... The front of the pickup was smashed in to where Paul described it (not inaccurately) as half its normal size. The rear bumper also absorbed much of the crash, being twisted and bent far out of shape. Mercifully the trailer seemed to be in good shape. Things inside it were no more jostled than they normally got in riding down the road. Only the crank used to level it was broken. The position on the road could have been worse, too. Brian had pushed the car more toward the middle of the road, so there was at least room for cars in both directions to pass the wreck on the shoulders. ... The mechanic who would tow everything away (who happened to work at the local Irving station) arrived. He took one look at the truck and described it as "a write-off". He got his chains out, but he had to wait with us until the cops got there.
The police in rural Nova Scotia are the Mounties--the Royal Canadian Mounted Police-though it's probably been forty years since any of them mounted a horse in this area. The Mounties are the equivalent of the highway patrol, and they dress and drive cars like any highway patrol officers in the States. They are spread pretty thin, too. It took over half an hour for our Mountie to arrive.
[Our] constable ... (the proper name for any Mountie is "constable") was a tall man with reddish brown hair and a moustache. His hair (about the same length as mine) would be long by American standards, but it was quite typical for Canada. EVERYBODY in Amherst seemed to know him, and we hear from "everybody" that he used to work on the drug squad. Supposedly he was happy to be reassigned to traffic duty because it gave him a chance to shave his beard. He wore a blue uniform, like a city cop, and he had no partner with him. [The constable] didn't seem to have a first name, so in honor of the old Mountie cartoons I'll just call him Dudley.
Dudley was appropriately frowning and serious at first. He checked to be sure no one needed medical attention and then proceeded to take photographs of the scene. Margaret and I, feeling slightly out of place, also got snapshots with which to remember this bad spot in our vacation. After looking around closely, Dudley asked the parties involved (which, now that the REAL cause was gone, amounted to Brian and the [driver of the car in front]) what happened. Brian started explaining the accident in great detail, but the Mountie interrupted him saying, "so you rear-ended him, eh?" That seemed to be the only fact that mattered at the moment, and we were expecting the worst-perhaps Nova Scotia was one of those places where anyone who rear-ends another car is at fault, regardless of any other factors involved. Dudley looked around some more and spoke with Doug, the mechanic, to make arrangements for getting rid of the mess. He seemed to know [the mechanic] and have the utmost respect for him.
With time the constable got more friendly. It was decided that [the mechanic] should tow the truck to his home, where it would be safer than at the service station. The trailer would be towed to a trailer park in Amherst (NOT the Barrel, thank goodness), since we would have to stay in town until everything was cleared up. Brian would have to go to the police station to fill out various forms, and after that was taken care of the [other driver] offered to let Brian use his phone to see about insurance arrangements.
After what seemed forever those involved in the accident got into the police car and Dudley drove them off toward Amherst. We followed, since we had to pick Brian up when he was done and we had no idea where the Mounties had their headquarters in town. On the way the [passengers in the other car] insisted on stopping by the hospital-even though they were in no way injured. They were cooking up an insurance scheme, if you ask me. All the way to the station, on the highway and in town, the Mountie drove FAR above the speed limit. It seemed peculiar behavior right after an accident, but I followed close behind him. I figured he could hardly ticket me since he was the one driving so fast.
The Mounties' post looks like a modern brick house in a residential district on the northeast edge of Amherst. I read a newspaper as we waited for Brian to finish with the constable. In the end Dudley decided to declare no fault in the accident-to place the blame on nature, presumably the moose everyone was photographing. That was good news for us, since God knows how long things would have taken to clear the court if Brian were charged with a crime. At any rate, he was free from the Mounties' point of view, so one problem was out of the way.
... Next, ... Brian made some phone calls. While we waited I walked next door to see if the local Dodge garage could fix my muffler, which had been noisy ever since the beginning of the trip. They were booked up all day, so I went back and just waited some more.
After Brian had finished with his phone calls, we went to a little mall where we had lunch at a place called "Pizza Delight". Each of us had mini-pizzas, which were good and quite reasonably priced. We went back to our new campground (Loch Lomond Park, MUCH nicer than the Barrel) and killed some time before Margaret and Brian had to meet with an insurance representative.
