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It’s probably no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I like to keep the things I own for as long as I can, which has meant figuring out how to fix a lot of things. It started out as frugality but has now become as much, if not more, about keeping things out of landfill. I get this trait mostly from my father, who worked hard for everything he got. Even later in his life when he had money to buy new things, he would buy used and fix them up, always looking to save a dollar. I am a bit more of a spendthrift in comparison, not having his mechanical skills to buy things like used lawnmowers and get them going, but I certainly have the desire to not spend money on replacing something that could be fixed.

The handle of my 2001 vintage snow shovel, purchased at Callbeck’s Home Hardware in Summerside, broke this morning while I was trying to dislodge frozen snow and ice from my mother’s deck. I knew not to use it to pry, but the temptation to get one more piece of ice shifted was too much, and I paid!

I trundled off to my shop, stood in the warm springish sun and whittled the end of the shovel handle so it would fit back into the blade. It’s a bit shorter now than it was when purchased, but I bet I am a few centimetres shorter as well, so it evens out. The cutting edge on the shovel blade has worn down over the years, and I’ve periodically trimmed the sides to even it all up.

Two shovels, some wood shavings, my boot prints and skunk tracks.

I put the repaired shovel next to a metal one with a wooden handle that stands beside our shop door and is used to clear that step and the chicken run. It is really old – older than me, I expect – and would have come from our general store. It used to stand outside the back door of our former house next to the store. It’s a Champion No. 105 and though it has been outside for most of its life and has a crack in the blade where someone else pushed the limits of what you should pry with a snow shovel, it is still good. I have an extra handle kicking around from another shovel that rotted away that I can always replace the Champion’s with, if need be.

So, I’m in good shovel shape for another 23 years, when I will be 81 and hopefully still shovelling and fixing and standing in the sun.

Suitcase Swan Lake

I picked up Steven at the Charlottetown airport last week. The Air Canada flight from Toronto was late. It had been deiced twice at Pearson. When it finally took off, I started my 100 km drive over snow-drifted highways, and the plane touched down just a couple of minutes after I got there.

I haven’t been in the terminal since before the pandemic. They’ve done a bit of renovating, removed the Cows Ice Cream cow that used to greet travellers in the arrivals area. A much more multicultural array of folks were waiting with me than in the past

Two children tried to find a place to hide so they could surprise the person they were meeting. A young man held a bouquet of flowers, shifting back and forth and looking at the floor, thinking hard. A Buddhist monk in orange robes and the biggest snow boots I have ever seen came in decked out in a couple of DSLR cameras. There were the pasty potato-faced people like me. 

I was sitting on a bench far enough away that I couldn’t see the when the doors opened, but I knew a couple of seconds before they did because those waiting near the doors suddenly started to crane their necks to spot the person they were meeting. There are no jet bridges at Charlottetown, so people have to make their way across the tarmac through whatever weather awaits, emerging from the darkness at night.

The passengers trickled in at first, and then suddenly they burst forth, a flock of black four-wheeled suitcases with long handles, twirling and pirouetting across the bumpy tiles, click click click, a ballet of surcharge-dodging swans. Their human handlers seemed to have the most gentle of grips on them, just a couple of fingers, and that let them deftly maneuver around the people hugging babies and kissing grandmothers and out to waiting conveyances.

A few people carried those bags too tired to swivel or were reluctant to bump over the snow from the plane. A couple of my hens don’t like walking on fresh snow and will insist on being carried when they tire of the uncertainty of the puffy white, so I expect the bag owners faced the same thing.

In just a couple of minutes, the clattering cases were gone. The children were hugging a tall man, the youngest clinging to his leg so he sort of dragged her around, everyone laughing. I lost sight of the man with the flowers, so don’t know if the person he was meeting arrived. The monk was talking to a family with a young boy, no photos being taken yet. Steven grabbed his backpack off the conveyor belt and we stepped out into the drifting snow.

The Charlottetown Airport arrivals area, July 2014. The Cows cow was joined by Anne of Green Gables that summer, both patiently waiting for Matthew Cuthbert.