Roots

Yesterday I rode to Pike Lake to attend the launch of a book about the area around Pike Lake - the lake closest to where I grew up and which was a large part of my childhood.  There were many people there but probably less than a dozen that I knew from my childhood.  Most people on the lake, despite having moved there 20, 30, 40, or even longer ago, have a connection with the lake but not the community around it.  In a sense, I feel like they have expropriated the history of the families that have roots that go back for five or six generations, and have taken part of it as their own.  I'm not certain that this is a rational way of looking at it but when I saw the relative scarcity of true locals at the opening compared to the 'lake people' (and I don't mean this in a derogatory manner) this thought crept into my mind.  The book itself is very well done and I gave a copy to my father for his 89th birthday.

The tombstone of my paternal granmother & grandfather in

St. Bridget's cemetery in Stanleyville, ON

My mother & father's tombstone. Dad jumped the gun a bit!

In keeping with that theme I did a final tour of the area where I spent my first 19 years taking photos of the homes where my mother, my father, and where my brother and I grew up.  I also made a visit to the local cemetery where many of my relatives are interred.  There, one gets a very graphic sense of the connection with the land these families have had over the past 160 years.  Many of the names on the early tombstones in the cemetery which  was opened in the 1870s are the same as the names that are much more recent, and almost all of the older names are Irish.  I visited the graves of my great uncle Francis Bernard Kerr, whom I remember as a very old man when I was perhaps ten years old, and who was born in 1891.  His younger brother who was my gandfather, Alphosus Ligouri Kerr was born in 1892, and his wife, Mary Jane Fagan, my paternal grandmother was born in 1893.  There are no earlier Kerr tombstones in the cemetery, I suspect, because they were probably too poor to afford them so their graves are unmarked although they are probably mapped.



The house where my mother grew up

The house where my father grew up.

The house Dad bought in 1947 where I grew up.

These roots are very important to a society, and in many cases because of our ability to be mobile and to move 5000 kilometres away from my birthplace as I have done, they are often lost to succeeding generations.  My children will never know the connections to my extended family that I experienced before I left home at 19.  In the ensuing years I have lost many of those connections but I still have the ones I made as a child and a teenager.

I helped plant these trees in about 1960. They are now about 15 metres

high with trunks about half a metre thick.

I am preparing to head back home tomorrow and I will try to continue this blog from the road each day if I can.  When I have the time I will try to add photos to this entry, probably from somewhere in western New York State or Ohio tomorrow.

Eastern Ontario

It has been twelve days since I arrived in my home town of Perth, Ontario and I've had the opportunity to see a great deal of the country around Eastern Ontario for the first time in many years, and some for the first time. The town itself is a jewel with old stone buildings built in the mid 1800s lining the main street and scattered throughout the town. Several of the large houses date from the 1820s and 1830s. Stewart Park occupies a large part of the centre of town and is one of the most beautiful town parks in Canada

Stewart Park, Perth, ON 

Stewart Park, Perth, ON

Stewart Park, Perth, ON

Tay River, Perth, ON

Town Hall, built in 1863-4, Perth, ON

I have been staying with my brother, Dave, who is working while I am here. He has just finished a three day visit and review by company executives so his stress level has dropped a bit.  His pride and joy is a 1998 black Corvette that he treats like a baby and keeps spotless.  Needless to say, this trip when I haven't been ridinng my Harley around town I have had a few rides in this very sleek machine.  Ridin' in style in Perth.

Last week I did some riding in the area.  On Wednesday I rode to Adams Centre, south of Watertown, NY to have my bike serviced.  It was a windy day and the ride across the Ivy Lea Bridge near Gananoque was a bit interesting since the crosswinds were blowing at about 40-50 kph and the bridge has only two narrow lanes.  The scenery from the bridge is incredible since it crosses the St. Lawrence River at the Thousand Islands.  On my way back I stopped in Alexandria, NY to see Boldt Castle which was built in the early 1900s by a hotel magnate for his wife.  She died and he didn't complete it so it fell into ruin until the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority began a restoration in 1973.

