Ida Linehan Young's Blog, page 4

Then There Was That Time That I Opened the Winter Olympics

There are times that you are exposed to something so out of the ordinary that it stays with you for a long time. For some of us, it is more than others. One such time was when I was invited to open the Winter Olympics in Long River, PEI.

Now why in the name of God would such a thing happen to a gal from Newfoundland? I still ask myself that same question and I’m not sure I’ve ever gleaned an answer that fits the honour that was bestowed by that action. It lines up with the time I welcomed Pope John Paul to Canada and when I met Danny Romalotti (not many will remember him), the latter probably coming in third.

It all kind of happened in a non-descript; perhaps in a yeah, whatever, kind of way. The Olympics were being planned, I told my great friend Carla that I just might go, never thinking I would, and she kinda said, well why don’t you come to open them. And that’s where it sat until the stars aligned and I was on PEI the last week before the country shut down in March 2020. Coincidentally, that was the weekend of the Olympics.

Now the Olympics weren’t the only gig in town. There was competition with saving crows but that’s a tale for another time because it's something that is near and dear to Carla’s heart, however, I digress.

The Olympic Committee, the drivers Alain, Marlene, and Brian, were hard at work but, like any idea, it is only as good as the leaders' commitment and the community behind them.

Although I’m usually in the thick of things, for this event, I basically just had to show up. By the time I had gotten there all the prep work had been done on the river ice, all the games had been outfitted, even down to the ax-throwing stations. It was quite the scene.

One game I couldn’t pronounce nor had ever played involved throwing stones across the ice to take each other’s out of a big ring (no it wasn’t curling), because, plus there was curling – real curling rocks and all. In another place, bowling was set up with frozen two-litres Pepsi bottles, and there was mini golf, nine holes! The ax-throwing was impressive, full-size boards, beautifully done, and just amazing.

None of this getting ready was done in a day, as you could imagine. Months of planning went into it. Invitations, teams, etc. Ice needed measuring for safety, tractors had to keep the ice clear, lines had to be drawn, the area had to be set up and safe. Then there was the praying for good weather. Nobody was disappointed. Hundreds showed up, adults, kids, dogs.

The mascot was a cheezy Christmas Snowman aboard a punt with a ragged and tatter sail sitting proudly out on the ice, and for good measure, there was a cauldron that would burn all during the day. That was my job, light the fire and declare the Olympics open.

This came with some pageantry of course. Once the crowd had gathered I took the torch and marched behind the bugle player to the readied cauldron and lit ‘er up. Cheers erupted and the games began.

Once the play was underway and the competition got heated, so did the BBQ, hotdogs and hot chocolate. The Olympic Committee oversaw the happenings of the day and it went off without a hitch. Points were awarded based on scores in the games and a winner, complete with gold, silver, and bronze medals were declared.

What a day. I’m not sure I’ve heard such laughter and good-naturedness in one place at minus four or five degrees for a long time. Once the events were finished, the crowd helped put things away and dispersed. More than my day was made that cold winter’s day.

The river blew in with snow over the next few days before the last remnants of the games disappeared in the spring thaw a few weeks later. All physical signs of the Long River Winter Olympics vanished with the exception of the ax-throwing board which lay in wait for the next event.

This, of course, is not a story of the Winter Olympics, it is a story of community. Where you live is where you live – eat, sleep, nowadays probably work; but, when you live in a vibrant community, that is where you really live. That is where you make memories. I can promise you, that I have memories of feeling special and proud to be part of something so simple yet so complex. It was a wonderful day, I had to do nothing only show up. Kudos to the folks in Long River who have many traditions put on hold until this pandemic is all over. Thanks for allowing me in to this wonderful community. Thanks for reminding me we all need to live a little bit on the “hell let’s just do it” side of life.

Here's to never losing this attitude and encouraging and supporting it in our own communities. 

Thanks for reading.

Why the Nashwaak and I will never be friends...