I drove everybody into Amherst in the middle of the afternoon. There was no State Farm insurance agent in Amherst (in fact, State Farm seems to have only one office in all of Canada--in Kingston, Ontario), but a local businessman was contacted to make the proper arrangements. .... [The company he worked for] had offices all over Iowa, in some of the strangest little towns. This man dropped the names of Iowa towns none of us had heard of until we moved out to the western part of the state.
Margaret and Brian met with the man in private while Paul and I waited in the outer office. Paul seemed extremely bored (with good reason--there weren't even magazines to read), but I entertained myself watching the secretary NOT work. When we came in the secretary was explaining to her boss what she didn't like about the new computer system they had installed. The boss left, and she shuffled a few disks around in the computer but never did type anything. Soon a delivery boy came in, and she had a long chat with him. Before she could get back to work, another secretary stopped by. Again they spoke at length. Next the woman's daughter dropped in-a valley girl "to the max". She wanted to return a top she had bought that was "just totally gruesome" (actually it was totally pink). Unfortunately she didn't have the sales slip, and what's more, she had washed it. She wanted mom to re-assure her that she could con the salespeople into believing it had never been worn. Her conversation was in the hurried pace that is so typical of teenage girls, and mom wasn't able to get much of anything in. After a short while the girl was off to the store. Mom turned to me and said, "Well, she's like that, eh?" I've taught a hundred girls who are "like that", and I knew exactly what the mother meant.
While the daughter was gone, the phone rang a couple of times. It was for the man who was talking with Margaret and Brian, and the secretary did a good job of explaining that he was "in", but he wasn't "available". Before she could really get back to work, the mail lady came. They gossiped, though not at quite so much length as some of the earlier people. Then the daughter was back again. She had indeed exchanged the top (I'd hate to be the pour soul who ended up buying it), and she had bought another top, which seemed even more "gruesome" to me. The daughter wanted to send her daughter on an errand to the supermarket. There was a warehouse store nearby, but the daughter said, "I'm just sure you're sending me to the 'No Frills'! Like, how can I be seen THERE?" She punctuated her sentence with a small gasp--also very typical of girls her age. It must be totally gruesome for others to think she saves money on her groceries. She wanted to borrow the car and drive out to the mall where her friends could see her shopping at a nice supermarket. Unfortunately she did not have her permanent driver's license yet, and mom was not about to let her have the car until she did. They argued some more, and finally the girl trudged off to "No Frills".
After that the secretary talked to me for a few minutes. She never did get back to her computer. I found the whole situation very entertaining, but Paul looked more and more bored. Margaret and Brian had been talking to the man for nearly two hours. Eventually I offered to drive him back to the campground.
Driving Paul back to Loch Lomond was a guarantee that Margaret and Brian would finish with the man. Sure enough, they were waiting on the street when I got back downtown. Things turned out to be rather complicated, and the moral of this whole story is: Don't wreck a car in Canada. Here are the various problems:
This man had to contact an insurance agent in Sioux City to find out what Brian's truck would have been worth there in its age and condition at the time of the crash. Needless to say, the agent in Sioux City wasn't in when the Amherst man called, and vice versa.
There was some question as to whether the truck was actually a total loss. Since parts of the frame and parts of the engine were still intact, there was a possibility that State Farm could insist we have it repaired. Just imagine the likelihood that parts would be available in Amherst, Nova Scotia, for a particular model of Toyota diesel pickup. (We didn't even see a Toyota dealer in town.)
Even if a money settlement could be worked out, there was a question about where we could pick up the money. Since State Farm's Canadian office was 2,000 miles away in Ontario, we obviously couldn't go there. Most likely we would have to pick it up somewhere in the U.S.A., but that would require even more phone calls to even more people.
Somehow we had to get the trailer back to Iowa. My car certainly couldn't handle the load, so Brian and Margaret had to buy another vehicle. The new car had to be bought in the U.S. (NOT in Canada), because Canadian cars don't meet the standards needed to register a car in America.
Since we had to buy the new vehicle in America, somehow we had to get the trailer to the border. The nearest border was at Calais, Maine, about 150 miles away. Most likely we would have someone tow the trailer there for
us--at great expense.