Bridge from Wellesly Island to the USA

Boldt Castle near Alexandria, NY

While I have been here I have been able to visit with relatives that I haven't seen for a long time.  Since I moved away from Perth more than forty years ago, things and people have changed quite a lot.  What was once open country now has housing subdivisions on it, the roads are much improved, and everyone has become a lot older.  Many people I wouldn't recognize if someone hadn't introduced them to me.  It is kind of wonderful though, to go back over old memeories that have faded over time and relive them.  Many events haven't occurred to me for decades and it's great to be reiminded of them.  I think that one of the advantages of staying where you grew up is that you keep a great deal more of your personal history than you do if you move away.  Places and people are constant, if subconscious reminders of your past.  I find that many people whose families have been here for many generations can tell the oral history of the area back a hundred years, while I cannot do the same where I live because I do not have those deep connections to the people and the places that one gets from generations of history.

I rode to Ottawa to spend some time on Parliament Hill as well.  After all, I should see where many of my tax dollars are going when I'm in the area.  With the government presence in Ottawa, the city wants for nothing.  It too, though, has grown to the east, and now what was once a sleepy two lane highway to Carleton Place is now rapidly becoming a divided four-lane highway.  The downtown area is replete with monuments and public buildings as well as hotels and museums.  Every Canadian should try to spend time there if they are able to do so.

 

National War Memorial, Ottawa, ON

Centre Block, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, ON

East Block, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, ON

West Block, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, ON

Library of Parliament, Ottawa, ON

The rural parts of Eastern Ontario are quite scenic with the blend of corn, oat, wheat and soybean fields, small lakes and streams, and the beautiful maple, oak, elm, other hardwood trees and white pine.  I was able to ride the back roads north of Perth to a maple farm where they produce maple syrup and sugar in buildings which are new, but which have been built from logs salvaged from hay barns that were more than a hundred years old.  The owners have turned this farm into not only an enterprise that produces maple products, but also a tourist attraction with displays about the early history of farming in the area.  We even had pancakes and spicy sausages for lunch while a summer shower pounded down outside.  One of the more interesting displays for me was an old White Rose gasoline pump with the price of forty-two and a half cents a GALLON, not litre, for gas.  We can only dream of that.

Main building of Wheeler's Maple Farm near Fallbrook, ON

Two week old lamb at Wheeler's Maple Farm

Wishing I could fill up at $.42.5 a GALLON!

Next week my dad will be celebrating his 89th birthday.  Unfortunately I won't be here for that so we are going to celebrate the event on Saturday evening with a small gathering and a birthday cake.  My dad is the last of the seven brothers, and except for his younger sister, the last of thirteen children born between 1914 and 1937.  He has had an eventful life, leaving school to work in the spring of his Grade 8 year, joining the Canadian Army during world War II and spending more than three years in England, France, Holland, Belgium, and finally western Germany, then coming home to raise not only three of his own biological children, but four other step-children as well.

Last Sunday we went to the church dinner where I grew up in Stanleyville, ON and I met many people that I knew as a child.  One woman even told me that when I was a baby she used to push me on the road in a carriage!  Dave took Dad to the dinner in the Corvette and Dad loved it!  I took a few photos of him in the driver's seat, but Dave wisely kept the keys in his pocket!

Dad at the wheel of Dave's Corvette

The two weeks since I arrived in Perth have passed very quickly.  It is now time to prepare to do the reurn ride to Campbell River.  I plan on crossing the border at the Ivy Lea Bridge and riding south to Syracuse, NY, before getting on to I-90 and crossing the middle of America.  If it works out I would like to spend a day or two at the bike rally in Sturgis, SD while on my way home.  I might even get to Mt. Rushmore to see the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt carved into it.  Hopefully, the weather will hold and the ride back will be a smooth one. I'll try to keep the blog going when I'm on the road because I'm certain that I'll see many things worth making note of during the ride.

Parting of the Ways

Saturday was Kerry and my last day riding together on this trip.  Yesterday we got an early start and were on the road from Espanola at 7:30 a.m.  When we reached Sudbury about 40 minutes later Kerry took Highway 69 south to Toronto and then headed back west to Guelph to visit his sisters who live in the area.  I continued on Highway 17 East to North Bay, Mattawa, Deep River, Renfrew, Arnprior, and finally to Perth.  I hope and trust that Kerry made it to his sister's place in Guelph alright.  I assume that is the case but I don't know yet.

