Fix It Megapost

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I’ve mended many things in the past 16 months since my mother died. I’ve tried to keep busy, to catch up on tasks put aside for a few years as I focussed on her.

I enjoy figuring things out, rolling the dice on maybe being able to put something broken back together. Couldn’t be a clearer analogy for trying to come to terms with the massive hole that my mother’s absence has left in my life.

I replaced a rotary switch on a 1960s lamp using an unused switch I found in a box in the basement. My father must have purchased it for some project, perhaps even for the lamp I fixed, the lamp that sat between his chair and my mother’s chair in the den of our old house.

Brown rotary lamp switch with 42 cent Canadian Tire price tag on bottom.
42 cent switch from Canadian Tire.

I replaced the fuel filter on my 26-year-old lawn tractor and added a fuel shutoff valve while I was at it so I can burn off the gas in the carburetor when storing it for the winter. I also found out the hard way that hooking up a lawn tractor battery backwards will (hopefully) cause a fuse to blow when you try to start it, and the replacement fuse costs exactly a dollar plus tax. I also found that when you are grieving, you hook up lawn tractor batteries backwards and you’ll not understand why you can’t do something you’ve easily done for decades.

A blue 15 amp fuse with wires around it.
$1 fuse.

I took my mother’s single bed mattress to the waste facility for recycling in my small car by kind of folding it up, but boxsprings don’t fold, so I took it apart, recycled the metal springs and staples, disposed of the fabric and used some of the wood on a portable chicken coop and the metal frame as a garden trellis.

Lumber leaning against a workbench in a messy workshop.
Boxspring wood ready for repurposing.
A portable chicken coop with an orange Kubota tractor on the left.
Building a coop from scraps, reclaimed wood and ancient barn door hinges.

A digital scale I had for over thirty years stopped working. Before throwing it into the e-waste pile, I pried it open to see if maybe I could identify the problem. A thin wire had broken off and even my terrible soldering skills were enough to reattach it and the display popped back to life. It worked for almost a year, but wasn’t repairable by me a second time and will be off to e-heaven.

A messy work bench that has a digital scale on it, tools and soldering iron.
The display of a digital scale showing the number zero.
Success!

Our microwave door fell off, or at least the covering part with the handle did. It was attached with comically-tiny little plastic tabs that weakened and broke, so it is now reattached with massive amounts of epoxy and will never, ever fall off again.

A microwave oven sitting on a kitchen island.

Tonight, I was having a little fire in a Biolite stove and the plastic bucket in which I store wood scraps cracked. A piece of wire saved from something or other will likely hold the bucket together for a few more years.

A cracked white plastic bucket with wood sticking out the top and a piece of wire wrapped around holding it together.

Alas, my mother is still gone.

EV Kilometreage

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Occasionally I attend a volunteer meeting where I can claim travel expenses. Such was the case when I drove to Cardigan yesterday to attend the Meals on Wheels PEI AGM. It was a 318 km roundtrip from Foxley River, with a couple of stops to pick up other attendees. It took 49 kw of electricity to get there and back, leaving me lots of charge to attend a meeting in Tyne Valley last night.

Using their rate of 60 cents per kilometre, I could have claimed $190 for travel, but the electricity cost to me if purchased from Maritime Electric is less than $10. I’m now also enrolled in a program where I get a rebate on the electricity I use to charge my car at home, so my cost was closer to $5.

There is no way that driving 318 km causes any measurable depreciation or maintenance issues for my car; I barely used the brakes the entire trip, using regenerative breaking most of the time, so there wasn’t even wear to brake pads.

I couldn’t in good conscience claim $190 as I knew I’d be making a huge profit from a non-profit group, and it was silly to claim $5, so I didn’t claim anything at all. I wonder how these travel expense forms will change in the future to reflect different vehicle power sources?

Holman’s Island

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A friend and I joined a walk around Holman’s Island in Bedeque Bay that was sponsored by the Bedeque Area Historical Museum and led by the always-interesting and gracious Doug Sobey, who is president of the historical society that runs the museum.

About a dozen of us met at the museum last Tuesday and drove a few kilometres to a private driveway where the museum had permission of kind cottage owners for us to cross their yard to the shore. The walks are timed to coincide with the lowest tides, so we easily waded through ankle-deep water on a sandbar to the island. Doug gave a fantastic overview of the Mi’kmaq and settler history of Bedeque Bay and the city of Summerside, and then we started our circumnavigation.

