Giant axe made road trip memorable
In 1992, which was the 125th anniversary of Confederation — and next year will be the 150th and where did the time go? — I produced what I still consider to be my best journalism: an essay on our country and what it means to be a Canadian and a list of the 125 neatest things about this place that you would never find in the tourist brochures.
The essay was from the heart. The list — well, that was something else. This is before email, so I had to write letters to friends from one end of the country to the other, asking them to suggest 25 great things about the people, places and things in their province and communities that most people didn’t know about. Everyone accepted the assignment with gusto and I soon had more than I knew what to do with.
I would make one list and then I’d throw it out because there was too much Ontario, or Maritimes, or West Coast.
It must have taken me four or five cracks to get that list down to 200 and then the real work began: selecting the top 125. That was hard. One time (and I’m not making this up), I put five suggestions on a dart board and had my wife blindfold me and point me in the general direction of the target. I tossed a dart and it landed on one of the choices and so it made the cut and the other four went into the wastebasket. No, beer was not involved.
Here are four examples from that list:
The Medicine Hat Exhibition and Stampede in July. Forget the commercialized Calgary Stampede; this is the real deal. Parades, cotton candy, stock show and rodeo.
The annual strawberry social at the home of P.E.I. premier Joe Ghiz. Early in the strawberry season, the Ghiz household invites everybody on the island to drop by for tea and strawberries. Just about everybody does.
The Oak Hammock Marsh in Manitoba, where millions of migratory birds stop for a rest every spring and fall.
Philip MacIntyre, of Baddeck, N.S. He helped build the Seal Island Bridge in Cape Breton. He was admiring his handiwork one night. When he leaned over to get a better look, he lost his teeth in Bras d’Or Lake. A scuba diver retrieved them. His pals prepared a plaque to mark the spot, but a Nova Scotia bureaucrat with no sense of humour refused to let them put it up.
That list — it and the essay took up most of the June 27, 1992, issue of the (Kingston) Whig-Standard Magazine, where I was employed at the time (July 1 being a Wednesday that year) — was a hit from coast-tocoast. The Toronto Star devoted its entire Travel section to it. The Vancouver Sun had a small section that week, so edited it down to 75 of the neatest things, which kind of defeated the purpose, but what the heck, it made it into the West Coast’s biggest newspaper.
I was reminded of that list — and of Canada’s 150th birthday coming up next year — while on a motor trip last week to New Glasgow, N.S., and back. One day, I needed gas and there was an Irving sign on the Trans-Canada in New Brunswick near Fredericton advertising fuel and Subway sandwiches, so I turned off.
Now, those of us in central Canada are very used to finding an OnRoute every 70 or 80 kilometres along the 401where there’s gasoline, a Tims, KFC or Burger King (or A&W, or McDonalds) and a gift shop. There certainly are stops like that in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec, but not this one.
I had to drive quite a distance off the highway to find this particular place but boy, am I ever glad I did because we discovered one of those hidden gems that, if I was making one of my “neatest things” list, would be right up near the top.
Did you know that the community of Nackawic, N.B., is the home of the World’s Largest Axe? Well, now you do. It was erected in 1991 (I will have to speak sternly to my New Brunswick correspondent of 1992 for having missed this gem) “to symbolize the importance of the forest industry past, present and future to the town of Nackawic and the province of New Brunswick.”
It is huge. My 2-year-old grandson, Remy Watson, was dwarfed by it. (His father, Lee, and mother — my daughter, Carolina — were with me.) It stands in a lovely park setting near the east bank of the Saint John River, just down the hill from the town arena. A Canadian flag flies beside it. There is a plaque explaining everything. Who knew? As we continue through this glorious summer of 2016, and we go on vacation with our kids to the cottage, or on a road trip somewhere, keep an eye out because there are all sorts of these hidden gems everywhere. We don’t make a big deal out of them most of the time, but we should because they are so Canadian.
I mean, where else would you find a giant axe? nmcdonald@thestar.ca