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On Thursday David left to attend Youth Forum at the United Church Maritime Conference at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. Several other members of the church Youth Group also attended. This was David's second year. He arrived back home again this afternoon. Having missed some school last week as well, not to mention the week in Cuba, he is going to have to work hard at school the next week or two to stay on top of things.
James also missed school on Friday, going with his Cub Pack on a camping trip to Kejimkujik Park. They took along a trailer full of bikes as well as all their camping gear and a ton of food. The weather was poor for the first night but cleared on Saturday allowing them to go canoeing and biking. Apart from the bugs, which are always bad at this time of year, it seems to have been a very successful trip.
After dropping James off with the Cub leaders, Ann picked up Ingrid and they went down to Ingrid's cottage outside Lunenburg. They had lunch at the Knot Pub in Lunenburg, then played nine holes of golf at the Bluenose Golf Club (Ann's second round ever).
Yesterday morning I slept late after a fairly late night on Friday. Ann and Emily went shopping and Katy was at work, so I was all alone (David was still at Youth Forum and James camping). All of a sudden there was a most horrendous racket from the kitchen and dining room. I got up quickly to investigate and found Ginger careening around the rooms with an empty bag of bird seed firmly attached over his head. He couldn't see a thing but was completely freaked out, running everywhere, banging into furniture and knocking things over. I eventually caught him and removed the bag, after which he immediately disappeared. I later found him curled up among the shoes in the bottom of the cupboard in our office. If past experience is anything to go by, he is unlikely to learn from his mistake.
On Saturday Emily went with the Girl Guides to a Fun Day at the Anglican Church. There were several other Guide, Brownie and Spark troops there as well. In the end Emily was disappointed claiming that it wasn't really that much fun. In the afternoon she had her friend Nicholas over to play to make up for it.
On Saturday evening Ann, Katy, Emily and I went to Carl and Roxanne's, across the street. Many of our other neighbours were also invited. The main purpose was too Oooh and Aaah over the renovations they have done to their house over the winter.
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On Thursday afternoon David left to go to Acadia for a conference of the Nova Scotia Secondary Students Association, an organization run by students for students and designed to promote leadership skills. The theme of the conference was EDGE: every day grab an experience. As far as I can make out (David being such a communicative fellow) they spent most of the time playing games of various kinds and attending workshops. He arrived back on Sunday afternoon.
On Saturday morning Ann, James and I went with Emily, her friend Keara and Keara's parents to participate in the Blunenose Youth Run around Citadel Hill and the Commons in Halifax. Emily and Keara went as part of their Girl Guide troop, but in the end only one other girl from the troop showed up. The 4.2 km run, associated with the Bluenose Marathon which was held on Sunday, is intended to get school-age kids interested in running. This year around 2500 kids participated along with various adult chaperones. Our whole party participated except for myself, self-delegated to take photos instead. Luckily it was a gorgeous day and everyone made it around the course with relative ease. Afterwards we stopped in at the Starr Bakery in Dartmouth for coffee and treats.
On Saturday afternoon Emily went around the corrner to her friend Rachel's birthday party while Rachel's brother Max came to our house to play with James. In the evening James was invited to another friend's for a sleepover. By Sunday afternoon he was completely worn out.
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On Wednesday I took the day off work and Ann, Mum and I went to the Maritime Museum in Halifax. One of the curators gave us a tour of the exhibition on marine disasters. He was very enthusiastic and told us lots of "wonderful stories" of shipwrecks, mutinies, pillaging and plundering. In his defence, he did like to emphasize the heroic aspects of each disaster. After the tour we had lunch at The Old Triangle, an Irish pub just across the street from the museum. Then we went to Pier 21 where we had just enough energy to watch the multi-media show before coming home.
On Saturday Mum and I drove Katy up to Acadia to see her beau, Ben, as it was his birthday. Katy, Ben and his flatmate Jarek gave Mum and me a tour of the campus. It was a gorgeous day, so it was pleasant just to wander about and admire the view over Blomidon and the Minas Basin. James, meanwhile, was on a 30 km bike trip up the Musquodoboit Valley with his Cub Pack. They left at around 10:30 with all the bikes crammed into a trailer, and returned at about 4:30, just late enough that James missed his choir practice. In the evening David went to the birthday party of one of his friends while Ann, Mum and I went to a concert by our friends in Clearing by Noon. The concert was to launch a CD of peace songs that they have just produced. The proceeds will be donated to the Halifax Peace Coalition.
