Photo courtesy of Tourisme Îles de la Madeleine. Photographer M. Bonato

This Quebec Maritime story follows our British Columbia (BC) post on the Dogsled Mail Run. Each describes an unusual way that mail was delivered in Canada. In 2010, Canada Post issued two stamps commemorating these unique mail deliveries. I stumbled on both while researching dogsledding in Canada. Even though I was raised in Quebec, I’ve never been to Quebec’s Magdalen Islands  (aka Îles de la Madeleine), the site of the second unusual mail story .

Reproduction « ponchon » barrel at Musée de la Mer, on the Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St-Lawrence between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

It was winter 1910 when a telegraph cable stretching across the Gulf of the St. Lawrence broke and left the residents of Quebec’s Magdalen Islands completely cut off from civilization. Magdalen Islanders knew they had to come up with a way to deliver the mail but island fishing boats were deemed too dangerous to sail because of moving ice. That’s when local, Alcide J. Gaudet, came up with the idea of using an empty molasses barrel. Letters were placed in the barrel, a sail and rudder were added and they signed the barrel “Winter Magdalen Mail”. It was launched on February 2, 1910 and just over a week later, it washed up near Port Hastings, Nova Scotia. Murdoch McIsaac found the barrel and when he opened it, he discovered a note from the islanders requesting their mail be delivered so that’s what McIsaac did.

Although the molasses barrel has long since disappeared, one of its letters survived and is on display at the Magdalen Islands’  Musée de la Mer (Museum of the Sea). According to a Magdalen Islands blog, in the 1990s, a second group of islanders tried to recreate the barrel launch. Despite launching in similar weather, tides and currents, their barrel was lost at sea.

Photo courtesy of Tourisme Îles de la Madeleine. Photographer G. Theriault

Photo courtesy of Tourisme Îles de la Madeleine. Photographer M. Bonato

One of our Montreal friends, Steve, is a huge windsurfer/kiteboarder and heads to the islands every year. Canadian travel journalists, Katherine and Eric Fletcher are also big fans and include the Magdalen Islands in their Quebec Off the Beaten Path guidebook. Katharine also gave me a good travel tip. She suggested we drive to Prince Edward Island, hop on the Souris ferry, tour the Magdalens and then catch the ferry and return to central Canada via the St. Lawrence River. The photos on this Mountain Equipment Coop blog  have also whet our appetite. Magdalen Islands and Quebec Maritime tourism sites are informative and the staff I spoke to at both were helpful too.

I think it’s time for a visit.

Photo courtesy of Tourisme Îles de la Madeleine. Photographer M. Bonato

The Cariboo region of British Columbia may be the only place in the world where you can have a letter stamped “carried by dog sled”.

The 20th anniversary Dog Sled Mail Run is January 20-22, 2012. Photo by Thomas Drasdauskis, courtesy of Barkerville Image Bank

The Dogsled Mail Run, an annual Cariboo event, will celebrate its 20th anniversary January 20-22, 2012. Sledders sworn in as Canada Post mail carriers will carry close to 3,000 Mail Run envelopes by dogsled over the Gold Rush Trail, a former sled dog mail route. The Mail Run envelopes, which include a picture of a musher and dog team by a local artist, will be stamped at points along the trail and then delivered to 20 countries worldwide. Many envelopes will also carry a new Canada Post dogsled stamp issued in May 2011 to commemorate the history of the delivery of mail by dog team throughout Canada.

We’ve all heard about the “Pony Express” in the United States, but how many Canadians know that the arrival of a sled dog “packet” or a “batard”, a narrow 22 foot-long canoe paddled by six skilled Voyageurs, signaled “news” in Canada.  For isolated, lonely people in those early days, the arrival of mail was a huge event despite the fact that the news received was often already 12 months old.

The Stage Race on the Gold Rush Trail is a new addition to the 2012 Dogsled Mail Run. Mushers from all over will challenge themselves and their dogs in this event. Winners will take home real Cariboo gold bullion. Warren Palfrey, a local sled dog outfitter, is the race marshall. His great grandfather, Sam Hourie, delivered mail by dogsled during the Klondike Gold Rush.