White clouds in a blue sky, with two people on the right hand side walking on green grass towards water.
Starting the walk to Holman’s Island.

Now owned by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Holman’s Island is most notable as the site of a 125-bed hotel that operated for five years in the 1870s and closed due to financial difficulties, the building burning in 1904. Doug said there are depressions in the ground where the hotel foundations were, but nothing else is left of the hotel and the island has reverted to forest.

We didn’t venture into the forest, but the beach walk was beautiful, though not really much different than any other PEI beach; the real delight was in finally being on this little island that had been pointed out to me since childhood but that I had never had the chance to visit.

The western and northern sides of the island have steep cliffs, while the east and south are much lower and it would be easy to walk from the beach into the forest. There were lots of empty oyster on the shore, possibly due to the die-off of oysters from two diseases, MSX and Dermo, that have crippled our oyster industry.

It has become more difficult over the years to find sea glass on PEI beaches, which, it is hoped, is mostly because we are better at recycling and properly disposing of waste, so it was fun to look for glass on this more inaccessible location. I found a few lovely bits and pieces on the east side of the island, all of it still pretty pointy as the wave action in sheltered Bedeque Bay isn’t as scouring as ocean waves.

A blue sky with white and grey clouds at the top, trees on a cliff on the right, distant buildings on the left, water in the middle, and a red sand beach covered with shells at the bottom.
The beach on the west side of the island, with Summerside in the background.

And then, sitting on a pile of rocks high up on the beach, I spotted what is likely to be the best piece of sea glass I will ever find: a light-green bottle stopper. At first I thought it had to be plastic as it was so perfect, but it gave a satisfying little tink when I tapped it against some other glass and my beach combing heart soared.

Maybe it’s the stopper from a cruet tossed from the long-gone hotel, a medicine bottle top or, heaven forfend, the stopper of a little bottle of alcohol. Hard to say, but now it sits on the windowsill next to my desk, catching the sun as it did for decades in Bedeque Bay, same sun, different view. I finally made it to Holman’s Island, and it gave me a treasure.

A light-green glass bottle stopper on a wooden table.
The green glass stopper.
Three people walking on a red sand beach that has many white shells on it. At the top are white-and-grey clouds and blue sky.
The end of the walk. We narrowly missed a big thunderstorm earlier in the day, and the lingering clouds were spectacular.

Time and Music

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I was invited to a hymn sing yesterday morning at Old St. James church in Port Hill, a twenty minute drive from my home. A sunrise event, 7:00 am, created by someone I only met when she contacted me last week after reading something here on my blog.

Our only connection was that our ancestors embarked from the same town in England to take up work in the PEI shipyards in the mid-1800s. Our families would have worshiped together in St. James after it was built around 1841, but neither of us have a recent connection to that church or community.

A colourful stained glass window in a church, the walls painted cream with wood trim, and a woman playing an electric piano on the right
Old St. James Anglican Church, Port Hill, PEI

The music was outstanding, Laura Beth and two of her friends playing electric piano, guitar and the church’s ancient pump organ, harmonizing together on an hour’s worth of classic hymns. A dozen locals, mostly parishioners, came to join them, none of us knowing these musicians but, I would guess, drawn as I was to the novelty of being invited to this sweet historic church on a soft, gentle July morning.

The morning sun moved through the simple coloured glass window, casting a nearly-neon glow first on the singers, then the pews, and across the floor. It was mesmerizing and poignant, moving many to tears. Brought together by strangers, parting as friends, with hugs and farewells all around. Brief but deep conversations about family history and spirit and life. I’m not a churchgoer, but this was a special, meaningful morning.

Colourful patches of light on a brown wooden floor.
The view of the light from the windows on the church floor as seen from the front pew.

I had spent the previous evening in Britannia Hall in Tyne Valley at an evening of story telling and music. The only thing I have any real training in is technical theatre: lights, sound, stage management, stage carpentry, that sort of thing. It has been decades since I used any of those skills in a theatre, but I recently joined the hall’s volunteer committee and jumped at the chance to relearn how to run the sound and lights by assisting the technician, moving microphones around and helping with sound checks.

A pair of musicians on a theatre stage, with an audience watching them, surrounded by the wooden walls and ceiling of the theatre.
The view from the booth of Britannia Hall.