The day I near drowned on the Nashwaak River took place in the summer of 2016 when I was supposed to be on a wonderful adventure in New Brunswick. Sharon was with the Canadian Forces Reserves in that province and lived with her friend Amanda and Amanda’s dog Polar. Polar plays a role in this story so it might be best to describe him. He was a cross between a Labrador Retriever and possibly a moose. A giant of a dog who lacked color, hence the name Polar (this is my guess, but probably because he was white and resembled a polar bear in size, shape, and colour, but I digress). What he lacked on the Crayola spectrum, he made up for in brute strength. Being raised by two fun-loving girls with a thirst for adventure, you can guess that Polar was not one to listen to commands given at inappropriate times.

Myself and Amanda’s mom, Renee, having been in NB for less than two days were keen to spend time with our girls. One of them came up with the brilliant idea that we should try tubing on the Nashwaak River. I was a bit eager for adventure and read of the meandering five-kilometer journey through the wilderness, ending at the site where the tour was stationed. Easy peasy, a lot more lemon than squeezy.

We were excited and left in Sharon’s car, a red Kia, and drove to the business and rented the tubes. $5 per tube was quite an inexpensive adventure. Polar came along for the ride because she was an outdoor dog and the girls brought her on every escapade. Two weeks before they had gone on the same tubing adventure and Polar swam the entire way. However, we purchased a backup tube for her in case she got tired.

The first clue that things were not exactly like the two weeks prior was a comment from the tubing owner when we got to the drop-off site, 30 minutes up the river by truck.

“That’s strange,” he said. “There wasn’t this much water here yesterday. You should be good to go though.”

“We should tie all of our tubes together,” Sharon suggested. “We did that last week.” So, we did.

It was wet getting into the tube because the launch area was flooded. Nevertheless, I was able to flop in, having committed with no chance of return once I was halfway down. The tube had a vinyl bottom so there was only one side up. The girls wanted to put their belongings in the one we had for Polar. Sharon took out keys to throw them in and I said “no”. I placed them in the pocket of my capris so they wouldn’t get lost should Polar decide she was tired. I blessed myself like any semi-good Catholic as the tube owner pushed us all out into the river.

The first thirty seconds, I was panicky, but settled in, and relaxed a little though not fully committing my soul to enjoyment. The river was wide, three or four hundred feet where we pushed out. Amanda had Polar’s leash. The river had ducks. Just sayin’, and three of those ducks were swimming in the middle of the Nashwaak. Polar caught sight of them and, with her powerful strokes, she soon had a train of tubers in the middle of, what we soon realized, was a fast-moving river. So much for meandering and pleasant, I digress once more.

That wouldn’t have been so bad, but the three ducks saw Polar swimming toward them and, instead of doing what ducks do in a panic and flying away, they, instead, headed for the shore. So did Polar. Now the train was slowly edging toward the tall grass, upturned sticks and rocks that graced the overflowing, debris deposited banks of the shore. Amanda was shouting commands at Polar and pulling on her leash but none of this was a match nor inspiration for the moose-dog, who swam like a polar bear.

Because we were so close to the shore, we couldn’t see ahead and there was a bend coming in the river. The water was fast on the turn, a small tree that had been uprooted upriver, passed us at lightning speed and went under on the turn before popping up farther out in the river.

I was the farthest from the shore and when I saw this thing, I shouted, “Oh Mother of God, we’re killed.”

The current began to take me at the same time that Polar made a run for the ducks on the inside. She tugged/lugged the others, and she went around the turn first. There, ahead of us was this log that was probably six feet in the round at its narrowest, broken offset tip that extended about thirty feet across the river, on the turn that we were heading toward. Half the log was submerged, and the other half was three or four feet over water and had spikes on it that could have raised any drawbridge in medieval times or been used as a rack in the torture chambers of every horror movie ever written. The bloody ducks were swimming toward it, and you know who, followed by you know who, was following them. 

Polar’s name was shouted, commanded, cursed, begged, pleaded, about seven hundred times by four frantic women. The leash was tied to the raft as well as being, in her mind anyway, controlled by Amanda who was trying her best to guide Polar around the fast-approaching torture chamber cast-off.

Lucky for us the ducks weren’t pulled by the current and they flapped their wings enough to keep Polar’s attention, but not enough to fly away. They paddled like the devil out around the log, and we cupped water with our palms to help Polar follow. The tubes picked up speed, Polar skirted the end of the log, followed by two of the others, leaving me and Sharon dragging behind.

