A love letter to Bathurst

December 3, 2024December 3, 2024 / Greg / Leave a comment

On May 24th of this year, I stood in the driveway of what was my parents’ house, miraculously closed the tailgate of a Tetris-like packed SUV and climbed behind the wheel. In the passenger seat was my wife who had so expertly packed the car as full as it would go with as many of an assortment of items of what remained from the lives of my mom and dad. Their respective lives had both ended so abruptly, and without warning, over the previous month and a half. I remember glancing over at my wife, our newly inherited dog on her lap, putting the car in reverse and taking one last look at a house we had emptied and packed and organized for sale in just a couple of short weeks, and if I squinted, I’m sure I would have seen ghosts of my parents’ lives… at least the parts I saw on my visits to Bathurst.

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A perfect script

August 12, 2022August 12, 2022 / Greg / Leave a comment

Visits back to see my parents in northern New Brunswick follow a familiar and comfortable script now. A long three hop flight journey across the country. Lots of laughter and catching up. Visiting some favourite craft beer bars with dad. Eating some delicious food. Then some tearful goodbyes followed by the reverse of that long three hop flight journey. Even for a short vacation the travel hassles are worth it to see my folks and to get a greeting like this from their dog, Tia.

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Summer patio hopping

May 31, 2022May 30, 2022 / Greg / Leave a comment

My three week summer vacation last year in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia meant there would be ample opportunity to sample liberally from some of the finest craft beers those two provinces have. As the pandemic was still swirling and my comfort with eating or drinking indoors was still at a low point, this craft beer exploration became something of a patio hopping experience. That’s usually difficult to pull off in rainy Atlantic Canada, but we got almost a completely perfect three weeks of weather. I wasted no time visiting an old favourite in Nackawic, my wife’s hometown. This is a taproom that just feels comfortable to me. Big Axe Brewery is located in a beautiful log constructed building just down the street from the world’s largest axe (hence, the brewery’s name).

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A long overdue visit, part 3

May 8, 2022 / Greg / Leave a comment

After a wonderful week in northern New Brunswick with my mom and dad, and a week rediscovering our hometown of Halifax with my wife’s brother, wife and kids, our summer reunion tour of 2021 returned back to New Brunswick for some time with my wife’s parents. A brief pause here for a couple of quirks about our respective experiences living most of our lives in Atlantic Canada. I have never been around the Cabot Trail (that will have to be rectified on a trip back to Nova Scotia at some point) and my wife had never visited the Hopewell Rocks. We decided to tick that one off her list by visiting on a short detour on the way from Halifax to her old hometown of Nackawic.

We checked the tide tables to ensure we planned our visit to coincide with when we could walk out on the floor of the Bay of Funday. We arrived right on schedule for low tide and got a good dose of weather luck with a stunning late summer afternoon to do some exploring.

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A long overdue visit, part 1

January 27, 2022January 24, 2022 / Greg / 2 Comments

When we moved to Saskatoon, we consoled ourselves that we could always overcome the occasional bout of homesickness with an overpriced airline ticket and be back east the next day. Now looking back on that thinking almost two years into a global pandemic, I long for the ability to plan trips and visits without concern for testing, isolation rules or carrying a virus to people I love. While all of that will be the reality for some time to come, the summer of 2021 will be a time I’ll look back on as a joyful return to our old stomping grounds to spend time with family around the Maritimes.

This was a trip in three parts. Part one, with my folks in northern New Brunswick. Part two, with my wife’s brother and kids in our old hometown of Halifax. And part three, with my wife’s folks and extended family in west/central New Brunswick. Feeling like a complete travel newbie from the longest separation from air travel in my life, we excitedly, and with some trepidation, hopped on our flights back east with our masks hiding ear to ear smiles.

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Looking back on 2021

December 31, 2021February 3, 2022 / Greg / Leave a comment

While my hopes might have been higher for more travel in 2021, I finally made it back out east to visit family I hadn’t seen in close to two years. That three week summer trip, the first time in my career I have ever taken three consecutive weeks off, was a revelation. Part reunion tour with lots of hugs and stories to share with family and part vacation with a suddenly fresh set of eyes for places that now feel less like home after so long living, and hunkering down in Saskatoon.

Most of my favourite travel memories this past year are from that three week trip back to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but I will be liberal with the term “travel” as a few of my favourite memories in 2021 were about other forms of escape or diversion during the third and fourth waves of a pandemic that hit Saskatchewan very hard. So here they are in no particular order, my favourite travel memories and moments of 2021.

(1) Beers with Dad – It had been far too long since Dad and I had just had a good hang at my favourite craft brewery in Bathurst. On a steaming hot August day, we enjoyed a couple of our favourite beers (mine, Four Rivers Brewery’s amazing Havre St. Pierre, a medal winning amber ale that I wish I could have a stash of back home in Saskatoon) and chatted an afternoon away.

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Until the next visit…

August 3, 2020August 3, 2020 / Greg / Leave a comment

When I moved away from the east coast more than four years ago, there was comfort in knowing that family back east were just a day and an overpriced airline ticket away. Now in pandemic times and with the borders to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia remaining effectively closed, I haven’t been back to visit family since late fall last year. I’m sitting on a host of Air Canada flight credits for trips that were cancelled with no prognosis on when I’ll be able to use them. Even worse, the small airport in my parents’ home town of Bathurst was taken off of Air Canada’s roster of places they fly, meaning this view I had on landing there last November is something I may never see again.

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Seventh honeymoon

September 30, 2019October 1, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

Since getting married six years ago, my wife and I have kept up a tradition of taking a “honeymoon” each year. Some have been a bit more exotic like our first trip to Boston or our actual honeymoon to Puerto Rico, and a few have been to make sure the tradition stayed alive. “Honeymoon in Regina”, even for a Riders game, just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

We decided to celebrate our sixth anniversary by heading back east to New Brunswick to spend a week with our family. With my wife’s family mostly in the southwest part of the province, and my mom and dad up in the northeast, we had to split up for a few days (not sounding too honeymoon-ish, is it?). Upon getting a good night’s sleep in Nackawic after landing in Fredericton on the first evening, I drove across the province to Beresford to meet up with my parents and their dog, Tia.

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Snowbanks for miles

July 29, 2019July 29, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

People in Saskatchewan, at least around Saskatoon, have no idea what a lot of snow looks like. Snowbank size is relative, but when I visited my mom and dad in northern New Brunswick in March after an epic winter, there was no question who should have had a licence to say something negative about their winter.

Landing in Bathurst, I was immediately taken by the amount of snow on the ground. Driving on the highway from the airport into town was like driving down tunnels of snow. Even after about a week of melting, here’s what the snowbanks in my parents’ driveway looked like.

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Memories of New Brunswick

October 20, 2018November 12, 2018 / Greg / Leave a comment

Beresford, New Brunswick is a long, long way from Saskatoon. Three flights across the country gave me a lot of time to think about the fact that I’d be visiting the new home of my parents for the first time a few months after they moved away from what was our family home just outside of Halifax. While this was first and foremost a visit to catch up, it was also a visit to check in and see how they were doing in New Brunswick and to visit an area I hadn’t seen in close to twenty years.

Shortly after getting off the plane and reuniting with Mom and Dad, I got to catch up with the other family member that had made the move… Tia. Good dog!