All the contents of the pickup had to be transferred somewhere else. Neither my car nor the trailer was really large enough to hold them, but they had to go somewhere.
When a vehicle is wrecked in Canada, one must make arrangements with Canada Customs about what to do with it. In Amherst this means dealing with an elderly woman about who everyone advised us "be nice to that lady". In theory she could require that we remove the pickup from Canada, in other words have it towed to Maine. Alternately she could require that duty be paid to "import" the wreck into Canada. At one point we heard that she was asking for $2,000 in duty for this worthless truck.
We pondered all these problems, and then we entertained ourselves with all the ways in which things could have been worse:
Most importantly, no one was hurt in our accident. Things would have been far worse if someone was hurt.
The trailer was okay, even if we couldn't level it without the crank. At least we had somewhere to live-we didn't have to stay in a motel.
Brian was not charged with any crime. Who knows what would have happened if there were charges filed?
It happened about as close to the U.S. border as we were anywhere on the trip. Yes, it was 150 miles to Maine, but at some stages on our trip we were much further away. It could have happened while we were in
Newfoundland--500 miles and a ferry ride from anywhere.
It happened while we still had time to spare. We were forfeiting our trip to Newfoundland, but at least we didn't have to rush back-yet.
It happened in a developed region where people spoke English. Our worst nightmare would have been to have an accident in that remote park in Quebec. I may be able to order a meal in French, but there's no way I'd want to deal with an accident in French. The man Margaret and Brian spoke to said many Canadians, including himself, will not drive in Quebec for that very reason. (In fact, when we were in Quebec, we noticed that almost every car on the road was from that
province--very few people were from elsewhere.)
Everyone in Amherst (the Mountie, the mechanic, the insurance man, etc.) mentioned to us the worst things that might have happened-we could still be staying at the Barrel.
So we counted our blessings and tried to accept reality. We didn't trust the stove in the camper before having it checked out, for fear the propane connections might have been damaged. So we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, apparently the best place in Amherst-though nothing too special. Like all nice restaurants in Canada (including Pizza Delight) it was "fully licensed", meaning they serve booze too.
With the pickup gone it was vital that I sleep in the car now, as there was absolutely no room in the trailer. It was pleasantly cool sleeping at Loch Lomond, and I got a good night's rest.
If you look carefully, you will notice that the odometer reads exactly forty miles more than yesterday-that's really moving!
There's not a great deal to say about the day. We got up relatively late (about the same time as the rest of the campers), and I drove into McDonalds to buy coffee and rolls for everyone. The McDonalds restaurants all over Canada were promoting Chicken McNuggets Shanghai--a special gimmick that offered Oriental sauces and chopsticks with the chicken chunks. At the Amherst outlet, even at breakfast time, the employees were wearing pointed Oriental hats. None of them seemed to enjoy it, and they all looked stupid in them, but it certainly did set them apart from the other fast food in town. I felt a bit strange ordering three large coffees, a hot chocolate, and four danishes when I was the only person in the car-but not nearly so strange as the employees must have felt in those silly hats.
Brian had set up a screen tent behind the trailer, and as we sat there and had our coffee, we entertained ourselves watching a young couple striking their camp down the hill from us. They were either newlyweds or a couple living together, and they were overly romantic. Margaret commented at one point that it took them so long to take down their tent and roll up their sleeping bags because they had at most two free hands between them. Eventually they did get on their way, and we decided to get out a bit ourselves. So we saw what there was to see around Amherst.
The only thing that comes close to a tourist attraction in the area is Fort Beausejour (BOWS-zhure, pronounced with two and a half syllables), back in Sackville, New Brunswick. This is the ruins of an old fort on the border between French and English Canada (New Brunswick was French and Nova Scotia was English). There is a small museum there, and you can walk around the ruins, but it's not really anything special. It certainly wouldn't have been anything for us to go out of our way to see, but since we were a captive audience we spent some time there.