A corner block of stamps from Canada Post

Jeffery Dinsdale, a Dogsled Mail Run volunteer, sled dog owner and local historian told me he and other volunteers gather all the envelopes for each Dogsled Mail Run. Each is hand-cancelled with three different cancellation stamps, then packaged for the three-day trip over the Gold Rush Trail route and collected for entry into the regular mail system at Barkerville, a famous Gold Rush town. Five envelopes traveling by dogsled at the 2012 Dogsled Mail Run will be ours. One is addressed to us. Four other envelopes will be sent to family members. Each carries the new Canada Post dogsled stamp. If you want to send a letter by dogsled, log on to http://www.dogsledmailrun.ca/  to find out how. Dogsled stamps are available from Canada Post.

2012 Dog Sled Mail Run envelope with stamps from Canada Post

Next week, we head to Canada’s east coast for another great mail story. Stay tuned.

Look what is all dressed up for the holidays!!! It was a crisp, cold December evening. We walked from a Sandy Hill B&B over to an Elgin Street bistro for a meal. After dinner, we took a camera and tripod over to Parliament Hill and snapped a bunch of pix including this one.

Happy Holidays CANADA!!

Recently we did some work for the good folks at Tourism New Brunswick and they tipped us off about a local treasure. Letang, New Brunswick, just north of Grand Manan Island on the Bay of Fundy is the home of Wolfhead Smokers, purveyors of fine smoked salmon products. So we called them up, ordered some fish, and set a date with a couple of our “foodie” friends for a maritime feast.

In 1981 George (Skip) and Karen Wolf started Jail Island Salmon, one of the first Atlantic salmon farms in North America. This company was the first Canadian salmon producer to market its fresh salmon under its own brand. In 1985 George and Karen started smoking some of their own salmon as a value added product. In 1998 they sold their shares in the farming operation, but retained the growing smoking division and renamed it Wolfhead Smokers.

The smokehouse is in the original Jail Island processing plant, located on a secluded cove off the Bay of Fundy in southwest New Brunswick. The salmon is cold smoked according to a traditional Scottish recipe. Taking their time, they start with premium fresh fillets which are dry salted and cured, then smoked very slowly at a low temperature before further curing. The result is a rich, buttery texture on the tongue and no strong salty or fishy flavours.

We also tried the “hot smoked” salmon, which is double smoked. Cracked pepper is sprinkled on the salt cured fillets before they are cold smoked. Then the temperature is turned up so that the fish is actually cooked as it is being smoked. The texture is firm, and the fish is moist, smoky and rich tasting. I took a private moment to savour this one and to recover from the exquisite sensory experience!

Wolfhead Smokers has been accused of adding a secret ingredient to make their products addictive. We were unable to confirm these assertions.

Most of the smoked salmon is shipped to fish markets and distributors in New Brunswick, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Toronto and can be found in specialty shops and fine restaurants. In 2007, NB Premier Shawn Graham hosted the Canadian Premiers’ Conference. He sent his invitations to each Canadian Premier inside a Wolfhead cedar gift box along with packages of smoked salmon.

For the past ten years, Wolfhead has participated in the annual World Wine & Food Expo in Moncton, NB, and 2011 will be their ninth straight year as the official smoked salmon supplier at the NB Spirit Festival in Fredericton.

Our delivery arrived by FedEx in an insulated box with frozen gel packs. Karen told us on the phone to try pairing the salmon with Glen Breton single malt whisky from Nova Scotia, so that’s what we did. She said that after they toured the distillery they tried Glen Breton with their smoked salmon and loved it. At our dinner, one of our dinner mates also brought a Cave de Hoen Heimberger Crémant d’Alsace, a French Brut Rosé which was very good, but you could just as easily pair it with a Niagara or British Columbia Brut if you wanted to go all-Canadian. As I expected, whether it was washed down with wine or whisky, there wasn’t a single morsel of salmon left when we were done.

