Nicholsons seldom stayed in hotels.. Although there was a exception in 1908, when Margaret and Norman visited Quebec City to see the 1908 Celebrations there, with the Prince of Wales.

I write about it in Flo in the City, my novel in progress about a girl coming of age in the pivotal 1908-1913 era.

The Queen of England was just in Canada, in Halifax (before we arrived) and in Ottawa the day before we left (Canada Day) and in Toronto.

My friends told me how in England they saw the Queen close up when her limo happened to stop right in front of them. I didn’t want to spoil the story, but I have a similar one. In 198something, I was visiting Toronto and just happened to stop in the middle of the street in front of Union Station to rest my arms (I was carrying two suitcases) when her limo stopped right in front of me too. Two feet or so. (I guess the driver’s instructions were to stop right there, so he did, despite the fact a young woman was standing in the middle of the intersection. It was right at the end of her what’s it called, cortege. I saw Her Majesty waving with a far away look in her eyes (I joke to people that I am sure she was day dreaming about a young Albert Finney. I think that’s funny as Albert Finney played working class guys) and then her limo sped away.

These same friends, last night, showed we a Twitter Tweet that pretends to be Queen E. It’s funny. Queen_UK

Many many people, I guess, have a “I saw the Queen of England” story. I’m not the only one. Still, it’s one of my better stories.

Man vs Machine

1910 invention. Live Map for use with the new popular “automobile”

I’m in Halifax in the elegant Prince George Hotel on Market Street, sitting in the room with a real good cup of fresh coffee I found in the hall as my husband sleeps. I’m a morning person; he’s a night person and holidays are not going to change that. We drove to Halifax Nova Scotia from Montreal, stopping at Fredericton. It’s a long 9 hour drive to Fredericton, but the highway is good (rare in Quebec). It’s the kind of drive where you are bored to death 99 percent of the time, and you have long stretches of road to yourself, even in vacation season, but you still have close calls on the road, for some reason. We had two. A huge truck changed lanes just as were were passing for one. Can’t recall the other.

Anyway, since we have the Onstar service on the car, we decided, just for fun, to ask it for directions as we entered Fredericton from the Trans Canada. Might as well get our money’s worth, we felt. Just a toy. Well, we asked the live ‘navigation guide’ or whatever the address of the hotel we were staying at, which she got and then she punched our destination into the Onstar Computer.

It told us what to do first, but before we got to where it wanted us to turn, we saw a ‘fork in the road’ that said left to Moncton, right to Fredericton, so naturally we turned to the right. Naturally, the Onstar computer told us ‘we had left our route..would you like us to recalibrate?’ …we said YES. And then it said to turn onto said highway, but when we got to the next turn the indicator said there was 100 meters to go…so we continued and again it said “you have gone off the route” and so we instructed it to recalibrate and then it took us to a long dirt road and I told my husband, “This doesn’t seem right. I mean we are going from the Trans Canada to a major Canadian city, usually that means a direct route through civilisation. Anyway, the computer, somehow, got us somewhere near the airport, 20 kilmeters away, into a new housing development, and landed us at an empty lot and said “you have reached your destination.” We contacted the human advisor who said ‘But you are at your destination” but we said NO WE ARE NOT. This is a ruralish development. Then the navigation person said he’d recalibrate for us, and the computer took us to a crossroad, which had a sign, right to Fredericton, left to Oromocto, or whatever and it told us to turn LEFT, but we turned RIGHT, being of a higher order of primate and able to think for ourselves. When it asked us if we wanted to recalibrate, we shouted NO loudly. We wondered if we were in a military experiment to see if human beings would follow ANY instructions, even if obviously WRONG. Anyway, this road took us the long and scenic route into Fredericton, you know, the route paste the elegant old homes that every Canadian town has if it has a waterfront. The shortest route is usually the ugliest, I’ve found. Fredericton had a beautiful stretch, where the heritage homes were interesting in that there was a great deal of variation in style to them.

We don’t know what went wrong. Were we soooo stupid, we made the computer go berzerk? As in “Danger, danger. It does not compute Will Robinson” or are computers stupid?

Last year in PEI onstar was 1 for 2.

We got Onstar with the Malibu, but I didn’t want it at the time. I just had no choice. It all seems so 1984 or Brave New Worldish. “Hello, Mr. McGill. What can we do for you today? I see you’ve gained a few pounds Mr. Wells, Should I drive you to the gym, or how about a walk along the river path. The temperature is 64 Celsius and showers are predicted for 4 hours.

And considering the slow slide in totalitarianism that we are experiencing, I get antsy at the thought of my every move being tracked.

So, it’s kind of comforting that computers act dumb. All last week the predication for Halifax was 4 days of sun this week, but it’s going to rain a bit. That’s fine with me. Peggy’s Cove is beautiful in the rain.)