Gasoline tourism: part deux

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Big fins and all, I really have to admit I enjoyed seeing the Coasters 2010 antique car and trailer caravan—the one making its way from Newfoundland to BC.

I took our three boys down to see these beautiful, hand-built machines lined up and down King Street in St. Andrews, and stopped to take pictures of them for my dad, who’s also a huge antique car fan. Along the way I saw my neighbour, who was there with his brother checking out a nice 1940s Ford truck. In fact I saw a lot of neighbours along the way.

I had no idea the caravan would be arriving. The first clue was driving along the main street and seeing a huge lineup of grey-haired tourists trying to get into the Sweet Harvest restaurant. I wondered what was going on, and looking around noticed all the other retail shops filling up. As far as I could tell it wasn’t a special day—just another summer day in paradise. So what was up? Of course, as I drove around the corner I saw the caravan.

There it was. The antique cars and trailers filled both sides of the street, bumper to bumper, for five full blocks. All other cars were somehow cleared from the street. Once again it was a model of town organization. Traffic guides and roadblocks seamlessly redirected traffic without a hitch. It’s impressive to see a tourism town that really works.

Why do I approve of this particular gasoline-powered event and not the Atlanticade motorcycle event? Well, let’s say it has something to do with context. The Coaster event simply fit St. Andrews perfectly. It arrived on an otherwise ordinary day, put no undue pressure on local resources, brought a lot of interesting paying customers with them, and their vintage machines added some rolling art to our pretty vintage seaside community. And as an added bonus, it was quiet.

But what about that waste of gas? Yes, like Atlanticade, this event showcases the last gasps of the fossil fuel generation. But this wasn’t some noisy chrome-plated version of rebellion. This was more like a rolling museum exhibit, something that informs us about the fading golden age of the automobile, and the nostalgia and feeling of loss we’re already experiencing. This was an event that respects who we once were.

Sorry to say, the Coasters didn’t stay long. They left as quietly as they came, cruising out of town, antique trailers in tow, on to the next lucky community en route, which would be Hartland according to their website (www.coasters.com).

Not only were the Coasters good for our town’s economy, they’ll be good for the economies of all the towns along their route, from sea to sea. (In fact, we'd seen them the day before, stopped at the blueberry store on Route 1 halfway to Saint John.)

And the cars? Fantastic. There was a mildly modified ’48 Chev convertible in a white top and candi-apple red paint that really stood out. There was a Studebaker with a matching trailer and a mid-’50s Mercury and a couple of beautiful T-Birds, some Mustangs and an early ’60s vintage ambulance and a pair of old Model As, you get the idea… Oh, and that Plymouth with the huge fins… And the little 1930s pickup truck with the blue-green iridescent paint!

In exactly one month from their arrival here—by August 19—they’ll be in Victoria, BC. That’s pretty fast traveling for some of those old cars, and I know how that is. My dad built a 1930 Ford Model A roadster from the ground up, which I’ve inherited, and it too is a thing of beauty. I may be picking it up this summer, and have often thought about driving it out here instead of having it shipped. It’d be a long trip; the car cruises at about 25 miles per hour, but it could be fun—especially if I took my three boys along for the ride. And I’d love to take my dad along, but I think he’s just not well enough to make it—though I’m pretty sure it would be a trip we’d all remember for the rest of our lives.

As to my own history, I’ve said it before, I’ve been addicted to cars and gasoline and driving fast since I was a young kid. I’ve owned a lot of sports cars in my life, and still have one in the driveway. That said, we’re all going to have to adapt to a changing world if we want make a small difference for their kids’ future. The only debate is how we get there.

And that may not be easy. We have yet to see the world’s first electric car caravan, for example. It may involve rebuilding our railways. Some of us would have to give up waterfront land to make that happen. We may even be forced to give up our cars altogether.

As we all know, giving things up—including our habits and assumptions—ain’t always easy.

Courage and complacency around here

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George Carlin died of a broken heart. Literally. His heart gave out at 5:55 p.m. on June 22, 2008. But just maybe Carlin died of the other kind of broken heart—the kind that breaks from disappointment.

