Hello from Canada!
It is my turn to write our children a letter, and I want to share with you about my travels this past summer. Yes, for Canada, summer is about to come to an end. In some ways it can be sad, but once the fall leaves arrive and their colours make us smile, we remember that seasons change to bring something new. That’s all good. I think you have season changes in Ethiopia, too. How do you like the season changes? What is your favourite season?
This summer I traveled in Canada to the east coast to a province called New Brunswick, then one month later, I traveled all the way out to the west coast to the province of British Columbia. If I were driving, the distance between these two points is 5954 kilometers, which would take 56 hours of driving time without stopping to sleep. When we say Canada is big, we mean BIG!!! I did not drive this distance - because that would be a bit tough to do.
It might be fun to look at the places I traveled to on a map. See if Tesfa can show you where I went.
To go out east, I drove in my car, which is powered completely by electricity stored in a big battery. That means instead of stopping for petro-fuel to fill up a tank, I have to stop to plug my car in to re-charge its giant-sized battery. I can drive for about 4 hours before I have to stop for a re-charge. It takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes to recharge the battery, so that is a good time for me and my passengers to eat a good lunch, go for a walk, and have a washroom break. Sometimes we even had time to read a little bit from our books. I was reading a spooky book written by Stephen King called “Fairy Tales”, so sometimes it was hard to put it down to get driving again.
This trip took us 15 hours of driving, so we broke the trip up into two days to make it more pleasurable. We scheduled a stop in the province of Quebec, which sits between Ontario (where I am from) and New Brunswick. In Quebec, the official language is French. I only know a few words in the French language, like, “Thank you”, “Please”, and “Where is the bathroom” - all important words when you are traveling. All Canadian children learn to speak the French language in our school days, but that was a very long time ago for me, and I have forgotten so much of it. We have a saying here that says, “Use it, or lose it”, and I think when it comes to learning a different language that is really true.
My friend who traveled with me, along with her dog, is a friend of mine from High School. We graduated from High School way back in 1980, so we have known each other for over 40 years. We were traveling to visit another old school friend who owns a small home in New Brunswick in the town of St. Andrews-By-The Sea. This little town truly rests right against the ocean waters. The Atlantic Ocean washes ashore into the Bay of Fundy, and St. Andrews is right along this bay. I have included a map so you can see where I am talking about.
The coolest thing we did (and by cool I mean interesting and fun) was we drove to Minister’s Island in a car right over the ocean floor. Isn’t that crazy? In St. Andrews, they experience the biggest tide changes. Does anyone know what a tide is? Look-up what you can find out about tides. They are so interesting.
I’ll help you out for now.
A tide is the rising and then falling of the sea waters, usually twice in each day, due to the attraction of the moon and sun to water. That’s right. The sun and moon cause the ocean waters to rise up for about 6 hours, then to go back down again. It’s amazing to watch. In St. Andrews, we saw the water levels raise 28 feet or more twice a day. From low water to high water takes about 6.2 hours and in that time up to 2¼ billion tons of water swill into the Bay through the passages. That’s a LOT OF WATER! Carefully watching the time of day, we were able to drive across the ocean floor from the mainland to Minister’s Island during low tide because we could actually see the ocean bottom. Of course that meant we also had to time our trip back to the mainland so we weren’t stuck on the island over night by the rising sea levels. I will show you pictures. What FUN!!!! I hope someday you can see how tides work - it is such an amazing thing to watch. I was completely surprised to see how tides work.
I ate the most prized food of the east coast. A lobster. In Ontario, we have to pay a lot of money to eat lobster, but on the east coast, they are plentiful and easy to buy. We bought our dinner straight from the fisherman who caught it out of the sea that day. I know lobsters probably don’t look too tasty on the outside, but once you crack open the hard shell, oh my, the meat inside is so yummy.
For my trip to the west coast, I had to take an airplane for 5 hours, then a ferry ride for 2 hours, then a car ride for 1.5 hours to get to our townhouse sitting right on a lake in the mountains. The difference between the lake water and the sea water is salt. The sea water has a lot of salt in it, and the lake water is fresh, clear water that you could drink. I got to go kayaking on the lake water, and I am still smiling from this. A kayak is a small, low oblong boat that normally only one person can fit in. The paddle has two blades, so you can stroke through the water with both arms and get going super fast. Kayaking is so fun.
On the west coast, we stayed on Vancouver Island beside a lake called Sproat Lake. It was voted the most beautiful lake in all of the province of British Columbia, and I know why. Wow!!!! So pretty. To drive anywhere from our location, we had to take highway 4. This highway is famous because of how curvy and windy it is. We were driving around curve after curve, climbing up and then down the sides of mountains and we had to go very slowly. The sights were so amazing, it took our breath away sometimes. I was a bit dizzy from the drive, I have to admit.
On one exciting moment of my trip to the west coast, I rode on a ski-lift chair to the top of Mount Washington, then peered out across the lands from way up there. It was cold up there. And we could see so far. Because we are having problems with forest fires in Canada, there was a bit of smoke in the air that clouded our view. I hold all the people fighting fires in Canada in my heart whenever I think about how hard they are working to save our forests. I have to admit, I was a bit afraid of the ride on the ski-lift, but I didn’t want the children who were with us to know that. They were so brave.
I was so happy to put my toes in the Pacific Ocean in the town of Tofino, British Columbia, because those same toes had also been in the Atlantic Ocean just a month early. What a fortunate person I am. I feel so grateful to be able to experience my own country from one coast to the other. Canada truly is a beautiful place to live.
I know that it is a privilege to be able to travel. I do not forget how fortunate I am to be able to travel to see my own country, and then share this experience with you. If there was somewhere in the world that YOU could travel to, where would that be? To be honest, I hope one day, I might be able to travel to Ethiopia to see all of you. That would be a dream come true!
I hope you enjoyed hearing about my adventures. I hope you enjoyed learning about tides, and found seeing my pictures interesting.