The Countryman: Peeping long distance

Some say this has been the best season yet for autumn colors. We’ve checked it out with two leaf-peeping trips, a day trip to Pittston Farm and a five-day trip to Cape Breton.

Yup, it has been a terrific year for foliage. ‘Bout done, though.

The trip to Pittston Farm did not disappoint. Color was brilliant along Route 151 from Athens to Kingsbury and on to Abbott Village on Route 16. Lots of reds, plenty of orange and gold to highlight the reds. Ponds for backdrops. As we got into country that had more rain this year than we had, the reds eased a bit, but until the final 10 miles or so to Pittston Farm, it was spectacular. Homeward through Bingham was spectacular, too.

If the trip to Pittston Farm at 115 miles isn’t long-enough-distance peeping for you, then consider our fifth trip to Nova Scotia.

For the third time, we drove to Cape Breton for the Celtic Colours International Festival. Celtic Colours, a music show, runs for nine days, starting the Friday before Thanksgiving (our Columbus Day). Celtic music acts play all over Cape Breton island, in churches, schools, legion halls, hockey rinks. Most nights, four to six shows run simultaneously. Our trip was really for Celtic Colours, but autumn colors were a big part of it, too.

Having lived nearly five years in Canada, we usually reacclimate quickly there. The differences between Canada and the U. S. are more real than apparent. We are at ease with the differences and since coming home in 1977 have often had a foot in each country.

This trip to Canada, however, we were a bit more aware that we were visitors. Much was familiar, some was different.

One thing hasn’t changed. American news tells us nothing about Canada. Reports of widespread flooding Thanksgiving Day on Cape Breton surprised us, since reporters and meteorologists here had said Hurricane Matthew was turning harmlessly out to sea.

What we saw was hardly harmless. Sydney, the major city on the island, received 9.17 inches of rain on Thanksgiving. Wind reached 70 miles an hour. Roads were undermined. Surprising, though, was mounds of flood trash — mattresses, insulation, furniture — out on lawns to be hauled away. Surprising because some of those houses that had flooded were on high ground. The rain fell faster than the soil and drainage could carry it away.

In the spirit of the show, none of the 49 Celtic concerts was canceled, we were told, but a couple who came from Florida for 10 days of music told us a show on Thanksgiving lasted barely one set. More than 30,000 island customers were without power. Cape Breton’s population is 136,000, so 30,000 homes without power is likely more than half.

Also the same as when we lived there is Canada’s commitment to diversity. Where we celebrate the melting pot, they celebrate the cultural mosaic. It’s not always easy, as the separatism debate of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s made clear. All federal government services and regulations are available anywhere in both official languages, English and French.

Cape Breton is bilingual, too, but it’s a wee bit different. Road signs appear in two languages as you drive from one village to the next. The languages are English and Gaelic. If you have noticed that French seems to use more letters and words than English to express an idea, you should see Gaelic. The name of a village that is eight or nine letters in English may be 18 or 19 in Gaelic.

We saw a teenager sing in 2005 in Gaelic. When he sang at the American Folk Festival later in Bangor, I spoke with him. He struggled a bit in English, having grown up mostly unilingual Gaelic. That’s not common but it can still happen on Cape Breton.

Not all the Celtic musicians’ names begin with Mac. We saw a bagpiper named Cote, a keyboardist named Morin, a guitarist named Cormier (from Massachusetts, no less).

Back to similarities. During Celtic Colours, you can get your fill of bean suppers. Or seafood or turkey or ham or beef. Organizations, often churches, put on suppers as fund-raisers near where the shows play, and music lovers can grab supper and a show in the middle of what seems like nowhere. They are a lot more expensive than, say, the New Sharon Methodist Church supper ($8) but your $15 to $20 goes to a good cause and saves you a few kilometers of driving.

We were prepared for Canadians to ask about our zany campaign. But the only people who raised the issue were other Yanks. Canadians are polite, wouldn’t want to embarrass you, except when they are wearing ice skates. The radio was full of campaign reports, though, so we didn’t miss a beat of the beatings Clinton and Trump are handing out.

At one concert, the emcee referred to what Canadians call the Trump Bump. That is an expected wee move of Americans to Canada should Trump win. As of a couple of months ago, about 5,000 Americans had registered with a Canadian outfit set up to help Yanks adjust, should they move. About 25,000 Canadians have signed on to help. In 2013, about 9,414 Americans emigrated to Canada.

It’s odd that no Canadian asked us about U.S. politics, because usually Canadians are fascinated by our politics. They probably get more of ours on Canadian TV than they do of their own. That may stem from history. We rebelled for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, but Canadians organized 90 years later to ensure Peace, Order and Good Government. Order and good government seldom make must-see TV.

Dick Gregory, a ’60s comedian, built a routine partly on Canada’s “funny money,” which is to say bills of different colors. Worldwide, we were the outlier with a single color, and Canada was in step. Its currency has changed, though. Canadian paper money is no longer paper. It is plastic, with a transparent strip near one end that apparently can be read by optical scanners.

The colors remain. Fifties are red, 20s are green, 10s are purple and 5s are blue. A Haligonian we met warned that the new bills stick together. They do. I counted my 50s on Saturday morning. I had five. Used one for gas and another for breakfast, and then counted two left. Used another for Sunday supper. On Monday, I still had two. Two of the 50s had stuck together so tightly that I counted them as one. Several times.

You already know that Canada uses coins instead of bills for $1 and $2. Now it has dropped the penny, too. A price of $14.02 on the cash register means you pay $14. A price of $14.03 means you pay $14.05. Makes sense. Pennies cost more than a cent to mint, so why bother? That’s new, and it was an easy adjustment.

The price of gas and the sales tax required more adjustment. In Quebec, we had always paid at least $1 a gallon more for gasoline than in the States. But other provinces were lower, some much lower, than Quebec. No longer. The lowest we paid was $1.065 for a liter, which figures to $4.03 a gallon.

And the sales tax, called HST, was 15 percent on everything, 10 percent provincial and 5 percent federal. The HST isn’t new in the past decade or so, but the 15 percent is.

One final difference. If our politics is zany, consider this. The Cape Breton Regional Municipality, which has about 70 percent of Cape Breton’s population, held municipal elections on Saturday. Candidates had called for an audit of municipal spending. The audit was given to the municipal council on Thursday. Just in time for the elections.

But the council voted to keep it secret until after the elections. Can you imagine the uproar here if, say, the RSU 9 board withheld an audit until after the budget passed? Canadians have less of a sense of transparency (except on their currency) than we do, and less mistrust of government. We heard only one objection to the secrecy of the audit.

By the way, the Cape Breton color was extremely good. But the storm had stripped away much of the red, which hadn’t been so prominent there as here because the Scotia summer wasn’t so dry. But it was worth the trip to see the colors. And the Colours.

Bob and Marilyn Neal lived in Montreal from 1972 until 1977. Christopher, their younger son, was born there in 1976. His older brother, Robbie, was born in Kansas City. All live in Maine and feel warmly toward Canada.