If you order from Wolfhead, be sure to leave at least a week for delivery, more in the busy holiday season. They can be reached toll-free at 877-965-3432 or by email at orders@wolfheadsmokers.com.

Not too long after I wrote my Roadstories post about Soulpepper Theatre’s excellent production of Eric Peterson and John Grey’s “Billy Bishop Goes to War” describing the exploits of Canada’s famous First World War air ace, I learned that Canada also could boast of an air ace who was less well-known, but even more decorated than Bishop.

A Sopwith Camel from the 1914-1916 period

On September 22, 2011, in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery, the grandsons of William George Barker presided at the erection of a monument to this famous World War One flying ace. The monument describes him as “The most decorated war hero in the history of Canada, the British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations”. He had received a total of twelve First World War awards, including the Victoria Cross, among other English awards, as well as two medals from Italy and one from France. Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, David Onley and RCAF Lieutenant-General Andre Deschamps were present at the ceremony, which featured a fly-over of two vintage World War I aircraft, including a Sopwith Snipe, a favorite plane of Barker’s.

Photograph of Lieutenant Colonel William George Barker VC in interim RAF uniform which dates the photo to the period April 1918 to August 1919.

Major Barker was born on November 3, 1894 in a log farmhouse in Dauphin, Manitoba. This was still pioneer country at that time, and a sister later described Barker as an adventurous boy, given to taking risks and a great shot with a rifle who loved to ride out into the open country, often without waiting for the permission of his parents. He was in his final year of high school at Dauphin Collegiate when the First World War broke out. He volunteered as a trooper with the 1st Canadian Mounted Rifles and was sent to England and then to the trenches in France. He fought at Ypres, but, like Bishop and other flying aces, he seems to have tired of life in the trenches and volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps. By May, 1917, he was back in Europe as a flyer and an officer, and by August, 1917, he was wounded in an air fight and sent back to England to recover. A story is told that during this period, he disobeyed orders by conducting a display of low-level flying over Piccadilly Circus. It sounds like the type of thing that the population of war-time London would have loved more than his officers might have!

On his return to Europe, he was sent to Italy where he shot down many enemy planes. On one of his missions he and a fellow flyer destroyed a German airfield, and for this he apparently was reprimanded for exceeding orders and awarded a medal at the same time for the same expedition! On one of his missions he was severely wounded, and for the remainder of his life he suffered pain from shrapnel in his leg and had little use of his left arm because the elbow had been destroyed. When he was recovering in London from these injuries, he met Billy Bishop.

Sopwith Snipe flown by William George Barker

After the war Barker and Bishop worked together and formed several companies under names such as Bishop-Barker Aeroplanes Limited. Although these companies weren’t always successful, they were part of the early development of commercial flying services in Canada. Barker later married Billy Bishop’s cousin, Jean Kilbourn Smith.

In 1918, Barker flew at the Canadian National Exhibition, beginning an annual tradition that still draws large crowds to this day. He joined the newly-formed Canadian Air Force in 1922, became an officer and an active promoter of flying and what it could do for Canada. In 1927 Conn Smythe, who had also been a flyer in World War I, named Barker the first President of the newly-named Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team.

Barker also apparently continued to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Today we call this PTSD, and it is taken seriously as something that afflicts many war veterans and regarded as an illness that should be treated. After the First World War, it was called “shell-shock”, and the mode of the era seemed to be that a veteran should suck it up and get on with life. There was also perhaps less recognition in that era that a Manitoba farm boy could have risen to the heights of shooting down fifty enemy aircraft: flying was considered more of a “gentleman’s game”. This may explain why there was no headstone or mention of the number of enemy planes he had shot down.

He may also have had less fame than Bishop because he did not live as long. On March 12, 1930 Barker was demonstrating a new aircraft over the Ottawa River. A complex circular maneuver he was performing went out of control and he crashed onto the ice of the river and was killed. His death certainly did not pass unnoticed in his own time. At his funeral in Toronto there was an honor guard of 2,000 soldiers, including six Victoria Cross recipients. The U.S. Army sent an honor guard. 50,000 spectators lined the route to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, where his remains were interred in the crypt of his wife’s family, the Smiths. And there he remained until a September morning over eighty years later when a monument and a flyover would recognize his daring and courage from a long-ago war.