Ready to leave Goodman's Motel in Espanola on July 17th, 2011

Yesterday was extremely hot.  As I rode along the temperature kept increasing until the inside of my jacket sleeves and my T-shirt were soaked.  As I passed every small town it was difficult to find a place to get a cold drink on the highway.  I was beginning to be dehydrated so I finally pulled in to the parking lot of Macdonald's in Arnprior.  When I stopped the air temperature gauge on my motorcycle read 100 degrees F.  I drank a large (1 litre) sized drink and it hardly made a dent in my thirst. However, I was close to Perth so I continued in that direction on a great back road that took my to Highway 7 outside of Carleton Place, home of the not-so-famous Canadian singer Brock Zeman.

I am a person who gets paranoid after my gas gauge reaches the just a little less than half full mark so I don't know what I was thinking yesterday when I left Mattawa with just a quarter tank of gas.  I figured I could fill up down the road in plenty of time but as the kilometres rolled on I checked my GPS only to find that I was about 45 km from the nearest gass station each way.  I had no idea I could go 95 kilometres in that part of Ontario without being able to get gas and not be warned with a 'Check Your Gas - Next Service 90 km.' sign.  But about 20 km north of Deep River I came across a small Esso station and put enough gas in to get me to Deep River.

While I was filling up I saw a most disturbing sight.  A guy in a beat up, rusty old pickup truck pilled in to the station.  He got out and I saw that he was wearing cut off jean shorts and no shirt.  His skin was the colour of chicken skin and while he was not overweight, his pot belly hung over the tops of his shorts.  He had on a stained baseball hat which covered his mullet.  It was just so wrong and is the stuff of nightmares!

Corn field with farm buildings and silo near Arnprior, ON

Corn field and farm buildings

Typical Lanark County farm scene

As I rode the back roads I saw the sights that I still remember from over forty years ago; the brick farm houses, fields of corn and oats, the tall silver-domed silos, and most of all the trees.  We had begun seeing the trees of the Eastern Mixed Hardwood Forest two days earlier near Terrace Bay, but it is good to see elms returning after being decimated by Dutch Elm disease, sugar maples with their distinctive shapes, oak, poplar, and the local white pines.

In the almost 5000 km of riding I have doone in the past week, the closest I came to seeing a collision was when a driver in an RV pulled out in front of Kerry.  Fortunately is was early enough so that Kerry could hit his brakes and avoid a collision.  However, yesterday between Cobden and Renfrew I came across a major collision.  One car was smashed and pointing into the ditch on the right side of the road while the other was on its roof at a 45 degree angle to the shoulder.  I surmise that there might have been serious injuries because of the condition of the cars and the fact that an ambulance arrived just as I passed the scene.  shortly after I met two more ambulances, a policeman on a motorcycle, and an OPP cruiser heading to the scene. 

Later as I rode through the village of Pakenham I stopped to take a picture of their famous five arched stone bridge.  As I pulled in to the parking lot I saw a local fire truck, and across the river, several search and rescue vehicles.  I was told that someone had gone missing and that they were trying to find a body if there was one.  I found out late last night that a 53 year-old man had drowned after falling into the rapids while trying to retrieve a shoe that had fallen in the water.  It was strange that after  almost 4800 km or travelling, I should see two serious incidents within 90 minutes of each other so close to the end.

The five-arched stone bridge in Pakenham, ON

The Stewart Park Music Festival was winding down so the town was busy as I rode to my brother's house.  I arrived at about 3:00 after doing 600 km since 7:30 in the morning.  Needless to say, I had not stopped often during this part of the journey.  When I pulled into the driveway I was about 20 km short of the 5000 km mark for the ride, which for me had begun last Saturday morning in Campbell River.

After visiting with my brother for a time I had a nap since the extreme heat of the night before meant that it was a short on sleep kind of night.  When I awoke the cloudless skies had changed and there were angry grey clouds with high winds.  This usually signals a storm so we stood in the carport watching the branches of the maple trees get twisted and bent by the wind as lightning flashed overhead.  Rain soon followed but the whole event was over in about 40 minutes although the clouds remained.  Weather reports said that the winds approached 100 kph and in some places large branches were broken off trees.  It was great be under shelter and not to have to ride in that wind and rain.