It was fun to see what I had remembered, to stretch that part of my brain again, and the magic of making a performance happen still makes my heart jump. I will turn 60 soon, but I felt as I did when I was 20, hurrying around the theatre, nimble and quick, dressed in theatre-technician black, to troubleshoot the various things that always go a bit sideways in live performances. 

It was a weekend where centuries and decades folded in on each other, time meaning nothing. This has happened a lot since my mother died last year. Time expands and contracts so that my childhood seems like yesterday and then seems 1,000 years ago, often switching in the blink of an eye. I worried about this for a while, wondering what my grief brain was up to, but now I just let myself be pulled and pushed, giving into the swirl, the music, the ageless hymns of time.

Therefore you will joyously draw water

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Lunch today was a Famous Pepper’s Spud Islander pizza (yes, it has slices of potato on it). We got one to go from FP’s new Summerside location and decided to find a shady spot in Memorial Park to snarf it down.

St. Mary’s Anglican Church on the left and the church hall on the right, with a brown picnic table under a tree in front of the hall and green grass.
St. Mary’s Church and Hall

We parked in front of St. Mary’s Church Hall across from the park and spied a nice little picnic table under a tree in front of the hall. Next to it was what looks like a newly installed water tap, free for all to use, and I would guess specifically targeted at unhoused people who often use the park as a gathering place. Pizza consumed, I topped up my water bottle, and we were on our way.

Seeing this thoughtful act of love and care for others filled me up way more than the pizza did. I think if church had included this type of social action when I was a young person, I could very well have still been a believer.

A wooden post that has a water tap attached and a sign that reads: Community Water Fountain. Free Fresh Clean Drinking Water. Therefore you will joyously draw water from the spring of salvation. Isaiah 12:3 Provided by the Parish of St. Mary and St. John.
A sign that reads: Community Water Fountain. Free Fresh Clean Drinking Water. Therefore you will joyously draw water from the spring of salvation. Isaiah 12:3 Provided by the Parish of St. Mary and St. John.

If you are looking for a quiet, green, welcoming space in Summerside, I can’t think of a better spot.

A park with green grass, trees and shrubs, a sidewalk in the foreground, a white church in the background and a person painting a canon in the middle of the photo.
Memorial Park. Someone came along and started to paint a canon, as you do.

Wee PEI Spuds in Amsterdam

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A friend who sends me a photo every year of the Foxley River oysters she has on her birthday at an Ottawa oyster house is instead in Paris for this year’s celebration. She’ll be sipping champagne and enjoying lovely French oysters, which is just as well as there are no Foxley River oysters for her to slurp in Bytown this year, or probably for a few years to come, due to two diseases that have killed virtually all the oysters in our area.

Before she left Amsterdam for Paris, she went to see The Mouse Mansion (Muizenhuis), and true to her boosterism of all things PEI, spotted some miniature PEI potato bags in amongst the extensive and charming collection of tiny things and sent me photographic evidence. I think the bags say McKenna Bros Inc., which is a farm in Kings County. How and why they made it into this teeny wonderland remains a mini Dutch mystery.

Three small white PEI potato bags are shown in amongst other tiny replicas of consumer products, with a tiny mouse holding even tinier baby mice in its hands, in the background, all part of a set from an Amsterdam tourist attraction.

Gladys Marries Clark June 1951

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-MacQUARRIE - PHILLIPS WEDDING-A quiet marriage was solemnized on Monday evening at eight o'clock at the United Church parsonage, Summerside, by Rev. Mr. Baxter, when Mrs. Gladys MacNevin Phillips of Ellerslie became the wife of Mr. James Clark MacQuarrie of Summerside. They were attended by Mr. and Mrs. E.S. Burleigh of Ellerslie. Following the ceremony a reception for the immediate relatives was held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Wendell Phillips. Mr. and Mrs. MacQuarrie will reside in Tyne Valley. Prior to the marriage the bride-to-be was tendered a miscellaneous shower at the home of Mr. and Mrs. E.S. Burleigh, Ellerslie. - S

Was surprised to find my grandmother’s wedding announcement in the Guardian from this date in 1951. This was her second marriage, as my father’s father, Alvin, had died in 1936 at age 45, leaving Gladys with four sons under the age of 17 (and one only a year-and-a-half).