When I bought my poppy last week, I thought of Major Barker and wished his spirit continued joyous, daring flight.

Leslie Windsor

Trending on Twitter #canadianactionmovies

I’m not a big Twitter user, but my partner Judy is always on there doing something or other. If you are so inclined, you can follow her using the tab on the right side of this page. Below, you’ll find a list of the most recent (tongue-in-cheek) Canadian ‘action movies’. #CanadianActionMovies was a trend onTwitter for the better part of 48 hours this week. Who knew such a thriving ‘home-grown’ movie industry was lurking behind-the-desks of Canada’s tweeters.

Conan the Calgarian  – The Icewine Cometh  –  Never Ending Sorry  –  The Toques of Hazzard  –  Lord of the Rinks  –  The Manitoban Candidate  –  The Bacon Ultimatum  –  Slightly Annoyed Max  –  The Bourne Polite Request  –  Full Down-filled Jacket  –  Frostbite Hand Luke  –  Dude, Where’s my Chesterfield?  –  Don’t Fear the Beaver  –  Pearson: The Man, The Prize, The Airport  –  Politefellas  –  The DaVinci Postal Code  –  Glengarry Glenn Gould  –  Live Free or Hurry Hard  –  The Chronicles Of Sarnia  –  The Magnificent Group of Seven  –  The Hunt for Warm October  –  Black Goose Down  –  Harold and Kumar go to Whitehorse  –  Mutiny on the Mountie  –  Beaver Dam Busters  –  A Mansbridge Too Far  –  Big Trouble In Little Regina  –  The Codfather  –  The Eh Team  –  Hockey Diaries  –  Legal Weapon

If you are confused by any of these Canadian cultural references, post a question in the comments and we will do our best to enlighten you. Until then, keep your stick on the ice.

In Canada, it’s darker at this time of year. There are fewer waking hours and dusk and darkness are often inhabited by unexplained events and ghostly phenomena. We are not a superstitious people, not susceptable to assumptions of supernatural causation. But facts are facts, and we are a curious bunch. So every year at about this time we venture out, often by candlelight, in search of the truth that awaits us in the cold darkness…

The Haunted Stirling Mansion, home of Fright Night

European settlement in Nova Scotia dates back to the seventeenth century. In Canadian time, that’s a lot of history. @AuthenticCoast  and @travelbyterry have been tweeting me about an interesting Nova Scotia haunt. The DesBarres Manor Inn was built in 1837 in the seaside village of Guysborough on Nova Scotia’s eastern shore for Supreme Court Justice, W.F. DesBarres. Justice Debarres was the grandson of J.W.F. Desbarres, a military man and mapmaker who accompanied Major-General James Wolfe at the great battle on the Plains of Abraham. It is rumoured that Wolfe gave DesBarres his pocket watch at the moment of his death, and that it hung in the Manor for many years. Spooky!

Surrounding the Plains of Abraham is Québec City. As night falls, Ghost Tours of Québec guide visitors through the cobble stone streets and ancient buildings of the old city, regaling them with tales of murders, executions, mysterious sightings, tragedies and hauntings.

Mon Dieu! Tours are in English and French.

In Ontario (known before confederation as Upper Canada), Fort George is regarded by many as the most haunted place in Canada. It was headquarters for the British military in Niagara during the War of 1812, and the scene of much blood, death and suffering. Many soldiers and civilians alike are still buried on the grounds of the fort. Some people say that distant cries can still be heard there.

If you dare to set foot in the fort on a weekend in October, check out the Friends of Fort George Halloween ghost tour. This two-hour guided candlelit walking tour is conducted by Ghost Tours of Niagara.

