Halloween, Pie Making, and Healthcare

This week on PEI, it is beginning to look a little frosty. The temperatures in the early morning hover around freezing, but warm up to the fifties in the afternoon. Still, the sun comes up later each day and sets earlier. Halloween is this weekend. Since the houses and farms are so far apart, I don't really know what Trick or Treating will be like. Whatever it is, the kids will be working for the candy! It is definitely not like Lowell where you can walk to 200 houses in an hour!

I have been invited by my neighbors to make pies at the community center (a former one room schoolhouse) for a community fundraiser. People are very nice and welcoming here. Getting around to the healthcare debate, I find it kind of funny that there are a number of fundraisers like bake sales and craft fairs to raise money to buy equipment for the hospital. Recently, someone held a fundraiser to buy a piece of equipment for the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) at the hospital. Usually, a couple thousand dollars are raised, and it is a newsworthy event. In Massachusetts, hospitals raise funds by tapping millionaires and having glorious galas to raise hundred of thousands of dollars. Healthcare here is not the finest in the world, Canadian public opinion nothwithstanding. Canadians are terrified of American health care. They are convinced the poor and elderly get no health care at all. This is ironic, since the poor and the elderly are the only ones who do get healthcare without having to pay for it!

Healthcare here is humble but sturdy. The hospitals have very little new equipment and share resources. Carts have broken wheels. Doctors sit on stools that have been repainted a little too often. The surfaces are a little shabby and could use new paint. This contrasts with the luxurious settings of US hospitals with the best and newest equipment money can buy.

Nursing care is very different here. When you are admitted to the hospital, they keep you until you are well enough to go home. Abby was in the hospital for three days for an ear infection, treated with IV antibotics. No CAT scan, no sophisticated tests. Just a wait and see attitude and low-tech antibiotics until she was better and could go home. Contrast my major abdominal surgery three years ago. I was operated on at 4 pm and sent home in a haze of anesthetic at 7 pm once I could stand up in the recovery room. The surgery was robot-assisted laparoscopy. A follow up office visit a week later. A very different approach to health care. I think Canadian health care does the best it can with very limited resources. I think American health care could do much better in that regard.

Rainy Sunday

It is raining today, and has rained every day for weeks. I hear this is typical weather for this time of year. I am not complaining, though; it was snowing last week in Massachusetts. The rain is light and warm, but persistent. The cows next door acquired a new friend two days ago, a horse named "Horse." Contessa, our next door neighbor and owner of the cows, bought the horse at auction in Nova Scotia to save it from the other bidder who had recently been cited for cruelty for starving his horses. She is a very kind hearted person, and decided to rescue the horse from a terrible fate. The horse is very plain, part Percheron and part Saddlebred. Abby says Horse is very sweet and only two years old. She has been going to visit Horse since she arrived here, and Horse loves the attention.

Abby is so happy here. She has horses to ride, mini horses to train for shows, and she loves living in the country. Life is much slower and more relaxed here, with very little crime. The downside is employment. Jobs are scarce and hard to come by, and most people just get by. Abby will graduate from high school next year and wants to go to UPEI and then to the Atlantic Veterinary College. She has wanted to be an equine vet since she was little. I hope she gets her wish.

The sun is starting to break through the clouds. I hope it clears up soon. It is beautiful here even in the rain, but in the sunshine it is really spectacular.

Riverdance

On this Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, Abigail and I went to see Riverdance at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown. The theater was very nice. There were no bad seats anywhere. We were lucky enough to have the center, first row in the balcony. The show was terrific. The dancers were clearly world champion level Irish dancers, and the singers and musicians were superb. The only downside to the performance was the family behind us who brought their toddler to see the performance. Why they didn't spend the thirty dollars on getting a babysitter is anyone's guess! It would have saved the rest of the surrounding rows from constant chatter and seat-kicking. Children this young don't remember the performance, so taking a child that young to the theater to see an adult-oriented production only irritates the audience.

I think we will be waiting to celebrate Thanksgiving until the last Thursday in November. Somehow it doesn't seem right to celebrate Thanksgiving on Columbus Day! The weather is starting to get colder and fall is definitely in the air. It is getting darker earlier and staying darker earlier in the morning. The darkness will be my greatest winter challenge. Just as I always tried to be here on the summer solstice to enjoy the ten o'clock twilight, I will now have to make it through the dark of winter. I remember going to Scotland in November and the sun never really rising. It was completely dark by three in the afternoon! I have my SADD light, so I will get through it. All in all, I am very happy to be here. People on the Island are very friendly and helpful. I have been told that I will never be considered an "Islander." However, New Englanders are just the same; even though I lived in Lowell, Massachusetts for most of my life, nearly twenty-three years, people born in Lowell would still consider me a "blow-in." I would rather just be myself, having come from somewhere else.

To all you Canadians, Happy Thanksgiving! To all you Americans, Happy Columbus Day!

Sharon

A New Beginning on Prince Edward Island

This past June, my husband and I moved to Prince Edward Island, Canada from Lowell, Massachusetts, USA. We arrived here with our two younger children and three cats. This is the story of why and how we made the move.

The story began almost twenty years ago, when we first visited PEI on vacation. I answered a classified ad for a cottage rental in Argyle Shore, PEI. I had never been to the island, but I had always heard how beautiful it is. We packed the babies in the car and set off. The drive lasted nearly fourteen hours. Thankfully, since that time, the roads have improved greatly and the ferry was replaced with the Confederation Bridge, which cut nearly three hours off our drive time.

When we arrived, we fell in love with the island. The air was so pure and sweet; the colors so bright and beautiful. The fields are so many shades of green, and the soil is rich, red clay. For many years, we promised ourselves that we would live here some day. Each year, we returned to Lowell, never making the leap. I continued working as a lawyer and raising four children. My husband kept working as a software engineer at various companies. Still, we kept talking about moving here, but always had reasons why we needed to stay where we were. That changed with the recession. My husband was forced into early retirement from his job at IBM, though he was in no way ready for retirement. He applied to work in his field in PEI and was hired. He moved in May, and I was left to sell the house and move the family. The house sold within a week, and the week after school let out, we arrived in Canada. My eldest daughter, a pre-schooler when we first came here, graduated from McGill University and lives and works in Montreal, much farther from here than Lowell. My eldest son, a baby when we first visited PEI, stayed behind in Massachusetts. He is a junior in college, studying marine engineering. The younger children, a high school and junior high student, are adjusting very well and really like it here. We still find it hard to believe we finally made it.

I have been working as a fiber artist since 2004, when I had the good fortune to meet a group of extraordinary women who later formed the Lowell Fiber Studio, http://www.lowellfiberstudio.org/sharon.html.
Lowell has an amazing arts community, centered on the Arts League of Lowell, http://www.artsleagueoflowell.com and Western Avenue Studios, http://www.westernavenuestudios.com.

Look for future posts of my art and times in Prince Edward Island.