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A Rose for the TransCanada

by Gregory Betts

Transcryption

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TransCreation

I was born in Vancouver 1975, well Kits (zip zip, no quips, 1975! before the razzle-dazzle and lux), on E 35th Ave. My Maritime folks, from New Brunswick and New Glasgow, drove 5, 530 cramped km, vagabonds buzzing over rockies, prairies, wilderness, and francophonia for weddings, peekaboo visits. A quick 267 km for Nova Scotia holidays. The happiness of seeing a dizzying set of cousins, dozens of aunts, uncles, and grandfolk. We’d go on pilgrimages: Halifax – Pictou – Moncton – Toney River – Port Hawkesbury – Baddeck. Quality family experiences with excess bubblegum, jibberish, someone’s songbook and lilted assurances.

Come, deskbound jockos, maddened in the dungeons of business presidiums, come on a moonbeam while I compose pioneering chimeras to the unvoicing ribbon, transcanadian ashphalt.

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Such quests in 1975 would have looked like: quiet coffee, quick, slow, begin early on W4th - W6th - W2nd - 1A (Main hempshops) – join HWY 7A – 63 km to 7 – Mission 13km – 1 for Chilliwack – Hope – zip on 3, about 200 km – go 316 km to Olalla, join 97 – Summerland – Vernon (97 becomes 97E) – Solsqua (Sicamous) becomes 1 – just buzz Revelstoke – jut in Hamber Provincial Park (avoiding Glacier Park exit) – finally Yoho – reach Alberta in Lake Louise (zoom zoom — 808 kms from drizzled Vangroovie!). I remember quiet rams, quick mapgies, roadside cherries and buzzards, piss cans, maybe some grizzlies, ducks. Ducks? Quack quack, might have been road dozing.

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Come, oh bibliophile spacemen, quit being fuzzy – on 1 – Banff – Canmore – Seebe – Morley – Calgary (blizzards every month) – Cluny – Gleichen – Bassano (named for a possible maker of Shakespeare’s works, lovely Amelia) – Brooks – Lake Newell – Suffield – Redcliff – Medicine Hat (whizz – now 387 kms past Exshaw!) – Seven Persons – Irvine – Walsh. Now, just a few clicks – Saskatchewan, follow 1 – Maple Creek – Swift Current – Moose Jaw – Regina – Qu’appelle – Grenfell – Burrows – over yon Manitoba – Griswold, jag north before Brandon – Garberry – jolly Portage La Prairie.

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Swoop Winnipeg on 1, dazzled by the quick spectacle of city space following unbroken prairie – Beausejour – Whiteshell Forest Reserve – Ontario – McMunn (1 becomes 17) – Finlay, onto 11/17 – Oxdrift – Thunder Bay, where T. Fox jogged, called it quits.

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Check off Dublin, go on 17 – Chapleau (smooch a moose) – Sault St. Marie – Deep River – Oja, across Quyon – Ottawa. Choose 17, which we didn’t, or stick on 16 – 2, which became ye grande 401, the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway – 2 in Quebec which swells over Montreal goddesses (not quick).

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Above la belle l’eau on 2 til Trois-Riviere, else follow 9 to 13/20 – 20 – Saint-Leonard-d’Aston (Centre-du-Quebec), when 20 becomes 5 and goes quick – Plessisville – la grande ville du Québec. Just follow 2 on the lower side – have a noon sun snooze in le quietude of Ste. Anne-de-la-Pocatière, photo jewel of the whole thing. Kamouraksa – Riviere-du-Loup, then (boohoo) go downhill – New Brunswick.

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Quirky fun begins in Edmunston, and by fun I mean dizzying mind coldness – pass the lost Republic – Fredericton, where things pick up – Moncton. Don’t be excited by Magnetic Hill (zzzzzzz), just go on. No paparazzo here, just obsessed drunks, EI embezzlers, hasheesh goons, and hegemonic tourists stopping to pick up jujubes and bubblegum, take a whizz. Just jokes, folks! (Srsly, just go. Quickly.)

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My Grampie lived in quaint Riverview, which is just a village with, oh I don’t know, a cool videostore and a soccer pitch with a beat-up fence. Some quirk, just no pizzazz. He grew something for each of his dozens of grandkids (a beech for me, still standing). Bruns has a divided highway now (woohoo!). Back then we came in dusk as local gas stations closed, pensive and worried, following just visible gullies on either side of lumber roads in densest, murky forests, would escape from the 2 and fall into Gramp’s house on Montgomery for a couple of nights. 11 swings up passed Breau Village – hodgepodge Rexton – Richibucto – Bathurst – Chaleur Beach. I spent some time relaxing in Shippigan (hooch) – Pokemouch (booze) – Lozier (cheese) – the lovely village of Sheila with its quartz quay fit for the Queen.

