Winter wonder

Bedeque Bay is frozen now. In places the icy sheen resembles a rink. The temperatures in the early part of last week in the high minus teens Celsius solidified the surface of the bay for this winter. The ducks are gone from the frozen stream to the mouth of the river at the head of the bay. The windchill with those temperatures created conditions for staying home using the treadmill. Our first day out on the boardwalk again was invigorating.

In addition, this past week brought back a flood of memories. My first homeroom class, a group of Grade 9s I had during my first year teaching, is having a reunion next year. I remember them fondly.

At 21, I was working in Buchans, Newfoundland, a community in the wilderness in the island’s centre. The one road to that community was 75 kilometres from the TransCanada Highway. It wasn’t a place you happened upon whilst going elsewhere. 

Buchans was a mining town, where men mined lead, copper, zinc, gold and silver for ASARCO, an America Company. The community was self contained, with great recreation facilities, a hospital, two schools and a teacher’s hostel. The town had company housing and a hostel ensured teachers always had a place to stay.

That first class was challenging because I was new to teaching and just seven years older than they were. However, I loved science and taught it with enthusiasm, including field trips and lab work with the class work. I enjoyed the work, that class and the community.

Those students will turn 65 next year. Good grief! Where did that time go? Some have grandchildren older than mine. Some have died. However, I can still see their faces at 15, with the curiosity and enthusiasm for life nurtured in that community.

After that first year, my fiancé acquired a job teaching there. We married that summer. Housing was hard to secure in the town, so we bought a mobile home and moved it there. Our daughter was born four years later and we lived there for ten years. 

Several years ago, I wrote a blog post about Buchans. I have included it below.

Winter Wonder

It was a calm, cloudless night; the sky was black except for the stars, millions of them. New moon meant the edge of the Milky Way was obvious in the blackness of the setting.

We had taken our snowmobiles across the street from our mobile home to the huge bog surrounding our Buchans home. We were prepared to boil the kettle, or in this case the old juice can, have a cup of switchel, plain black tea, over an open fire in the countryside.

We could see the lights of Buchans in the distance as we stopped to take in the view. Within a few minutes, Rick started a fire and added tea bags to the 'kettle' which by now contained a few twigs. The tea had a taste unique to the setting. The fire added to the beauty as sparks drifted upward, drawing the eye with them. Despite the bitter cold our little spot was cozy. The only things missing were the Northern Lights. However, sitting on the snowmobile seats there, I swear we could hear the earth hum.

We did this periodically, enjoying the time of year when the daylight left so early the night felt endless. When we went snowmobiling though, the nights weren't long enough to take in the beauty of our place in the universe.

Buchans was a place where you could enjoy nature in winter because it was so easy to access. We haven't been snowmobiling in years. Winter just isn't the same.

P. S.

The photos are of Bedeque Bay, PEI, last week.