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I had a quick jaunt out to Ruskin (a section of Maple Ridge, BC) for the Thanksgiving weekend. It was a trip I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to take at first. Reason: Too much work, and too tight deadlines to allow it.

Deadlines changed. Whether they changed for the better remains to be seen…

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No rooster, just the sounds of patrons leaving their rooms. I think I prefered the rooster.

The Chateau’s name is a little misleading. One is brought to think of the Canadian Pacific (now Fairmont) hotels, with the old world grandeur and luxury. Make no mistake, folks, this ain’t the Banff Springs. It’s a 1950’s motor lodge with a fancy roof. But it’s comfortable, and the grounds a nicely kitchy. Besides, it’s a family business, and run very well.

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We awoke about an hour earlier than we have in mornings past, but for no real reason. We didn’t even hear the rooster!

The porridge was followed, almost as soon as we could get ready, by a cat hunt. Allen has plans for his farm, which includes a new barn (of some kind). The problem, of course, is that you can’t have a barn without having mice and rats — that’s just a side effect. They can be controlled, however, with cats.

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That stupid rooster woke us up again. We’ve taken to mocking it. If it crowed normally, we probably wouldn’t mind so much. I fell back asleep, though, and Alex went into the house. She came back to wake me up for breakfast.

Fog was hugging the ground all down the river valley. (Not exactly unheard of in the Lower Mainland.) Naturally, this set me off on a photography expedition. You have to move quickly with fog — it doesn’t last long once the sun starts coming up. I got some wonderful pictures, especially of a space amongst the trees near the tent.

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There’s a rooster not far from Allen’s farm. (Well, “farm” is using the term a bit loosely. It was a farm before he bought it, and it will be one again. But it’s going to take a bit of work.) This rooster isn’t particularly normal. We’ve been speculating why it doesn’t sound normal. Most roosters gain their sound by listening and mimicing the sound of other roosters. This rooster doesn’t seem to have rooster peers, so it lacks the stereotypical cockle-doodle-doo one would expect at 5:30 in the morning.

This one sounds like a cross between a coyote and a freight locomotive horn.

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Cory had called me yesterday. I didn’t know until this morning because I hadn’t checked my cell phone. I’d had a dream that things had gone horribly awry at the office, and for some reason, that had made me want to check my cell phone. Good or bad, something was up. Sure enough, our newest star hire had backed out — an extremely disappointing turn of events. I wouldn’t talk to Cory about it until late in the afternoon.

We were gone before 8:00. (We were to have left at 6:00, then 7:00, but last night’s arrival in Fairmont pushed us even later.) Allen was in Jean’s Honda Civic, Alex and I in Alex’s car. I drove while Alex read “Why I Hate Canadians”. Today’s lesson? Canada’s cast system, more formally known as how poorly we treat Indians. It’s a hard thing for a Canadian to admit that we don’t treat everyone fairly and equally. For a country known as being “nice”, we treat our aboriginal peoples very poorly. We’ve marginalized, forcibly contained, abducted and tried to convert them, even poisoned them with disease. And yet after 400 years, they’re still who they are.

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No-one told me that we were doing any surprises this weekend. ‘Course, then it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?

Allen (Alex’s father) took Jean (Alex’s stepmom) down to Cranbrook so she could catch a flight out to southern Ontario for a wedding. This meant the condo was quiet for a number of hours. That meant we didn’t get up until late. I love sleeping in.

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