True Patriot Love

It's amazing how the death of four RCMP officers will shake a nation. The team was in Sussex, New Brunswick, walking to Tim's for coffee, when a procession of RCMP and local police cars went through the city. Nearly every flag we see is at half mast, and I got to see the memorial service on CBC. It was somber, but seeing that black and red crowd of officers and mourners made me think of Canada as a country. Atlantic Canada was affected by a tragedy in my home province. Even over thousands of kilometres, Canadians pull together. I think, for the first time in my life, I'm feeling patriotic. Being among the priveleged millions who are citizens of this country means more than free health care and GST. Rhonda has made me think about this, because Canadians take (and dish out) a lot of crap because of the lack of readily identifiable culture. However, it takes a looooooong time to develop the culture of a nation. Canada has not even had 200 years.
And it is a beautiful country. Even in the winter, when everything is brown, it's gorgeous. We went to the Bay of Fundy and climbed through the rocks and caves on the beach. It was amazing! One cave in particular had red sand. Like, burnt red, not kind of organeish. We had a show in Saint John (which went really well), and today we drove to PEI. The soil is red. Just like in Anne of Green Gables (which borders on a cult here), just like in pictures. It's so weird; it almost feels like it's a joke. That suddenly it'll turn brown and God will laugh cause we fell for it. It makes you realize how many things get covered in dirt. Dirty snow is red, the cars have red dirt on them, dirty roads are...red. And plowed fields are the craziest. Kinda like a kid drew a picture but didn't have a brown crayon. We did go to the Anne of Green Gables house, but it was closed.
No quotes yet this week. We haven't been that interesting, I guess. We did go to a sweet 50s diner today, with a jukebox! And we took a picture of a giant lobster eating me...and against all reason, ran on a closed beach where icy cold winds almost knocked us over. We also drove over the Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick to PEI. It's 13 km long, was built in 1997 and cost $1 billion. Yeesh.