Toys for large lads (July 10)

Let’s have more flood studies in P-A!

                                by Robert LaFrance

          I received an email Monday morning from my cousin who lives near Caledonia, Ontario and of course it mentioned the weather. “It’s been 37ºC here for five days,” she moaned, and I thought: “Ha! Am I glad I moved out of Ontario in 1972!”

          Because, you see, I am sure that it is Global Warming that’s causing all the problems worldwide, and Victoria County, New Brunswick has managed to keep itself off the Global Warming Scale, which works a lot like the Richter Scale does for earthquakes.

          That is, I thought that until this morning when I woke up and noticed that my outdoor thermometer registered 32ºC – at 6:51 am. By 10:00 am it was 34ºC and by noon it was 36.5ºC. I was standing on the brink of Ontario disaster.

          Somebody Important was looking after me though; the temperature didn’t cross that magic 37 line and I was saved from a heat stroke. Meanwhile I checked the Caledonia weather report and found it was only 29ºC up there. “That’s on its way here,” I sighed. See, things work out.

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          This column will mostly be about small insignificant things – well not that small. On the way to Upper Kintore yesterday morning I stopped to say hi to my old friend Toad (Leroy Canford) who was mowing his front lawn while riding a 300 horsepower riding John Deere 3201S mower.

          Just to put that into perspective, if I had one of those, I could mow my 3-acre orchard in about fifteen minutes. Toad’s front lawn (he doesn’t have a back lawn) might be as much as a tenth of an acre, or 0.00034 hectares. He had started mowing when I pulled into his driveway and by the time I walked to his front step he was putting his John Deere etc. into his shed that also held four Husqvarna chain saws of various sizes, a bush hog (or Mott as some people call them), a heavy-duty chipper and two weed-eaters sitting behind a brush saw. Toad’s lot is exactly one acre in size.

          You have no doubt gotten my point by this time: come on guys, do you really need all those ‘toys for big boys’?

          While I am indulging in my bi-weekly rant, I should mention that we New Brunswickers seem to have a bit of a problem with signage, as the word goes. Surely the word ‘signs’ will do the trick, but I don’t want to be a rebel.

          I refer to the fact that organizations put out signs of upcoming events but never seem to plan for the days after the event is over. One recent day I saw a prominent sign along the riverbank uptown and noticed that the event mentioned had taken place nearly two weeks earlier.

          One of these days I expect to see a sign reading something like this: “Springtime 1958 big yard sale – war surplus. Re-elect Louis St. Laurent. No Dief for us!”

          One thing I am pleased to announce this month is that a pothole in Muniac has now been repaired. Many people from Kincardine, where I live, Bon Accord, Lower Kintore and parts of Muniac itself travel to town by that road which is probably one of the more interesting ones around, pothole-wise.

          The particular pothole I refer to is (WAS) located about halfway between Highway 105, the river road, and the intersection of Muniac Road, Kincardine Road, Kintore Road and Manse Hill Road. It appeared there in the road in early March and at first it was only a few inches across. Then a combination of truck and other vehicle traffic and snowploughs gradually expanded and deepened it until a Greyhound bus driver would cringe at the sight. It seemed to stay the same size until – miracles galore! – a D.O.T. crew finally got instructions from Edmundston to fix it.

          This they did, on June 28^th, and it was a great day for us all. The celebrations lasted far into the night, as the saying goes, although we were all snug in our beds – or somebody’s beds – by 10:00 pm.

          A few months ago the provincial government announced, in their roundabout way, that a new bridge for Perth-Andover was no longer on the code red, blue or purple priority list. In spite of the fact that the village and all those who live in or near it tremble in fear starting in February every year as they dread another major (or minor) flood, the government bureaucrats who wouldn’t be able to locate Perth-Andover on a map of Victoria County have decided to let us take a chance.

          Here’s one suggestion: All those functionaries who made that decision should be forced to live on the Perth side starting March 1^st and not be allowed to leave until flood danger has past. On the other hand, before making this move the government would have to conduct half a dozen studies to bury in the Centennial Building vaults.

            Beginning in 1973, I am guessing that the total cost of all flood studies would not only build a new bridge but would move everyone well up out of danger.
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