In the Canadian Badlands of southeastern Alberta, ghost tours and other paranormal events are wafting through the mist. The Haunted Atlas Coal Mine has BIG BOO and LITTLE BOO tours into the darkest corners of the abandoned coal mine. The Medalta Ghost Hunt is a nocturnal tour through a 100 year old pottery factory led by the Medicine Hat Paranormal Investigation team. And in the normally peaceful village of Stirling, Alberta, the Haunted Stirling Mansion is one of the best-produced haunted houses I have seen anywhere in Canada.

On Twitter, the Stanley Park Hallowe’en Ghost Train is known as @Ghost_TrainYVR. This year’s theme is Circus of Disaster. @Ghost_TrainYVR has been tweeting little teasers about this year’s event. Example: “The 1st circus in Ancient Rome was called the ‘Circus Maximus’ & more than 200-thousand people came to watch the show” Here’s a review of this year’s ghost train from the Georgia Straight, a popular Vancouver area media outlet.

If you know of a ghost tour or spooky Canadian factoid, please share it with us in the comments below.

It’s the first game of the new hockey season this Thursday (Oct. 6, 2011) and my beloved Habs (Montreal Canadiens) are in town to face their rival, the Toronto Maple Leafs. A perfect time to talk about a new hockey hang out.

“Dave’s Organic Burger” at Shakey’s in Toronto

Shakey’s is west of Runnymede Avenue on the south side of Bloor, in Toronto’s Bloor West Village, a ‘hood’ with deep European roots. More bistro than sports bar, what drew my attention to Shakey’s is its Toronto Maple Leafs history, decent food, bounty of flat-screen TVs, and its owners’ family connection to Toronto’s hospitality industry. All a good fit for a Roadstories post about people, places and things.

Shakey was Mike Walton’s nickname. Walton played centre for the Toronto Maple Leafs when the team won its last Stanley Cup (way back in 1967). When Walton retired from hockey he opened Shakey’s Original Bar & Grill, one of the first bars in the village, which for many years, ran dry.

Rob Lundy owns present-day Shakey’s with his brother Chris, Shakey’s chef. Their maternal grandfather once owned one of Toronto’s most famous clubs, the Silver Dollar. He also turned the Stardust Hotel and Lounge into the original Drake Hotel back in 1949.

The Lundy brothers have not forgotten Shakey’s hockey roots. Lots of Leaf memorabilia here. Black and white photos of early Leaf glory days hang on the walls. There’s the 1967 Maple Leaf Stanley Cup winners parading down Yonge Street and Walton squaring off with Gordie Howe at the old Maple Leaf Gardens. Even a couple of Habs photos hang by the entrance, a nod to Hab fans in Toronto, I guess.

Then there’s the food. The Lundy brothers have created a place that attracts its fair share of sports fans but not exclusively. Last week, more women than men were having lunch when I was there and when I went back for pictures, a dad and his two daughters and a young couple with an infant were among those ordering dinner. Chris, who trained at Vancouver’s Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts and worked at Toronto’s Crush Wine Bar, the former Lemon Meringue and Montreal’s Garçon and Club 357c , told me his biggest challenge was getting to know his customer base. Initially, he wanted a finer dining menu but he quickly realized that his best plan was still offer pub fare. The big difference is that just about everything here is now made from scratch or sourced from the village, including what you see on the kids’ menu. We tried Dave’s Organic Burger washed down with a Mill Street draft. Made with Rowe Farms organic ground beef, It came highly recommended and didn’t disapppoint. Other big sellers include Chris’s homemade fried chicken, fish and chips, nachos, and his soups which are mostly vegan. Fish for the fish and chips comes from a local Bloor West Village supplier and outside of the Polish pickles supplied by a Polish shop on Bloor West, most condiments, including the mayonnaise, are made in-house.

Thursday’s game will be televised. The puck drops at 7pm. The beer is sure to be flowing and the burgers flying off the grill at Shakey’s.

Got a favourite place in your part of the country to watch Canada’s national game? We’d love to hear from you. Go Habs Go!

Every fall, millions of birds, butterflies and dragonflies from across North America head south for winter. Along the north shore of Lake Erie in Ontario, Canada, these include birds of prey. Nineteen species of hawks, falcons, eagles and vultures have been recorded migrating past here. One of the best places to view them in fall is at Port Burwell Provincial Park, two hours southwest of Toronto and an hour south of London, Ontario.

