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ice fishing on family day in Canada

16 years ago

{{!gwi}}

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Comments (8)

Chemocurl zn5b/6a Indiana
16 years ago
Oh wow! looks like a fun day. I used to enjoy ice fishing, but haven't gone in years as often the ice doesn't get thick enough to be safe (for very long).

Don't the fish just taste so much better when they are caught through the ice...or is it my imagination?

Thanks for sharing pics.

Sue
Happy_Go_Lucky_Gayle
16 years ago
You need a much bigger fire! Looks like you had fun.

It hurts my bones to see those pictures.

Gayle
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Seedmama: My heart goes out to you. It brings back to me our experience with a similarly devastating ice-storm in 1997. Ours was after Christmas, January I think, but your post brought back to me the sound of branches of our particularly large maple crashing down on the house; large chunks of ice crashing on to the roof and ricocheting off on to the driveway; watching the explosions as transformers on the hydro poles went up in flames; and seeing the top of my choice flowering crab fall off into the driveway, just after I had moved the van. It was a nightmare, but we were safe, together, and had a fireplace and a gas barbeque, and those things brought us through. It was over two weeks before power was restored to everyone - we had itermittent power as the Hydro crews removed branches which fell on the power lines across our yard and I used those times to start meals which I could finish on the barbeque. It's amazing how creative we can become if we have to. So hang in there, and try to enjoy Christmas, and leave the cleanup until Spring. We had to because our weather continued to be bad, but it was amazing as soon as the weather began to warm up to see perfect strangers just arriving on your property, cutting up downed trees and stacking the wood for free, and clearing up branches stuck in trees, and downing those which did not straighten up after the ice melted. We all pitched in and helped each other and things went faster than we expected. Maybe your comunity will come together like ours did. But take your time and see what nature has presented: it may be nicer than you think and remember 'this too will pass'. You will feel down sometimes, and that's O.K., because it will pass. Enjoy the holidays with your loved ones and we'll look forward to seeing your new beds in 2008. Northerner.
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Um... that's not quite the story. Since my name is on the subject line: There was a horse drawn wagon in my picture book. We had an automatic icemaker, and sometimes my folks froze blocks of ice in plastic containers, but when we were having a big party or going camping, my father would get a block of ice at the ice house, which wasn't far away, and he'd take me. He'd tell the story of the ice man whose horse knew the way to connect the blocks of ice with the horse drawn wagon in my storybook. When he was a kid they had an ice box. My mother only knew electric refrigerators, even out in the country. Sometimes, equestrians would ride down out of the hills, where there were some horse estates and trails, but that's as close as we got to horses where we lived. The milkman came in a panel truck and brought the milk inside and put it in the fridge. There was a breadman, I don't think daily, also in a panel truck, but one that opened up in the back with a display of breads and pastries, but my mother had a car and preferred to go to the bakery or supermarket. There are a few reasons primarily responsible for refrigerators not lasting so long nowadays. Electronics help meet energy savings goals, but are notoriously delicate. People want all kinds of gizmos, like crushed ice dispensers, which have never had a lot of longevity. The ice maker is the most likely place for failure. With all the plastic parts, which make shipping lighter, can be molded rather than wrought, and don't require metal ores (though petroleum is also a scarce resource), and overseas workforces who work for fewer dollars than North American workers, fridges are way cheaper in terms of buying power spent than they were ever so long ago, and far cheaper to replace than repair. People move a lot and move their appliances, which is hard on them. Landlords used to supply fridges.
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Carol, ”This made me recall that our neighbor, when I was kid, seeded quahog clams into the bay behind our houses, and years later, after the neighbors were long gone, I would harvest them when the tide went out. I always flushed them for a few days in a big bucket of saltwater with a handful of cornmeal tossed in, changing the water daily. I used them for clam sauce and chowder - they were huge! The cornmeal made them extra tasty, IMO.” Interesting. lucky you! When we first summered, there were quahogs ( ercenaria mercenaria) with very few soft shell clams (Mya arenarius). Then they were only the soft shell clams, steamers, and you couldn’t find a quahog for the life of you. The quahogs don’t move as fast, and they’re much easier to catch. They usually are maybe only 6 inches down or 4 inches. But those soft shell clams are like race cars; in our enthusiasm it was easy to have the tines of the clam hoe puncture the clamshell. The quahogs have a very hard shell and didn’t have that vulnerability. As you can imagine once you’ve got sandy muddy soil into the clam, by puncturing it shell, you could still eat the clam, but you better rinse it well before putting it into your mouth. What a lot of people used to do is pour the broth into a separate cup next to ones cup of melted butter. So you can rinse off the clams in the broth before dipping it into the butter and eating it. With practice not so many clamps, punctured.
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casey_nfld
16 years ago
Cool, where in Canada do you live? We don't get that holiday here in Newfoundland.
Cherryfizz
16 years ago
Great pictures!

I would love to do a winter activity like that.

Casey, Family Day is our new Ontario holiday but if you work for the Federal Government you still have to work so it is not a holiday for everyone.

Anne
susan_on
16 years ago
Glad I work for regional government. I am so glad to have the day off.
summer_tx
16 years ago
Looks like a great time, although a cold one. Guess you are used to the frigid weather though. I'm a wimp these days. I don't think I could get on enough layers to stay warm. Maybe if I was perched right against that fire. LOL Enjoyed the pics Clairdo. Thanks!
justlinda
16 years ago
Brings back memories of when I lived back in Quebec/Ontario. Out on Vancouver Island we don't get temperatures much below freezing, so ice fishing isn't seen out here. brrrrrrr
joyfulguy
16 years ago
Alberta and Saskatchewan had Family Day, I think that both of them call it, before.

Manitoba has named their day after Louis Riel, a French-Metis guy in the West who wanted some regional autonomy and the gov't. fixed him and his few guys in a small battle in N. Sask. in '85. No idea how many killed, but it wasn't very many.

They hung Louis Riel.

We'd had another tiny revolution in Ontario and Quebec in 1837.

I'd said a while ago that we hadn't had international military battles in N. America N. of the Alamo for 190 years, or within one country for 140, referring to that as the most recent.

But our battle was really the last, 120 years ago in 1885 ... and it was so small that I forgot about it.

The Ontario government declared a new holiday in February, Family Day (to promote "Family Values", I guess, including family-like assemblies based on same-sex couples), after they'd won an election last year.

So now there's a holiday in the four contiguous provinces from Ontario to Alberta on that day. The Alberta holiday, governed by a more Conservative group, with an election in the offing, has defined "family" a bit more narrowly, I think.

About 40% of the people in those areas, for various reasons, had to be at work today/yesterday ... but many of the workers had trouble, for their day care providers were on holiday.

At least some Toronto civic workers were on duty - they had a lot of snow to move.

Just a regular old holiday, same as every other day, for us retirees.

Well, not exactly - quite a few stores closed, and provincial govt. offices (but Fed. workers, as (Susan?) reported, were on duty).

One Federal political leader said that they should make it a Canada-wide holiday.

Some said that such an eventuality is a bit remote, for Canada's productivity is much lower than in the U.S., that the rise in value of our dollar has hurt our manufacturing industries, and though we've had 8 statutory holidays and U.S. workers 13 ... they think that there's little chance of expanding our numbers for a while.

Hope you all find some interesting and memorable things in the rest of this week.

ole joyful

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