If you really listen carefully to George Carlin, you can hear through his rants some kind of inner passion—the passion to inform a population that has lost its ability to direct its own future. George was one of us. And he had heart.

It’s hard to ignore Carlin’s courage. In 1961 he was arrested for refusing to show his ID when the original shock comic Lenny Bruce was being arrested for obscenity. A few years later Carlin’s “seven words you can never say on television” launched a freedom of speech debate that still echoes through the halls of the U.S. legal system.

What got me going on Carlin was a fellow blogger who posted a video of Carlin’s rant about education—the kind the big wealthy business owners don’t want you to get. Here’s George in his own words:

“Forget the politicians. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress the State Houses and the City Halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information that you get to hear. They got you by the balls!”



Some days it sorta sounds exactly like how things run out here in New Brunswick—and how the rest of us might want to be careful about what we say, since what we say may actually affect our paycheques. As a result, dissenters in New Brunswick seem to be a rare breed.

But it’s not just here. Carlin’s kind of dissent seems to be in awfully short supply everywhere these days. Looking back it makes you wonder what has changed over the past 40 years. I’m fairly certain that dissent didn’t disappear because all the problems of the world have now been solved, or the gap between the rich and the poor has been narrowed at last, or our politicians are finally working harder and more openly for us ordinary folks, or we’ve all reached a level of enlightenment that transcends personal gain. We seem to have more problems than ever. So what happened to dissent?

I was talking to a friend about this apparent lack of dissent last week, and somehow Facebook crept into that conversation. What is it about Facebook? And the lights went on. Facebook is all about being popular. On Facebook it doesn’t pay to offend anyone—in fact the less offensive you are the better, because in the Facebook universe the person with the most friends wins.

Sure, our media shapes us, as Marshall McLuhan said. But Facebook is just a symptom. There are deeper reasons for the disappearance of dissent. As consumers in a consumer-based society we’re prisoners of the global corporations that supply us with our next fix. And at the most fundamental level we subconsciously know it.

It follows that what happens at the local or regional levels is more or less irrelevant on the larger economic and political scale. More than anything, we’re affected by what’s happening internationally.

This came up last week at a meeting where the idea of local–regional media was being discussed. The newspaper that was being discussed is a great record of regional events and ideas. But what relevance do these ideas have to the events happening in the outside world? What is shaping our thinking from the outside that we don’t acknowledge in our everyday lives?

Truthfully, most of what influences our lives is dictated by that outside world—the corporately controlled world. It dictates the way we communicate, dress, shop for food, decorate our homes, and how we travel from one place to another. Very little local enterprise—other than the localized political and economic controls that keep our sewers and potholes fixed—affects our daily lives. And maybe that’s enough to keep us locally engaged.

But clearly, as Carlin suggests, the main shaping agent of culture is the corporate media. Living inside these sprawling media networks we sometimes get the uneasy feeling that we’re victims of disinformation—such as the media rush to the war in Iraq. Or worse, that were simply being distracted from the real business of running our own society. The end result is a growing cynicism about one’s ability to actually affect the affairs of the world, and a loss of faith in the future.

So we’ve made the bargain with the devil. We get all the high fashion and cheap consumer goods we can possibly want. All we have to do is play along with the system, shut up and enjoy it—no matter what it does to erode our capacity for critical thinking, or how it damages the rest of the planet.

But there’s that niggling thought. If it’s such a great deal, why are we slowly getting poorer and less satisfied as time goes by?

Can mushrooms save us from ourselves?

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Fungi rule the earth. At least that’s what I learned from the documentary “The 11th Hour.” The basis of all fungi growth is something called mycelium, a branching, networked organism that spreads through the soil, and somehow manages to keep all land based life alive.



From a quick surf on the Internet, it appears that Paul Stamets is the grand master of mushrooms and mycelium. He makes an interesting comparison between the complex growth of mycelium and the composition of the Internet. But unlike the Internet, mycelium has been around for a billion years or so.