Fall mornings are best – just after dawn until mid-morning and especially after a cold front has rolled through. That’s when park visitors gather on the beach or in the beach parking lots to watch the migration. Some days, the birds pass by at tree-top level. Other days, they are high in the sky. On a good day and with a pair of binoculars, you’ll see birds everywhere.

The bulk of Broad-winged Hawks pass through in mid September but the month of October produces the highest number of species on any given day. Sightings of ten or more species of hawks a day are not unusual. Peregrine Falcons peak in early October, Turkey Vultures in mid-month and Red-shouldered Hawks in late October. The massive Red-tailed Hawk migration occurs later, in early November, when thousands fly over daily. Bald Eagles can be seen any time during the fall migration period from August to December. In December, heavy snowfalls in the north bring the last of the migrants through, including Northern Harriers.

Turkey vultures scouring the ground for fresh carcasses – a close look at two of the carrion (meat)-eating raptors. Turkey vultures are often identified by their conspicuous red heads, bare of any feathers. Researchers believe their bald heads help keep them clean as they dig through their meals – photo courtesy of Ontario Parks

A free brochure called Marvels of Migration is available from the Port Burwell Provincial Park office at the park entrance. It describes the different species and lists their silhouettes to help you identify them in flight.

Milder fall temperatures in southwestern Ontario attract campers to provincial parks along the Lake Erie and Lake Huron shorelines. One of the best group campsites in Ontario’s provincial park system is found at Port Burwell Provincial Park. Staff call #402 “the site with the million dollar view”. To reserve a group camp site, contact the park directly. You don’t have to camp to enjoy the fall migration though. Park day passes are available too.

The United Nations (UN) has declared 2011-2012 the International Year of the Bat, so with Halloween just around the corner, I wanted to do this post.

Bats are the world’s most misunderstood creatures. For centuries, they’ve been associated with black magic, witchcraft and vampire folklore. But bats are in real trouble right now and desperately need our help to survive.

In North America, White-nose Syndrome (WNS) has devastated bat populations. In other parts of the world, bat habitats are disappearing. The United Nations and bat conservation groups around the world are anxious to get the word out that we need bats for a healthy world. Bats pollinate plants and disperse seed and they help control pests, with some eating half their weight in insects every night.

To understand bats better,  the UN has set up a Year of the Bat website.

Just ten minutes on YearoftheBat.org and its links and I discovered all kinds of interesting facts and figures about bats. The world’s only flying mammals represent 1200 species of bat. That’s one-fifth of all mammal species on the planet. The smallest is the Bumblebee bat, weighing in at less than a penny. The largest is the Giant Flying Fox with a wingspan of up to six feet. The Little Brown which is native to many parts of Canada and the US, eats up to 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in an hour. The Little Brown is the bat that has been most severely affected by WNS.

Here are a couple of other things I learned from YearoftheBat.org:

Golden Crowned Fruit Bat – a type of Flying Fox mega bat

Bats often sing to attract a mate or they do a fancy wing display.

Bats live long lives – sometimes twenty years or more and they only have one pup a year. Pups are suckled by their mothers until they are old enough to fly.

I found out how to remove a bat safely and humanely from a home:  http://www.batcon.org/index.php/bats-a-people/removing-a-bat.html And, I found instructions on how to build a bat house. http://www.batcon.org/index.php/get-involved/install-a-bat-house.html These houses really do work. My mother had bats roosting between the frame and siding of her home and a bat house that we posted on a nearby cedar tree eliminated the problem.

In Canada, many Ontario Parks have bat awareness as part of their natural heritage education programming. At Rock Point Provincial Park on Lake Erie, bats are a part of the park’s summer activities. At The Pinery, a provincial park on Lake Huron, the park’s Halloween weekend always includes a Build your own Bat House session hosted by Friends of the Pinery park volunteers. This year, the Halloween weekend takes place October 22-23, 2011. Reservations are required.