After touring the fort we bought some souvenirs and had lunch at that same Pizza Delight (this time we all had pasta). We then killed some time in the two small malls in Amherst. Most interesting in the malls was the Zeller's store. Zeller's is a discount store found all over eastern Canada, and the one in Amherst is nothing special. What was interesting about it was a series of posters and loudspeaker announcements for "Club Zed". Club Zed is a gimmick where shoppers earn points for each of their purchases. The points accumulate like trading stamps, and they can use them to buy merchandise or vacations. The peculiar name Club Zed (obviously a take-off on the Club Med resorts) comes from the British (and Canadian) name for the letter "Z"-zed. You apparently have to fill out an application to become a member of Club Zed, and we didn't bother with the paperwork.
Another interesting store was the Singer sewing machine shop, located next to Zeller's and across from Pizza Delight. We got a clear view of Singer while we ate. The manager had just gotten a new cardboard sign that said "SUPER SUMMER SALE". Unfortunately the only place he had to put this sign was on a tiny bulletin board in front of his shop-the bulletin board already said "Singer" on it. The sign was far too big to fit on the bulletin board, no matter how he tried to squeeze it. First he chopped off the word "SUPER" all together. "SUMMER SALE" was still too big to fit. He tried it diagonally and up and down, but nothing seemed to work. Finally he chopped the words "SUMMER" and "SALE" apart and cropped them so they had no border. Putting the words diagonally, one under the other, he managed to get them on the board, just barely obliterating "Singer". I have no idea what was on sale, but it was entertaining watching him set up everything.
My nose had been stuffed up all during this trip, so at Zeller's I bought an over-the-counter product called "Histimal", which advertised itself as "the decongestant that lets you stay awake". The package explained that it was perfectly safe to drive or operate equipment while taking Histimal. Like every other drug in the store, it was terribly expensive. Ten tablets of the substance cost Can$6.99 (US$5.25). ...
We had dinner at an A&W in the mall and then went back to the campground, where we read newspapers and watched television (Paul had brought along a tiny little black and white TV). One paper from Montreal reported plans among Reagan's aides to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law in case people disagreed with the contra aid program. Other papers were reporting how America was "falling in love" with Oliver North, considering him a patriot. The Canadian newspapers and television seemed to think this was strange, and I must say I agree with them. Dishonest people make me angry, not proud, and the last thing I would want to do is praise them.
I took one of the Histimal before watching the CBC's late news. Regardless of what the package might have said, I was asleep in no time.
We dawdled around the campground again this morning. There was certainly no motivation to get up early, as the business day begins LATE in Amherst-even grocery stores don't open until 10am, and many businesses don't open until 10:30. Part of this lateness may be the peculiar time zone Amherst is in. The Atlantic Time Zone is an hour ahead of Eastern Time, so everything is an hour later in the Maritimes-for example the morning news programs don't come on until 8am. That MIGHT explain why everything opens so late, but then again everything closes right at 4:30 or 5:00. It's like the entire city works on banker's hours-they must all be salaried; they'd go broke if they were paid hourly.
Each morning in Amherst I had gone into McDonalds to buy breakfast for everyone. It was not only expensive, but also a bit embarrassing to buy massive amounts of coffee when I was the only person in the car. Since it didn't look too promising that we would be leaving Amherst terribly soon, today I decided to stop at K-Mart when they opened to buy a coffeemaker. After a lot of looking I was able to find a Proctor-Silex automatic drip model (made in Canada) for 35 Canadian dollars, which works out to about the same price a cheap model would be here (US$26.25). We heated hot water and made instant coffee and hot chocolate later in the morning.
It was mid-afternoon when we had lunch, really quite a normal lunch time in Amherst. Again we ate at Pizza Delight. We were really becoming regular customers, since there wasn't much of anywhere else to eat in town. At lunch it was decided that we could save time if Margaret and I could drive to Maine and buy a truck while Brian stayed in Amherst to finish the insurance and customs arrangements. Shortly after lunch we got everything together, and Margaret and I headed back west.
We drove across New Brunswick, past Sackville and Moncton, and then southwest to Saint John, the province's largest city. Traffic seemed extremely busy both east and west of Saint John, but in the city itself the highway was four-laned, and it made traffic seem quite light. We drove on westward to the town of St. Stephen, where we crossed a little bridge and went through customs at Calais, Maine. It was one of the easiest experiences I have ever had at U.S. customs-the only question of substance was how much I had bought in Canada. We were then waved on into Maine.