In a quote from his book, Mycelium Running, Stamets illustrates the exceptional qualities of this incredible lifeform:

“Is this the largest organism in the world? This 2,400-acre (9.7 km2) site in eastern Oregon had a contiguous growth of mycelium before logging roads cut through it. Estimated at 1,665 football fields in size and 2,200 years old, this one fungus has killed the forest above it several times over, and in so doing has built deeper soil layers that allow the growth of ever-larger stands of trees. Mushroom-forming forest fungi are unique in that their mycelial mats can achieve such massive proportions.”

In fact mycelium has crossed all the continents on Earth, and is the central processor and digester of life. Mycelium is the stuff in the soil that recycles dead organisms. The mushrooms that sprout from the mycelium are just the fruiting part of the organism. The real work is happening underground.

Mycologists, those dudes and dudettes who study the fungal world, think that microscopic mycelium fungi evolved the world’s first stomach as they moved from the oceans to the land. To process nutrients, they apparently formed tiny sacs to digest these materials and convert them into energy. Due to the design of our stomachs, there is even some speculation that we humans are more related to fungi than to any other species on the planet. (I know there must be some kind of mushroom monster-man joke here, I just can’t come up with one.)

The fungal world is old and diverse. Over eons, some plants and trees have formed a symbiotic relationship with fungal root systems. These rooted fungi are known as mycorrhizae. Scientists estimate that more than 95% of these mycorrhizae species remain “undiscovered,” and represent an unopened treasure chest of knowledge.

But mushrooms may be an endangered species. Studies seem to indicate that mushroom colonies are shrinking around the world. The reason why is simple. Mushrooms and other fungi are at home within the natural cycle of our forests. However, recent advances in logging and reforestation have greatly disrupted or supplanted the natural forest regenerative cycle. When old growth, or naturally occurring forests are cut and replanted, the new cultivated forest is filled with trees of precisely the same age. And for many years the new growth thrives and nothing dies. That means fungi have no dead material upon which to feed, and they die, too. Once again we see the effects of our mechanical monocultural production techniques.

Closer to home, a friend of mine has his own secret stash of mushrooms near St. Andrews, on a patch of ground he jealously guards. I haven’t eaten his mushrooms, but I do know the general whereabouts of his spot and so, unfortunately, I’ve inherited the responsibility of keeping it secret. It’s a symbiotic thing.

Perhaps that’s what caught my attention most about mushrooms. They represent our interconnectedness. And not just in an ecological sense. In a cultural way, too. Through my involvement with Ministers Island I’ve learned that Sir William Van Horne and his family were avid mushroom enthusiasts, collecting them and documenting them in drawings. The mere sight of mushrooms evokes any number of emotional responses in people, from the bucolic to the humorous to the psychedelic to the erotic, and the Van Hornes must have shared those feelings.

Mushrooms have a long devotional history in art. They’ve been major props in Celtic fairy tales and the subject matter in everything Flemish paintings (toadstools depicting Hell) to the writings of Shakespeare, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. A mushroom even became the central plot device in H.G. Wells’ short story, The Purple Pileus, wherein the main character gets stoned on mushrooms and gets the mad courage to finally assert a stronger position with his domineering wife. And I haven’t even touched on the culinary arts and the gourmet properties of mushrooms—including truffles.

On a more utilitarian level, mushrooms and mycelium are being investigated for their pharmacological, chemical and organic properties. Mycelia are now being used to clean up toxic waste in the environment. For example, mycelium from oyster mushrooms is reported to be capable of renewing soil contaminated by diesel fuel in just eight weeks. I’d guess that the Irving Oil guys know all about it, and so do their environmental consultants.

And then there are the psychedelic properties of “magic” mushrooms. While I don’t advocate getting high on them, we should all be high on the idea of sharing the planet with, and owing our very existence to this phenomenal organism. I expect they may still be here when we’re long gone.

Gasoline tourism in the 7th circle of hell

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The moon was rising over the bay; cool highlights sparkled on the surface. The sounds of jazz, tinkling glasses and people chatting drifted from the old Fulcrum bistro on main street across the water to where we were lounging on the back of our sailboat. It was a magical night.

