EASTWARD BOUND

by Ben Robicheau

This year I came home for Christmas. An overnight, twenty-two hour drive from Hamilton, Ont. to Halifax, stopping only for gas and Tim’s. The trip home for Christmas, family gatherings or summer vacation is a ritual that many Islanders perform on a regular basis. Whether you are coming from somewhere else in Nova Scotia, across Canada or the other side of the world, you’re on a journey that ends with a ferry ride.
Over the years I’ve travelled between Ontario and Nova Scotia by plane, train, bus, truck, car, motorcycle and thumb. I’ve done the trip driving all night by myself, accompanied by other Islanders, and with newcomers to the Islands who didn’t really believe my stories about where I grew up until I showed them.
The drive is better than it used to be. From Hamilton to Halifax it’s all divided highway except for a short section of good quality two-lane road near the Quebec-New Brunswick border. My first trips to Ontario were before the Trans-Canada was finished and the road through Quebec was a time consuming stop-and-go route along the St. Lawrence River through numerous little towns with big churches all named Saint something-or-other.
Janet Morton knows this drive well, her family was in the military and lived for many years in Ontario, the yearly trip home is burned into her memory.
“Long before the main highways, (no 401 in Ontario) the 20 and 40 through PQ and the newer one down through northern NB, we travelled that path every summer from Ontario to NS. We didn't measure it in hours but in days, Dad was the only driver and I still don't know how he ever survived those drives with us monsters in the car. Sometimes there was an extra child to be dropped off in Bear River or another quiet place. Many people where we lived on the base were from the Maritimes and would send their children with whoever would take them to visit families in the east.
I remember the heat, the windows open trying to get relief, the noise! Most of it from us kids. Stopping beside the highway, not a fancy rest stop.. for warm drinks and mushy sandwiches and if we were lucky a stream to cool off in. The wet bathing suits hanging on the aerial to dry while driving, broken up radio stations, the games we came up with to play. Counting licence plates?? I can't even see them now, they all look the same.
Richard preferred the back window for travel but I’m not sure how he could stand the heat, Barry liked to watch the road and I just wanted to get there!
We won't even get into car breakdowns, repairs and time involved in that.. Did I mention we tented both ways, those old canvas tents can get pretty crowded and hot at night! I am surprised my mother survived all those trips.”
My first Christmas in Ontario I was looking for an economical way to get home when my Aunt Minnie came up with a solution. Having worked for a car rental company in Saint John, N.B., she knew that they bought cars direct from the factory in Ontario, then paid someone to drive them east. She made a call and sure enough, there was a car in Toronto waiting to be delivered. I picked it up after school and headed east in a 1970 Duster with summer tires and power steering. I was stopped by the O.P.P. before I had barely left the city. His attention had been drawn by my unsteady driving and the fact that the car had no plates. After my explanation that I was just getting used to the power steering and a thorough examination of the temporary permit in the side window, he let me go with the observation that it was December and I really should have winter tires on. I wasn’t worried about the tires because the roads were clear and there was no sign of snow.
Four hours later I was stuck in the middle of a howling blizzard, at a dead stop in a miles-long line of traffic. After three hours of sitting, idling and watching the gas gage sink towards “empty”, I took a chance and plowed my way into tracks made by several four-wheel-drives that had passed us by. Despite the lack of snow tires, I was able to keep moving and eventually reached the head of the line where a transport truck was uselessly spinning its wheels. Continuing eastward the storm lessened and by the time I hit New Brunswick the road was mostly bare with just a thin layer of wet snow at the edges. The sun was coming up and I was the only car on the road, I had to make up for lost time if I was going to catch the morning ferry to Digby.
I was doing close to 100 MPH when I wandered into the slush at the edge of the pavement. The car fishtailed to the right, then left, then right again, making a bigger swing each time. I knew I was going to lose control and figured it would be better if I slid towards the road than the ditch. When the car slid left again I slammed on the brakes, did a couple of 360s and ended up on the other side of the road facing in the opposite direction. I made the ferry O.K., but I never told my Aunt how close I came to wiping out that brand-new Duster.
Just before Christmas a year later I got a phone call from Peggy Thompson. She was on her way home from B.C. and wanted to know if I could give her a ride from Toronto. As it happened, I had just become the proud owner of a ten year old VW Beetle with 200,000 miles on it and I was glad to have the company. Setting out, the weather was good, but by the time we hit Montreal it was snowing and extremely cold. The VW heating system was not great at the best of times, and combining an old Beetle with a Quebec winter was just asking for trouble. Our breath froze on the windshield to the extent that we had to use an ice scraper on the inside of the glass to see where we were going, at the same time Peggy had to periodically reach out the window to clear snow that the wipers didn’t get. After a long cold night, we finally made it to the Digby ferry, crossed the Bay and happily started down the Neck, we were almost home! Then we ran into a problem that is familiar to every Islander, or, as Peggy tells it:
“After a very long trip, we ventured down Digby Neck behind the snowplough...only to get to East Ferry and find that the ferry wasn't crossing! I had come from Prince George...hit an avalanche in Rogers Pass in the Rockies, driven frozen all the way to New Brunswick, gotten seasick across the Bay of Fundy, risked our necks on the Neck to find the FRIGGIN’ FERRY WASN'T CROSSING!!!!!“
Many of my early trips were in the company of Herb Barnaby, who was going to university in Ontario. One trip he remembers is when I misjudged how far I could go on a tank of gas and ran out just as we were going up a hill. Herb was just envisioning us freezing to death in the dark beside the highway when with our last bit of momentum, we slowly crested the hill to see a gas station on the other side. We were able to coast most of the way, although Herb and my sister Janet did have to get out and push the last fifty feet to the pumps.
On another occasion, I had Herb and his brother Rodney as well as Rodney’s German Shepherd, Shamus, all crammed into the cab of my Toyota truck. With the four of us in such close quarters, the windshield fogged up and froze to the extent that we only had a small hole to see out of. Herb says he remembers going through Montreal changing lanes with no idea if anyone was beside us because he could hardly see out the front and the side windows were totally iced up. When we finally got to New Brunswick the road from Fredericton to Saint John was a glare of ice and we were reduced to a crawl. As usual, we were pressed for time to make the boat and at this rate we were going to miss it. Luckily, in New Brunswick you couldn’t go far without seeing a pile of pulpwood on the side of the road. One of these appeared now so I stopped, tossed a few logs into the back of the truck, and with the added weight providing traction, was able to make the ferry on time.
I hadn’t been thrilled about taking a dog with us, but Shamus turned out to be an excellent traveller. Though I don’t know where he found the room, he laid curled up on the cab floor for the whole trip. The only sign of complaint I saw from him was when we had to leave him in the truck on the Digby boat. I don’t know if it was out of boredom or in protest at being left alone, but he chewed up my wooden gearshift knob that I had made in Herbie Thurber’s woodworking class. I was able to sand out most of the tooth marks, but I did leave a few as a memento of the trip.
Someone once said, “You can’t go home again”, but I think with a bit of perseverance, you can… a good set of snow tires might help too. - brobicheau@cogeco.ca