The first thing to know about Calais is that it is pronounced KAL-iss, like a hard spot on your foot. Forget the images of Cal-lay in France. "Down East" in Maine they say things their own way. Calais is a town of about 3,000 people that anywhere else on earth wouldn't amount to much. Even together with its larger twin, St. Stephen, there isn't much of anything there. Calais is the busiest border crossing on the east coast, though. We found out later that six million cars a year cross the international bridge there; that would make it rank as a border town with the likes of Niagara Falls and Detroit. Both Calais and St. Stephen are heavily touristed, and they have the restaurants and motels to prove it.
The first thing we did in Calais was to scout the place for car dealers. There were two: one sold everything General Motors makes, while the other was a combination Ford-Chrysler place. (Combining two competing makes of American car has always seemed strange to me, but that also happens to be the combination we have here in Algona.) Both places had loads of pickups, but most of them were much larger than the size Margaret wanted to buy. Also none of them had sticker prices displayed-the prices were conveniently cut off of the stickers. At least Margaret was able to get an idea of what was available.
Next we found a motel. In St. Stephen we had seen a whole strip of motels, with prices as low as Can$19 (US$14.25) for a single. That was across the border, though, and while there were plenty of motels on the Maine side of the border, they all appeared to be overpriced. The place we settled on, the Calais Motor Inn, charged us $35.00 each for two single rooms. It was a nice place, but it went out of its way to make us feel unsafe. They locked the outside doors after 11pm, there were cameras in the hallways, and the room windows were supposed to lock, but didn't work properly.
Next on the agenda was dinner, as it was now getting quite late. After surveying the phone book, we decided on a place called "The Cracker Barrel" (no relation to that campground in Amherst). This place was mainly a deli, but we were attracted to it because they advertised that they "specialize in Mexican food". Mexican food sounded good after all the pizza and pasta, so we decided to give it a try. We both ordered nachos, and Margaret ordered an enchilada. The nachos came with an unspiced white cheese on top of them--interesting, but hardly what you would get in a Mexican restaurant. (I almost said "authentic", but American nachos are hardly authentic Mexican food.) Margaret's "enchilada" was not an enchilada at all-whatever it was, it was frozen and microwaved, with no sauce on it. I had somewhat more success in ordering a ham sandwich-that was very good. We both had "soda" as well. Two college-age boys were in charge of the place, and they almost forgot to charge us for our meal.
While we were eating a family that spoke no English entered the place. I'm not at all sure what language they did speak-perhaps it was Portuguese. It was both amusing and sad to watch them order and eat. We make no concessions at all in America for people who don't speak English, which must make things very difficult for tourists in this country.
After that strange meal we returned to the motel. I went next door to an Irving station (yes, Irving has expanded into Maine too) and bought some snacks and a Newsweek to read. Then I went to my room, took another Histimal, and fell asleep before I had read much of anything in the magazine.
Today was car deal day.
I woke up quite early, since my body was well adjusted to Atlantic Time. Margaret and I had arranged to meet around 8am Eastern Time for breakfast, and I had plenty of time to read my magazine and watch the TV news before that. We went to a McDonalds, and we had just settled down to eat our danishes when two buses from "Champagne Tours" stopped, and hordes of senior citizens flooded the place. Most of them seemed far more interested in using the bathroom than in getting anything to eat, but we decided to get out of their way anyhow. It did amuse me that a company named "Champagne Tours" should stop at McDonalds.
Maine keeps much more normal hours than eastern Canada. It was around 8:30 when we arrived at Border Motors, the Ford-Chrysler place. We had just started looking over some pickups when a dealer ... came outside to help us. Car salesmen are among my least favorite people on the planet, but as these people go [ours] could have been far more offensive. He was middle-aged, overweight, and only a little bit too friendly. He smoked too much, and he played with his glasses and mustache. We gathered he was widowed, as he frequently referred to his wife in the past tense; he often spoke of his daughters--who obviously lived with him, and once he talked about "the lady I go out with on occasion". He enjoyed hunting and fishing, and he assumed that must have been the reason for our vacation in the region. All in all we got to know this character much better than we would have wanted to, but as I said he could have been far worse.
