First of all I hope by the time you read this we're not into a federal election campaign. It seems Stephen Harper is chomping at the bit to call an election. I don't know why. Isn't he already the Prime Minister? We don't need an election and I know most Canadians don't want one. We're being electioned to death, especially here in New Brunswick. We just had a provincial election. We've had our share of by-elections recently. The last federal election wasn't long ago and the municipal elections aren’t that far off anymore. Please stop. I appreciate my right to vote but I don't want to do it every few months. I also don't want the government to spend my tax money on an election I don't want.
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I seem to have misplaced my driveway, or at least a good portion of it. The torrential rains that fell after the snow and freezing rain washed away a lot of gravel. It didn't really wash it away. It just moved it into the ditch. Now the drive looks like a mini grand canyon with deep river valleys meandering down its length like snakes. Instead of thousands of years of erosion, this only took a few hours of rain to accomplish. My driveway is on a fairly steep hill and washouts like this happen every 2 or 3 years. It's usually in the spring when the driveway is clear but ice and snow remains piled up on the side and that leaves the water only one place to go.
So I got out the wheel-barrel and shovel and went to retrieve what I could of my driveway from the ditch and snow bank at the bottom. Some of the deeper holes I filled one shovel full at a time. After I raked and smoothed things out it still looked like Niagara Falls had come down the driveway but at least it was patched up enough to allow us to drive up and down without fear of losing an axle.
This just didn't happen to me. The torrential rains took out a lot of driveways and ditches in town. It also flooded many basements. When you live on the side of a hill like many people in Grand Bay-Westfield do, running water is always going to be a concern.
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Finally and still with the theme of running water, I read a terrific article about the St. John River in the latest edition of Canadian Geographic Magazine. It's about a lazy su
mmer paddle in a canoe through the islands upriver of Fredericton. UNB professor Mark Anthony Jarman writes the story. Brian Atkinson took the beautiful photographs featured in the piece. It details the experience of paddling that part of the river along with an historical context. That's what you'd expect and it's the kind of writing tourism departments like to see because it's good for business. But what I really like about the piece are the extra, not so positive elements that Jarman has added. He writes, for instance, about bones and skulls of missing-persons from upriver washing up and lodging in the roots of butternut trees every year. I didn't know that. He writes of the glory days of river steamers and then adds how they collided or caught fire and how their boilers had a tendency to explode. He mentions the shooting and looting and burning and scalping that went on in the river valley in the past. Jarman doesn't dwell on the negative but he doesn't gloss over it. By adding these elements he makes the article more interesting and compelling and honest. It's great writing and having it published in a national magazine has to be good for the province.(Find this column, past columns and other unique content of interest to the area by going online to rivervalleyrambler.blogspot.com/)
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