It was still very wet so I let my dad know that I would visit him on Monday after I had the chance to do a major cleanup on my bike. 

This was a wonderful journey.  Now I have almost two weeks to visit with family and friends and prpeare for the return section which will be through the US along Interstate 90 back to the West Coast.  I may blog from time to time over the next two weeks but until I begin the return part of the trip they may be a few days apart.

Almost There!

Over the past two days we have been wondering if every town in Northern Ontario has a suspension bridge.  Several small towns had roadside signs advertising their suspension bridges as an attraction.  Maybe it was a phase or something but today we didn't see any suspension bridge signs so it must be a local phenomenon.  People in this part of Ontario were great at naming things.  This morning we passed by three small lakes called Baby, Dad, & Mom Lakes, yesterday we saw Primrose Lane, and today we saw Yellow Brick Road, Gargantua Road, Seldom Seen Road, and Faraway Lane.  I think living this far from the 'Big City' gives people license to indulge their whimsical natures.

We almost made it to Sudbury today.  If we had, I could have found out if Stompin' Tom Connors' song 'Sudbury Saturday Night' had any truth to it. Oh well, something to aim at for the future!

When we left Terrace Bay this morning it was about 13 C. with low clouds and some fog.  It felt like October, but by 10:30 it was warming up and by noon the temperature was in the mid 20s as we got to Wawa and the big goose there.  Earlier we stopped at Marathon but we didn't search for the fabled campsite where Jim Knight and I bought beer instead of a five dollar hotel room.  We planned to drink a dozen each and sleep in our tents, but after three beers we gave up because we didn't want to get out of the tent to pee and get swarmed by mosquitoes.  Kerry, in the meantime, went to the bar, had a beer, then went to his clean almost insect free bed.  When he pulled down the covers he found about five wood ants.  After getting rid of them he had a good night's sleep.  Jim & I couldn't say the same.

Panoramic view at Marathon (such as it was!)

We have been watching the roadside signs that mark every two kilometres for the past two days.  This morning about 40 kilometres west of Wawa we saw the sign that marked 1000 kilometres from the Manitoba border.  That was a real indication of how far we had travelled since Thursday afternoon.

One thousand Kilometres into Ontario!

Later on we stopped to see the famous Wawa Goose.  It was erected in 1960 and while it was refurbished a few years ago it is showing its age.  They people in Wawa are raising funds to replace it, with the slogan, 'Wawa needs a goose!' I think.
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Wawa's giant Canada goose

Kerry at Wawa's goose.

John at the Wawa goose.

Since I left that bastion of civilization where they have a Starbucks, I have been trying to get a good cup of coffee.  Across Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Northern Ontario when you ask where you can get a cup of good coffee, you are invariably pointed at the nearest Tim Horton's.  It happened to me in Swift Current and again in Brandon.  It's getting so that I'm afraid to ask.

Every so often we see road signs reminding people to take breaks when they are driving or not to drink and drive, but the one sign that really amazes me is the one that states: 'Bigger Vehicles Need More Room'.  What an amazing grasp of the obvious the person who created that one has!  That's the kind of job I could handle for the probably $100K a year the MTO (Ministry of Transportation-Ontario) is paying this bright light. 

The size of Lake Superior is difficult to comprehend.  Even from a lookout several hundred feet above the water it is not possible to see the other side of the lake.  And when the highway runs close to the lake the air temperature drops several degrees.  The lake has those typical Ontario lake islands with just room for some grasses and a few pine trees, and every so often there are even sandy beaches interspersed between the granite shores.   The whole thing is quite striking when you see it from different vantage points.

Lake Superior from a viewpoint several hundred feet above the water.