Margaret quickly explained what our situation was, and we started looking at trucks. After seeing almost every small pickup on the lot, we decided on a black long-bed truck made by Mitsubishi for Dodge. For the most part it was a bare-bones truck, but it did have such extras as cloth seats. We were not really in a position to bargain (just as well, since I think that is the single worst part about buying a car--why you can't just buy them out of a catalogue I'll never know), but the quoted price (just over $8,000) seemed reasonable. Margaret test-drove it around Calais, and we returned to make arrangements for buying it.
Margaret had several proposals for paying for this truck. She was considering making a down payment on her credit card and financing the rest at the dealer's discretion. We found out that this method would have required approval by Detroit, though. Much faster was arranging a transfer of funds from her bank in Cresco, Iowa. She and Brian were saving for a payment on the house they are building, so they had sufficient funds to pay for the car. It was, however, still early morning Iowa time, so we had to wait around for the Cresco bank to open.
Shortly after 10am (9:00 Central Time), [the car dealer] drove us into downtown Calais, where we stopped at the local office of the Merrill Trust. The Merrill Trust is the Maine equivalent of Hawkeye Bancorp or Norwest, the massive holding company that gobbled up every small-town bank in the state. (We found out that the Merrill Trust itself had been swallowed up; it was a member of "the Fleet Financial Group".) No one important was at the bank on Friday morning, but we did eventually get in contact with a very pleasant young woman who appeared to be in the third string of management at that branch. She explained to Margaret the procedures involved in making an electronic transfer, and then Margaret herself called the bank in Cresco to arrange things.
As it turned out, the Cresco bank first had to transfer sufficient funds from Margaret's savings account to her checking account. Then that money was to be sent via the FDIC wires to Merrill Trust's home office in Bangor (locally pronounced either BAHN-gow-uh or BANG-uh--take your pick), as close to a big city as Maine gets. Merrill then would place the funds in an account for the Calais branch, where the woman, on proper identification and authorization, would make them available to Margaret. It takes three hours to do all that, but Margaret and I were nonetheless marveling at how we could accomplish more in a day in the States than we had all week in Canada.
We explored the Calais region to kill time while we waited. Parts of Calais are truly beautiful-there are some enormous old homes with gorgeous gardens in front of them. Other parts of town are really ugly-run-down trailer homes with dead pickups beside them. All morning we saw a beautiful church which we kept trying to drive closer to until we realized it was across the river in St. Stephen.
We stopped at the local tourist information center, where we picked up Maine maps. The place SOLD the maps for a dollar each. I was quite willing to pay for the maps, but they turned out to be mostly advertising. Among other things, they indicated the location of every Burger King in the state. They didn't show such important information as the location of rest areas along the roads, though.
It was interesting to observe the elderly ladies who ran the information center. As they sat quilting and knitting they were discussing the Iran-contra scandal. While they were obviously staunch Republicans, they were also obviously upset by this whole affair. One remarked it was "much, much worse than Watergate", while another said, "I just don't see how they can condone those liars." Another made this comment, all too true: "I don't know where it maters which side kills them-they're still just as dead."
We had lunch at a fun little place called the Bottling Plant. This seems to be a collection of little restaurants and bars, all in the same building. The one we ate in was called Sebastian's, a bar that catered mostly to young children and their parents. Kids' meals were free, and there were games and other entertainment to keep the little ones occupied while Mom and Dad had their dinner and drinks. The place was busy and quite understaffed, and the service was rather slow. It was worth the wait, though-the food was simply superb. It was certainly among the best meals I have ever eaten.
Toward mid-afternoon the money finally came in. The woman at the bank called Bangor to ask that they make the money available "down in Calais". (Look at a map, and you'll see why only a Mainer could describe Calais as "down"-it's northeast of Bangor, but that's the way things are "Down East".) Margaret got he check, filled out the final paperwork with the dealer, and became the owner of a black pickup with a temporary Maine license. I'm sure she will be the only person in Ida County with a truck from Border Motors of Calais, Maine. Soon we were on our way back through Canada.