Sharon had a stick that she used to push off, but the other two had taken off in the current and were dragging us into the spears. Sharon managed to get around the end, but the blunt six-inch skewer tips knocked my tube and a water eddy sucked me under. As the weight (being me) went off of the last tube, the train sped up.

As I was being dumped into the water, I grabbed the tube handle. No matter what, at least I prayed and believed, the tube would go up. Up was air, so I clung on with all my might. I could swim when I was in the kiddie end of a pool, but I couldn’t swim where the water was over my head. I went down, pulling the tube under the spikes and I didn’t hit bottom before the tube charged upwards.  

I kept telling myself not to panic as it would be sure death by drowning and I’d make the NTV news back home in NL. I was writing the news story in my mind before I came up the first time. The three others had been pulled into a calm pool in the shelter of the death trap we’d just passed. Well, they’d just passed. The tube shot up out of the water with my hand holding it, and I came up under Polar’s tube – remember I mentioned there were bottoms in them.

Down I went again, sucked under by some kind of undertow. In my mind, I replayed every drowning scene in the universe and knew I’d only come up twice more. I doubted the universe would listen to my argument that it wasn’t playing fair on the first time up. I wouldn’t have time for a debate. I only had two left, if I was lucky. I clung to the tube; it was my lifeline. Even in a death grip, it would see my body being found somewhere, hopefully before the river spilled out into the ocean where the recovery area might make me harder to spot.

The tube rebelled against the current and bolted upwards once more. I was being pulled both ways and I kicked to follow my beloved, now best friend, tube. This time I came up in the center of the four tubes. I heard voices saying, “there she is,” before I plummeted down once more. At least I’d gotten a gulp of air. They all dragged toward shore to keep out of the current and Sharon dived in where I went down. She grabbed me and the tube and pushed us upward and toward the bank.

I touched the steep grade of the riverbed beneath my feet and crawled to the shore. I coughed and spit and was grateful I hadn’t panicked.

I thought I’d come through hell, but it was, in fact, preparation for what was to come next. My capris clung to my legs and made it difficult to stand, I was waterlogged, my sandals were drenched, and water was running down from my hair and my clothes. The girls prepared the tubes for us to get in, but I refused. I knew the road was somewhere near the river and I was going to walk toward it. Renee said she wasn’t getting back on the river either. It was settled. We’d go to the road, which we figured was forty or fifty feet away. The adventurous girls and the moose-dog could go down the river and get the tube owner to come pick us up in his truck. They lit out as quick as they could, got picked up by the current and within moments, were out of sight.

Both Renee and I were walkers, but not extreme sports kind of walkers, more like the pavement in the subdivision kind. My sandals squished, my capris trapped my legs so I couldn’t lift my foot too far, and the rest of me was just plain miserable. We set out to get to the road and wait.

Thirty steps in we realized that the terrain was really a multi-year flooded and washed-out riverbank, with spiny roots like spiderwebs hidden in sparse grass growing from where the river had desecrated it for years. We followed along the edge until we could find a way to get into the woods and out to the road. Each time we thought we had a path, giant murder weeds, the kind that blistered you if you brushed them weeds, that were taller than ourselves weeds blocked the path and we had to keep following the river.

Barbed wire roots tore at my legs and ankles, my sodden feet chafed, my legs wouldn’t lift, and it had become hotter than hell in the stillness of the woods with nothing but killer weeds for company. There was nothing high enough to sit on and we figured we were too far gone from the place where we’d been dumped to go back.

Finally, we saw a break in the trees, and we could no longer see nor hear the river. I took my sight from the sun, where it had been when we were on the river, and hoped I was speculating correctly and that we wouldn’t just follow along in between river and road and never be found. However, after being mutilated, and now discovered by every black fly and mosquito in greater NB, lucky for us, the river either bent in or the road bent out and we saw one and heard a car on the other.

Prior to our find, it was the closest I had ever come to knowing I had reached my limit and that helicopters could use heat seekers to find us that night. The only thing pushing me on was knowing Sharon and Amanda might race us to the road. Competition won out over desperation. Renee was struggling, but not like I was. She hadn’t gotten wet, and, admittedly, was in better shape than me.