Small island in Lake Superior

Lake Superior shoreline

I am still having some trouble with the 90 kph speed limit in this part of Ontario.  Even the four lane divided highway outside of Sault Ste. Marie had the 90 kph limit.  That's not to say that we ride at 90 kph.  Usually we wait until a driver passes us in the passing lane and tuck in behind them to get up to 100 or 110.  It seems that a lot of drivers ignore the speed limit and the police, according to the locals, will give you about 15  kph befor they hit you.  Today we saw several driver getting caught, two by one policeman in under 20 minutes.  He'll have a nice bonus at the end of the month!  North of Wawa there was a trap with three cars in the middle of the road.  Kerry thought it looked like a takedown of some sort and I couldn't tell.

As we ride along we occasionally see forlorn and overgrown motels, restaurants, truckstops, and even farmhouses that have been boarded up and abandoned.  Each one of these places represents the dream of someone and the loss of that dream.  I can't ride by those places without feeling a pangs of sadness.  It seems that while the cities continue to grow, these out in the country places have died or are dieing slow deaths.  It is apparent even in the small towns of 400, 600, 1000, or 1400 that have derelict service stations and restaurants and whose public places are falling into ruin for lack of money and people to take care of them and to make them viable.

We are now about a day from our destination.  We have excellent bikes, good roads, a destintion, and the money to do it.  Thirty-eight years ago we had good bikes (for the time), a little bit of money, mediocre roads,and no particular destination and yet we all pulled it off, making places for ourselves in a province where we knew no one.  When I think back on that trip in the summer of 1973, it was the adventure of a lifetime for me.  This too is an adventure, but not quite of the same magnitude.

Right now I an sitting in a motel room in Espanola, about 65 kilometres west of Sudbury.  The air conditioner is wheezing away but making very little headway against the heat.  The temperature in the room right now is a humid 31 C.  After running for two hours the air conditioner has brought the temperature down 1 degree.  But that could just be the building cooling down.

Tonight Kerry called Jim Knight and we talked to him for a while.  We really had hoped that he would be able to make it but it wasn't to be.  And he would have been so happy to find all the Timmy Ho coffee shops across the prairies and Northern Ontario!  It was great to talk to him and fill him in a bit on the trip.

Tomorrow Kerry and I will go our separate ways at Sudbury.  He, south to Toronto and then to Guelph, and I will continue further east almost Ottawa until I backtrack to Perth somewhere around Almonte.  This has been a wonderful experience.  Getting together and retracing your steps almost forty years later with an old friend isn't an experience that many of us get to have.  For that I am thankful.

Ontario and Bad Weather

Just as yesterday began with lousy weather, so did today.  It was misty and cool and didn't get much better all day.  From Dryden to Ignace it was damp with one rain shower that lasted for about 5 kilometres.  Just enough for us to get wet.  We continued on to Uppsala where we decided to top up our gas before continuing on.  The gas station had pumps that I haven't seen for about thirty years and prices that I have never seen - ever.  High test gas was $1.669/litre, or about $7.50 for an old gallon.  Ten dollars bought me six litres of gas.  Kerry paid $1.549/litre for regular.

These pumps date from the 1960s or 70s.

$1.669 a litre!

This part of Ontario is amazingly similar for kilometre after kilometre of pink granite, evergreen trees, and bog and it can be mind numbing but the occasional Canadian Shield lake, which no matter how many see, are still beautiful.

Moving east Kerry spotted a dead moose which was being feasted upon by two vultures.  They must have felt like we would if we won the 6/49!  Apparently it was hit by a Kenworth truck.  The picture below should explain my detective work.

Vulture heaven!

The culprit is revealed!

In Thunder Bay after seeing Kakabeka Falls we stopped at the Terry Fox memorial near where he had to stop his run in 1980.  It is hard to believe that it has been more than thirty years since cancer claimed him.  It's a really powerful experience to stand at this memorial so close to where he had to end his run.

Kakabeka Falls

John at Kakabeka Falls near Thunder Bay.

John at the Terry Fox memorial.

Kerry at the Terry Fox memorial

Statue of Terry Fox

Lake Superior near Rossport, ON

The rest of the ride was quite usual except for the incredible red rocks near Lake Superior and the views we had as we passed close to the lake on the way to Terrace Bay.  Tonight it is raining and we're hoping that it is over by tomorrow.