The dealer had to explain all the switches and so forth to Margaret, so I went through customs before her. There was a long line on the bridge, but it was moving quickly. The officer was friendly enough-"traveling all alone, eh?" he said. He asked me where I was going and if I had been over this road before, and I said "yes" without explanation. He tried to give me a "Welcome to Canada" booklet, which I politely refused. He wished me a happy trip, and I was yet again in New Brunswick. It was 35 degrees in St. Stephen; that's over 90 for us old-fashioned Fahrenheit people. The humidity matched the heat, and I quickly downed a can of pop while waiting for Margaret.
Margaret had the same customs officer as I had. He greeted her by saying, "Hmmm, new one, eh?" He then asked where she was taking it. When she said "up to Amherst to get my husband who had an encounter with a moose" he waved her on without any further remark.
We drove back through Saint John and over to Moncton and down to Sackville. Once again the traffic was horrible everywhere except in Saint John, where the four lanes made it seem as if no one was on the road. It was evening when we entered Nova Scotia and arrived at the campground once more. Margaret and I were hungry, so we trotted off to Pizza Delight yet again to have our last taste of Amherst's best Italian food. Then it was off to bed.
Brian had worked out the final details with customs and with the insurance people, and at last we were leaving Amherst today. First, though, we had to have the lights on the trailer wired to the new pickup. We decided to have ... the mechanic who had towed the trailer in the first place do the wiring. Everyone in Amherst seemed to know [him], and he had the best of reputations. We hitched the trailer and in the middle of the morning we pulled into the Irving station. ... It was packed with people--people buying gas, people getting air for their tires, people wanting oil, people doing anything you might do at a service station. The place was understaffed, so we had a couple of hours to sit and wait. ...
Before leaving, let me quickly describe Amherst, since it is the place we spent the most time on this vacation. My atlas lists its population as 10,263, and it is one of those places that isn't quite sure whether to be a city or a town. It reminds me a lot of Oskaloosa, where my brother Paul and his family live. It's not a very prosperous place; in fact, it's the only town I've ever seen in Canada with empty buildings downtown. It's a port city, located on the Bay of Fundy, but most of the people seem to work in industry. Among other things they make Life Savers candy there. It's also the northwest Nova Scotia headquarters for everything. There are four exits for Amherst along the Trans-Canada Highway, and the town stretches out to meet all those exits. Only one of them is really important, though. It's a place that would fit right in anywhere in America, but it seemed rougher than a lot of Canadian towns of a similar size. Overall I can't say I really liked Amherst much, but there are far worse places we could have been stranded.
While we were waiting I killed some more time walking over to one of the malls. Boys from the local baseball team were standing by the doors trying to raise money. I had no desire to contribute to another town's baseball team, but these boys were insistent. They wouldn't let anyone past-it was as bad as the American Legion and those silly poppies. I was proud of myself for sneaking in the door of Pizza Delight and thus entering the mall unnoticed.
[The mechanic] got most of the wiring figured out, charging us a grand total of Can$10 (US$7.50) for his effort. We then crossed into New Brunswick for the last time and bade farewell to Sackville and Moncton.
We drove across New Brunswick on the Trans-Canada Highway, passing through the capital city of Fredericton en route. Out of curiosity, Margaret and I counted the Irving stations along our route. It's roughly 200 miles across New Brunswick, and in that distance we saw no less than twenty-three different Irving stations (plus one that seemed to be closed). We also passed a grave on a hill east of Moncton that was apparently the final resting place of the firm's founder.
We stopped briefly at an information center near Woodstock, New Brunswick, where we changed most of our Canadian funds back to U.S. currency. We then drove on to the U.S. border near Houlton, Maine. Customs at Houlton was even easier than customs at Calais. This is where Interstate 95 begins, and there is an enormous new concrete customs building stretching across the road. They could accommodate about eight lanes of traffic, but only one lane was open (and that's all that was needed). The officer was friendly, and we were quickly back in the States.
--2004 David M. Burrow
The background music on this page is "Under Pressure", originally by David Bowie and Queen.