Two Sore Backs

Back in June we were in a hurry to get to the Maritimes and didn’t have a chance to catch up with everyone we wanted to. So, with one eye on the weather – we wanted to beat the snow to the Rogers pass – we plotted a course through southern Ontario that would put us in touch with family and friends.

First stop after Quebec was Ritchie Argue’s for a quick overnight. This was our second visit. We love hanging out with Ritchie at his place in Pakenham.

Then it was on to Mike and Nancy’s in Kingston for a quick lunch and chat about our trip before moving on to Toronto. Lunch was awesome and we got to spoil their dog Aspen again with a few last tummy rubs.

After Kingston it was on to Toronto for dinner with Mas Ansari and his wife Milli, who we had yet to meet. Mas is product manager with Jonas Club software and we had worked together to implement their new system at Capilano. The restaurant was MIMI Chinese.

The food was excellent, Milli is lovely, and we had fun catching up on travel and life in general.

Next stop on the catch-up tour tour was London and a meeting with Maurice Bain and his wife Stephanie. Moe was the bus driver for the majority of my time at Polaris. We joked that dinner at The Elm Hurst Inn was my tip for all those rides between the barge (concentrator) and accommodations. It was fun learning about Moe and Stephanie’s life in London and how their kids were doing.

Then it was back to Toronto to see my cousin Brenndan. It’s always great learning what Brenndan is up to – he’s spent most of his life in the music industry as a sound engineer, producer and musician – plus he knows Toronto inside and out so he always picks the best places to walk, eat and drink.

Brenndan’s latest project is preparing a piece of land in Prince Edward County for house construction, and it’s always interesting to hear where he’s been flying his float plane.

Moving on – we made our way to Oakville to have dinner with Tim and Karen Sewell at the Beacon. Tim worked on the surface crew at Polaris, and we got to know each other pretty well, in part from our involvement with the High Arctic Club – Polaris’ social club.

Our cheeks were aching and eyes watering from all the laughter as Tim told story after story about Polaris shenanigans and his career since then in Mine Safety and Environment.

Mining has taken Tim and Karen from Polaris to Yellowknife, Australia, Papua New Guinea, parts in between, and full circle to the Canadian Arctic and the Baffinland Iron Ore mine where they both work mainly out of the Oakville head office.

Here’s a selfie taken at Tim’s favourite hotel – where he basically lived when he started with Baffinland, before he and Karen decided to rent a place in Oakville.

Woops. Yeah, we forgot to take a selfie. Tim is in Winnipeg now helping his mom recover from surgery, so he sent this photo of their dog Scotty to represent the Sewells.

But Scotty doesn’t quite cut it, so I stole this from Tim’s Facebook.

The following morning we travelled north from Oakville to Brantford to meet up with Donna Cragg, who I hired in my last year at Polaris, and her husband Tom, who was a heavy duty mechanic for most of the Polaris mine life. The two of them worked there until it closed in 2002.

We had a nice brunch at the Brampton Flying Club restaurant, and it was great to hear their stories about the later years and end of mine life at Polaris, plus their life since that time. I’ll treasure the thoughtful gifts they had for us – a dvd full of Polaris pictures, a copy of Cominco’s Orbit magazine which talked about the mine closure, and the final version of the mine’s Polar Star newsletter.

One of the last things I recall Tom saying was something to the effect of “you should come visit and use our place as a base to explore from.” Those were prophetic words!

After brunch we headed north towards Sudbury where I hoped to meet up with Polaris friends Eileen and Rick Olivier.