Onward to Ontario

When we stepped outside this morning we were faced with low clouds and very light rain; the kind that makes the motorcycle seat and windshield wet but doesn't soak the rider.  Within 20 minutes the rain had stopped but the wind kept up from yesterday and continued all day.  The clouds were with us all morning and it felt that we were continually flirting with the possibility of rain.  In fact, Kerry wore his rain gear to appease the rain gods and it worked so well that he was able to put it away when we arrived in Brandon, MB.

Occasionally, but not very often, one gets to see and blindingly obvious example of things like love, thoughtfulness and the like. Today we saw a literal example of futility. This morning as we rode out of Moosomin, we saw a man with a power blower blowing the dust off the pavement in front of his gas pumps.  I'm certain that if he had thought it through, he might have realized that it was in Saskatchewan where the wind always blows and where it almost always carries dust with it, and gone on to spend his time doing something else.

The rain gods were happy as Kerry entered Manitoba.

John is glad to be ahead of the rain in Manitoba.

As we left Saskatchewan and entered Manitoba we began to see subtle changes in the land.  There were more stands of small trees along the edges of fields and around people's houses and barns.   And as we rode farther into Manitoba the trees began to become more widespread.  By the time we were to the east of Winnipeg they began to line the roads.  The land also changed from farmland to woodlands and we began to see the first outcroppings of the pink granite of the Canadian Shield.

Kerry counting railway cars at the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border

As we have crossed Canada from Kamloops to Winnipeg we were seldom out of sight of the CPR tracks.  Every day we have seen at least a twenty trains and perhaps even more.  The amount of cargo being moved across our country is staggering.  Taggers quite a while ago discovered the beauty of the flat surfaces of rail cars as their canvases and on this trip we have seen many examples of their 'art'.  Today's most striking sighting was the word 'SPERM' in colourful eight foot letters.  I suppose a statement was being made but whether it was wishful thinking or a statement of accomplishment we'll never know.

East of Winnipeg we stopped for lunch at 'Walker's World Famous Burgers and Bait Shop'.  It may be world famous to them but maybe not to others.  The burgers were great and we met a couple who rode in on a Honda Shadow and who were going to hike the West Coast Trail.  A cyclist dropped in looking for ice cream and was told he would have to ride five kilometres down the road to get it.  He had been on the road for 16 days from Vancouver and was already almost 2500 kilometres into his trip to St. John's Newfoundland. I hope he got his ice cream.  The place had a little pond with basking turtles there as well.

Walker's World Famous Burgers

Turtles at Walkers' Burgers

The Trans Canada Highway through Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, while showing its age in places, is a great highway and the speed limit is 110 kph most of the way.  It's a different story in Ontario.  Shortly after entering the province the road becomes a two lane secondary road with a speed limit of 90 kph.  With the distances people have to travel in this part of the province that road must really limit their travel and push people toward Winnipeg rather than to Thunder Bay.  It may also be a testament to the Ontario government's opinion of the drivers in the province.

John is welcomed to the land of 90 kph.

Kerry returns to Ontario

A stop beside Dixie Lake near Kenora

We started the day in Moosomin this morning and finished in Dryden tonight after riding almost 750 kilometres today.  With the reduced speed in Ontario it will be difficult to repeat that performance tomorrow but we hope to make it to Sault Ste. Marie before stopping tomorrow.  My hope is that each of us can make it to our destination some time on Sunday if the weather continues to hold. 

At the motel I met three guys who have been travelling from New York City on their bikes since June 18th.  Since then they have travelled to Alaska and back and the last four days are the only ones they have had without rain.  I have to admire their fortitude.  It makes our trip look puny.  They figure to have logged 9 000 miles or 15 000 kilometres before they get home.  Earlier I met several BC Forest Service firefighters who were staying in Dryden before going off to fight fires.  I mentioned my son's name to one of the guys who said that that he was from Williams Lake and thought he knew Ian.  I imagine Ian wishes he were here with them.

Finally, smells have been a bit of a theme of this blog for the past few days.  Today the smell of the day was that of the fresh turned black earth that a farmer was plowing just west of Winnipeg.  Not the delicate perfume of canola or alfalfa, but still beautiful in its own way.