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Come back down in Moncton – 132 or 115 (Elmwood Dr, see buzzing besmoked teens in Hal Betts Park), fixed for the final leg of the journey. Just get back on 2 for 51 km – Sackville – Nova Scotia (2 becomes 2/4, like the weekend) – 2 – 4 cuts up coast for a quiet drive of Pugwash – Fox Harbour – Lazy Pond – or quicker, Oxford – Jersey – Londonderry – Glenholme – Crowes Milles (4 becomes 2/4) – hop on to Onslow.

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Often, we exit the T.C. zip to Toney on 4 via New Glasgow – lovable Pictou – Tatamagouche (a quaint, old French port) – Halifax (why wouldn’t you go to shop Halifax?) – speed pass Stewiake – Shubenacadie –Bedford – follow Lakeside – Mt. Uniacke – Goffs – Head of Chezzetcook (Musquodoboit Harbour). Don’t even need to make Lunenburg to catch a good slice of sogged Maritime culture. Ships, boffo food, fish, docks, buoys, fezed chefs, quays, bookshops, chips, and fog. Lovely.

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It seems cliche but do go by Peggy’s Cove’s. My cousin designed the new hightop boardwalk, and we are all some proud. Back now for Sydney, where our quest began, a true Old Country for some of us jinxed Gaelic crofters.

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Now, go on back to the island-on-a-stick and spend a night in Charlottetown, follow 3 – 4 – 1 – 7 – 13 – 10 – 14 – Cardigan – Summerside – Malpeque. The best quality beach in the country is Cavendish. Pick up a snazzy quilt in Green Gables. Newfoundland? Well, you’ll need a ship. Speed back to Sydney’s slow ferry for Port aux Basques by Ireland’s Eye (across from British Harbour). Piles of scenic routes through Newfoundland, yet I’ve never been.

I have lived in Vancouver, Victoria (married by the beaches of Elk Lake, on an organic farm under cathedral Western Red Cedar), Prince George (boo homophobes), housed with Derek Beaulieu in Calgary (quietly hoping for a holiday in Banff), been often at Lisa’s farm by quaint Waterton Lakes, researched Riel (and MacDonald’s genocide) in Frog Lake (where Quinn was killed), and Batoche (where his doomed rebellion was quelled), extended the psychedelic research of Humphry Osmond everywhere (dosed cosmos), studied French for 5 weeks at the College in Bonaventure (near the tumble-down cathedral where Riel is buried, where I first saw northern lights), delved long hours in Brooker archives in UofM. Boozed on befogged Lake Winnipeg. I grew up in sheepdog Willowdale (Mom’s home), boffed downtown TO (where my wee siblings were born), camped in deep Georgian Bay (on Beausoleil Island, a rattlesnake preserve – perfect for kids), moved to Hamilton, Kingston, and St. Cats (where my children were born), recorded in Montreal (with Hallie Siegel), cheered the Habs (with Arnie McBay), opposed the government in Quebec in 2001 (with Lisa, but we lodged in Levis). Still feel my obsessed soul jump in Rivière-du-Loup; like a question in a quiz, but here the answer is oceanic. Visible on the T.C., a park in Moncton’s named for Grampie Hal, Harold, Dad’s middle name (whose name became middle of my oldest brother). I came of age in Toney River, surfside, cross from demoded PEI. It is my mind-fogged home. Speechifies I, I speechless become decomposed. Once, out drinking with a prof in Halifax, I walked to my Uncle’s home on Oakland. Some beseemed voice called me from somewhere – another cousin, asking me over to quaff a quick rum. My second brother was born in Port Hawkesbury.

My people reached Pictou in 1773, before highways, and fanned across the Maritimes, ON (hope), PQ (peeve), AB (jobs), BC (hippies). We come back each year in Toney River, a village of 374 folks (including 74 possessive family on a sizzling day). On the beach by the fishing wharf, we sing old hobo songs by a bonfire like “Fire’s Burning”, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” (a cairn to Culloden lies 72.2 km down the beach in Knoydart, halfway to Cape Breton), and Kate McKinnon’s “Farewell to Nova Scotia.” I have sung “the stars on the river, they sparkle and spin, and I wish I was with them again,” walked to gaze mooneyed at stars sparkling on the river, felt the longing kingships, and heard the calling to come back. I move possessed.

My ancestors walked these woods on lonely paths that became roads, eventually highways reaching over a continent as big as dreams.

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A Rose for the TransCanada is out of print from The Blasted Tree Store

Featured by The Blasted Tree: June 30, 2022

Gregory Betts

Contributing Author