She had a rough time of it after Alvin’s death, trying to keep a small mixed farm going, with the help of neighbours and her eldest son, who was 23 when his father died. To make ends meet, she and her sister, Dot, cooked and lived at Shaw’s Hotel in Brackley Beach for a couple of summers. Gladys would also attend births and nurse the sick, which is how she came to know Clark MacQuarrie when she moved to Summerside to look after his first wife, Priscilla, who was ill for a couple of years before her death in 1950.

Clark and Gladys were hired as the first caretaker/janitor and cook at Stewart Memorial Hospital in Tyne Valley on June 2, 1951, so I supposed they had to get married as it was a position that came with room and board, and the chance of them being allowed to live together in such public positions without being married would have been nil. They lived in a small apartment in the hospital basement. Clark was 67 and Gladys was 57 when they were hired, for which they each got $100 a month, a great sum.

My mother’s grandmother, Eva, was one of the first patients at SMH in 1951, and at times the only patient as it cost $5 a day and was still user pay. My mother often told me how highly Eva regarded Gladys and how good her cooking was.

I don’t remember Gladys or Clark as they both died when I was very young. I didn’t even have a nickname for my grandmother until a few years ago when one of my cousins referred to her as Nan; I suppose I would have called her that as well.

My grandmother Gladys MacQuarrie and me, Ellerslie PEI, February 1968
My step-grandather Clark MacQuarrie and me, Ellerslie PEI, February 1968

The Devil Wears Prada 2 Review

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It was fine; I had fun with my friends when I saw it a couple of weeks ago.

But I can’t stop thinking about why a character had TWO boxes of Maldon Sea Salt on her kitchen shelf, about four feet apart. Why, set dresser, why? What does it mean?

I also still worry about what became of Sally Draper.

VY2VH

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Today I wrote an exam to obtain my basic Canadian amateur radio operator certificate, and I passed! Within an hour of completing the in-person, on-paper exam, I received an automated email from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, the government body who oversee radiocommunications in Canada, inviting me to create an online account and get my call sign.

I am now VY2VH. “VY2” is the prefix for PEI, and “VH” is in honour of my mother, Vivian Hardy, her name until she married my father, Harold Phillips, so handily the “H” if also in honour my father. Victor Yankee Two Victor Hotel.

I have never studied so hard for anything in my life, two online classes a week since the middle of February with the wonderful Al Penney (VO1NO) from Nova Scotia, who runs the course for the Radio Amateurs of Canada. There was a lot of math and formulas at the beginning and I was certain I would never get it all straight in my head, but I read and studied and it finally all came together. It’s an interesting course, Al is a patient and goodnatured teacher, and if I can pass it, anyone can. It’s only $50, about the same again for the study guide, and the radio licence is free and for life.

There is a little handheld radio tuned to the O’Leary repeater sitting on my counter. Every so often it beeps or the time is announced. I heard a couple of people saying hello to each other, talking about the rainy weather and wishing each other a good night. The examiner from the Summerside club was a kind and generous fellow and it seems like a welcoming community. Will report back when I actually get up the nerve to push the button and talk.

My mother’s initials, V.H., painted on the second floor of her grandfather’s barn in 1938, the year she turned 16 and went back to live with her father.

Birch Sap

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On an early-morning amble through the decommissioned shale pit near our house today, I noticed a cloudly icicle hanging from the cut end of a tree. The maskwi (white birch) had toppled over sometime last year and I cut it in the winter so I could use the path. I didn’t bother severing the trunk from the ground, so it was still alive. The temperatures had fallen to -5C overnight, so the sap that was rising froze as it dripped.

I broke off a piece and popped it in my mouth, and there was the faintest sweetness there. Collect enough and boil it down and a sweet syrup can be created.

I have never seen this before, a sapicle. I’ve seen lots of maskwi stumps, but it must have been the angle that the trunk was leaning that allowed this sweet phenomenon to occur.

Every time I go for a walk in the forest next to our house, I see something new. Every time. You might think that’s an exaggeration, that I can still find something new here after 60 years, but I do, and it still surprises me. Something as simple as some dripping sap can connect me to the gifts of the earth and the power of the sun and the magic of walking slowly and looking with newly-opened morning eyes.

An icicle made of sap hanging from the cut end of a maskwi/white birch tree, with other trees standing behind it.