Sunday was Mother's Day which meant that Emily, James and I were up early preparing Eggs Benedict for Ann (the rest of us had some too, but Mum chose French toast instead). Ann had her's in bed, but Mum decided that she would prefer to get up for breakfast. After breakfast everyone but me went off to church. There were some special musical offerings this week in which David played his trumpet and James sang with the Youth Choir.
This afternoon I took the afternoon off and drove Mum to the airport. It has been wonderful to have her for the past week and a half.
On Friday afternoon my Mum arrived for a visit. Ann, myself and Emily and James (who were enjoying a day off school to to a teachers' in-service day) went out to the airport to pick her up. The airport was so busy that it was impossible to find a parking spot. Every parking meter was taken and about 20 cars were vying for each spot that opened up as someone left. I gave up and tried the long-term parking lot but was turned away because it was full too. In the end I just drove around and around while Ann and Emily went in to find Mum.
Saturday morning was the Shannon Park School Spring Fair, the annual fund-raising extravaganza organized by the Shannon Park Enhancement Comittee. This year the money raised will go toward new, badly needed, playground equipment. Ann, Mum, Emily and James and I arrived shortly after it got going at 9 AM. Emily had volunteered to paint faces for an hour with her friend Darian, so after trying out the bouncy inflated castle in the school yard, she went off to fulfil her obligations. Meanwhile James also had a go at the bouncy castle as well as several of the games. Mum and Ann loaded up at the bake sale while I tried to keep an eye on James. When Emily was done her shift I took James and Mum home while Ann stayed with Emily so that she could try some of the games too. By the time I picked them up at 1 pm the rain was pouring down, so we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, reading books and doing crossword puzzles.
On Saturday evening Ann, Katy and I went to see Evita at Neptune, their end of the season spectacular. It was a pretty good show, though if you're a regular reader of these pages you'll know that musicals aren't my usual choice in plays.
On Sunday morning we all got up bright and early to take part in the service on HMCS Sackville commemorating the Battle of the Atlantic. After the service they scatter the ashes of recently cremated servicemen into the harbour. As Dad served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy during the war, I arranged with the padré at Stadacona for Dad's ashes to be scattered too. So at about 8:45 am we arrived on board Sackville in the naval dockyard.
Sackville is a corvette that saw service during the war escorting convoys carrying goods and munitions to Britain. When I first joined DRDC she was being used as a second ship in our acoustics experiments. She was decommissioned in the mid-eighties, then restored as she had been in 1944 so that she could serve as a Naval Memorial and museum. In the summertime she is docked outside the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and open to the public.
Shortly after arriving on board we were given a short briefing on safety, then on how the morning's services would be conducted. Then we had the run of the ship until we arrived on station and the service began. James, in particular, had lots of fun exploring and trying out the machine guns and signal lights. One of the servicemen aboard gave him a short lesson on how to use the machine gun. We also chatted with a man who had actually been a machine-gunner on a corvette during the war.
Because Sackville's engines can no longer be used, she had to be towed into the harbour by tugs. They arrived at about 9:30 and we left the dock at 10, arriving on station just off the tip of Point Pleasant Park about half an hour later. Though the weather was overcast and quite cold when we first got on board, by the time we left it was clearing, and by the time the service started it was a beautiful, albeit still a little chilly in the breeze in the mouth of the harbour.
The main service was held on the quarterdeck and commemorated those who died during the Battle of the Atlantic. The padré read the names of all the Canadian ships that were lost, as well as all the air squadrons that lost men. The service for the scattering of ashes was held along the rail one deck below the quarterdeck. We all stayed up above where we had an excellent view. In all, the ashes of fifteen men and one woman were scattered. A short biography of each was read, then one by one they were brought to a short wooden slide supported by four veterans, covered with the flag under which they served (the white ensign in Dad's case), then tipped into the harbour.
When it was all over, the tugs took us back to the dockyard while corn chowder and biscuits were served in the mess. We arrived back on shore at about 12:30, just in time for a nice lunch at the Italian Market. In all, I think it was a very fitting ceremony and one that Dad would have liked.
On Monday morning Ann arose very early to pick David up at the airport, back from his Cuba trip, by 5:30 am. They arrived back at home at about 7 and David promptly disappeared into bed until 3 pm. Cuba was nice and warm with a good blend of relaxing on the beach and playing concerts. We played at several arts schools and on one day played a concert on a sidewalk in Havana with the provincial concert band. We played a mixture of our songs and their songs and it was very fun. We went on a tour of Havana, vistied a market, and ate at a jazz club with live music. On the last day we drove to the province of Pinar del Rio to see the Mogotes (funny looking mountains) and to explore an underwater river and a waterfall. — David
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