Fast forward three years. It’s a hot sunny afternoon. The mayor and the town manager are standing in front of the same Fulcrum bistro, now long closed, the subject of many noise complains and council meetings. The driver of a custom Harley motorcycle lights up the engine, cranks the throttle wide open and does a standing burnout, motor roaring, rear tire smoking. A man walking with his small daughter on the sidewalk claps his hands over her head to protect her ears. When the driver eases off on the throttle the mayor and the small group begin to clap and cheer.

That was a small taste of the Atlanticade motorcycle event in the pretty, quiet seaside resort of St. Andrews. And apparently the town “needed” these tourism dollars. It reminded me a bit of the old joke about a guy walking up to a beautiful woman at a party and asking her if she’d spend the night with him. “Are you kidding?” she says looking him over with distain. “Okay, imagine if I were rich,” he says, “and I offered you a million dollars,” to which she answers, “Oh, yeah, so show me the million dollars.” Not missing a beat he says, “Good. Now that we know what you are, let’s talk about price... The price for us last weekend was having to live in the noise equivalent of the seventh circle of hell.

Our house is located in the epicentre of Atlanticade, about 25 feet from the main entrance-road into town. Every motorcycle coming into town had to pass by our house. Better yet, the entire noisy event was headquartered at the arena, just a couple of hundred yards away from our house. The non-stop noise was horrendous. Sleeping with the windows open was impossible. Our kids kept complaining about the noise and waking up every morning with headaches. Of course none of this would matter to anyone living far enough away from the zoo.

The residents of the town were sold a pretty good bill of goods on this event: it would be good for our economy and good for tourism, yada, yada. So I was surprised to see a whole tent colony of shops sprout up at the arena to sell goods to the visiting bikers. How was that good for our local retailers? And how much did all the portapotties and town staff and facilities cost the town—relative to the increase in income?

We were also told that this was a new breed of biker—credit card bikers, doctors and lawyers and such, just having fun. And that most of the bikes would be quiet. Nope. I don’t think so. While there may have been doctors and lawyers, a whole lot of them were certainly NOT riding quietly, or riding on quiet bikes. They were more like a swarm of Hells Angels with a teenage compulsion for generating maximum noise from their machines all hours of the day and night for three days.

And all that income? A lot of them seemed to bring a lot of their own supplies with them. From short conversations I’ve heard that sales were actually down on Canada Day for some restaurants, and for whale tours as well. Some art galleries didn’t fare any better. One art opening that usually attracted over 100 people drew only 12. As for attractions, Canada Day visits to Ministers Island were very low, just 10 people made the trip. I heard, perhaps incorrectly, that even the Algonquin Hotel didn’t do the numbers it expected.

Some retailers did do quite well. The bars and watering holes like Tim’s did a land office business. Inexpensive rooms sold out and even booked for next year, so I guess some people benefited—as long as they fit the biker profile. But therein lies the problem. Does St. Andrews fit the bikers’ profile?

And what about that bikers’ profile? One thing stands out: the sea of white hair and grey beards. This is an aging demographic. In fact, this is the last of the hardcore fossil fuel generation—riding the toys they couldn’t afford when they were kids. For today’s kids its video games, iPhones and Facebook. The digital generation has arrived and the gasoline generation is finally moving on.

Atlanticade and Sturgis in the States and NASCAR are the last gasps of the fossil fuel generation. Inevitably, these will go the way of earlier pastimes such as hunting and fishing, also greying sports as the lodge owners in northern Canada will attest.

So as we make plans for next year’s Atlanticade, we might consider that creating activity doesn’t necessarily translate into a better economy—especially on the busiest day of the season. We might also think more about how to build for tomorrow’s tourism customer, rather than submitting to an adolescent past.

On a final note, to the town’s credit, this was the most well-coordinated, well-managed events I’ve seen out here. A few quieter, profitable shoulder season events—like Moncton’s Northrop Frye literary festival—would really benefit from this level of organization. And maybe save a bit of fossil fuel in the process.