The forest lured us to the road, but not to where we could just walk out onto the paved surface and rejoice. No, we had to climb Mount Everest first, then get over a guard rail, then we’d be saved, rejoicement delayed. We looked for other ways up, but the killer weeds had circled us, and hope was fading. My feet barely held on by the back of the sandal strap as they bent forward in ways that my shin touched my toes with each step. We grabbed trees and used them for footholds and leverage to rock-wall climb the bank. We heard a car approaching and threw ourselves up the last few feet and out over the guardrail in time to see the car bumper disappear down the road.

We sat for a moment to catch our breath and by now we were desert thirsty, oasis seeing thirsty, and had to act. We decided to walk toward where Sharon and Amanda were coming from. Then, motherly instincts took over and we thought, “what if something happened to them”, we’d have to get them help.

A car approached behind us and we waved our arms and called out for help. The car sped up. We walked some more and were getting desperate for water. On one side of us were steep mini-mountains, and on the left, somewhere we couldn’t see, was the Nashwaak. So much water there, but we’d die for the want of a drop before going with that option. We’d walked for ten minutes when a cabin came into view. The door was open, and a cat looked at us from the step.

I told Renee that I’d go ask for a glass of water. I approached the house and, as I came to the step I, in my trying-to-do-the-right-thing though thirsty-as-heck self didn’t want to frighten whoever was behind the screen door. I shouted that we’d been in an accident on the river and needed a drink of water. “Hello. Hello. We need help. We need water.”

After three times, a lady came into the shadow of the interior and asked what I wanted. I told her what had happened and that we were dying of thirst. After several minutes of rummaging from inside, I had almost given up when she opened the door and threw an empty Pepsi bottle at me. She said there was a river out near the road, I could get water there. I asked if she could just give us a glass or fill the Pepsi bottle, but she refused and told me to get off her property.

I told Renee what she said, and we had a few choice words for this part of NB hospitality but also realized the person could have been alone and neither of us looked like the most stalwart of individuals. We joked if we showed up at somebody’s door in NL, they have us in, new clothes or at least wash and dry our clothes, make us Sunday dinner, and take us to the tubing business, perhaps even the next day. Instead, we had a green encrusted Pepsi bottle and the hope of a running water stream and easy access. We looked all around and couldn’t find that.

We saw a truck coming at full speed in the distance. I stepped out on the road and waved my arms frantically. Renee did the same. The truck, a double-cabbed grey pickup, passed. It had a provincial Natural Resources insignia on it. We shouted “help, help.” The brake lights lit, and he stopped and backed up. He was a warden. We told him what happened. He said the place we were going to was just at the top of the hill. He said we didn’t have far to walk.

Renee said, “we’re not walking.” She circled the truck and got in on the passenger side. The man was not too impressed. He got out and opened the back door, stacked some stuff that was the full of the seat, and grumbled about not being allowed to have people in the truck. He looked me up and down, especially wet ones.

“Even dying people?” He was not impressed with my question. A kilometer farther along he stopped at the end of the driveway of the business, told us to get out because he was in a hurry, and we walked in from there.

The place was closed. It was four o’clock. The girls weren’t there. We sat on a picnic table. There was no water. I saw Sharon’s car. “I have the keys. We can go get help.” We walked toward her car and pulled open the doors. Then we heard a horn blowing and a truck with the company logo pulled up in the yard. The girls scrambled out and ran to us. They’d been looking for us be we hadn’t made it to the road before they passed. They were terribly worried, as were we.

The owner gave us water and revived us. I reached in my pocket and no key. I searched my other pocket and the little pockets near my knees. No key. I asked Sharon about the other key, she said she only had one. The owner suggested getting one from the dealership. He’d go get it, it was twenty minutes away. We called Kia. The car had a computerized fob. We had to bring the car there. They were closing in thirty minutes. We were screwed.

The owner knew a tow truck driver. He called. Buddy pulled in ten minutes later. He dragged the car onto the flatbed, and we all piled into the cab. He dropped us at the Kia dealership three minutes before it closed and charged us a flat rate of $100. It was a favour apparently. The Kia people were waiting for us and within five minutes, we had a new computerized key. That was $240.

The $25 pleasure trip on the Nashwaak had cost almost $400. We were tested; we passed. It was a day we won’t soon forget. And that folks, is the reason why me and the Nashwaak will never be friends.