Merry Christmas From PEI

It’s Christmas Eve, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas is on the TV, snow is gently falling outside (making our own white Christmas), the furnace is piled high with logs, and I am putting the finishing touches on our yearly Christmas greeting. Our Christmas greetings come to you this year from the North Atlantic Island of lobster, potatoes, and ADL. ADL? ADL is the maker of the BEST milk, chocolate milk, butter, and cheese you can possibly imagine. Drinking a glass of their chocolate milk is like drinking a little slice of heaven (I just finished a glass!). Well, our greeting comes to you, as you know, from 83 Lewis Road, Union R.R. 1, Alberton, West Prince, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

We left the U.S. in August, leaving the dog days of summer in Central Texas (the day we left was 107 degrees with 100% humidity), and headed across the U.S. moving up the east coast. So, here we were, Gil and I, accompanied by 2 dogs, 1 cat, and 1 Lucy Bird, pulling our horse trailer filled with things we thought we would need until our household goods arrived, headed for Canada. Gil and I had never driven through the states lining the east coast so we were really looking forward to seeing the land. An added bonus, especially when traveling through the southern states, being in the land of really really good grits! Yummmm. The only part of the trip that truly sucked was going through Atlanta with a horse trailer, and we didn’t even go through at a rush hour time. Thank God Alli and Jesse gave us the wonderful gift of a GPS before leaving or the suck factor of Atlanta would have been significantly worse!

We stayed for a few days with Alli and Jesse in Swanzey, New Hampshire and the rest was greatly welcomed by us and the animals. We had a wonderful time with Alli and Jesse and got to spend some time watching Aaron, their 7 m/o son, being Aaron. He is a truly happy and delightful child. Even though this is their first and they have little parenting experience (7 months to be exact!), I told them they HAVE to be doing it right or he wouldn’t be so happy and well adjusted to life. He is a joy to be around. We had such a wonderful time seeing Keene (Swanzey is just a couple of blocks from there) and Walpole (where their family business is located). We brought sausage from Green’s Sausage House in Zabzkville with us and Gil made a huge pot of his gumbo. We had our usual trio of gumbo, baguette, and wine, accompanied by lots of wonderful conversation.

We crossed into Canada at the border crossing located in Houlton, Maine. We were prepared with a file box full of papers which were required to get us, the animals, and the car across the border and fully expected to spend hours going through papers and getting it all sorted. We were shocked and pleased that it was so quick and painless. Gil got his work visa and I got my Canadian papers and we were across the border in less than an hour (none of the documents we worked so long and hard to get in the U.S were asked for!). As we drove through New Brunswick headed to PEI, we looked at the scenery passing us in a different way than we looked at Canada all the times we had visited. This was our HOME now, and it makes you look at your surroundings quite differently.

The horses made it here about a week after we got here. There was a bit of difficulty getting them across the border. The transporter called me in a panic at midnight saying they weren’t going to let them across. We finally got everything worked out so the border agents understood why we were bringing them here and finally in the wee hours of the morning they made it across into Canada. When they made it to me they had a bit of a deer in the headlights look, but that is to be expected. They were on a transport from Texas to Maine for 3 full days without stopping, stayed over in Maine for 2 days, and then were on another transport for another 12 hours here.

Cowboy and Olivia have settled in and done well. I have been riding Cowboy and although it took him a bit of time to settle in and get back to where we were in Texas, he has been just awesome. In the past, when he traveled, a show was at the end, so he was in full (and I mean full with bigness and glory!) saddle seat mode. We finally got the dressage brain engaged again and he has been spectacular. I have been lunging and long lining Olivia since arriving, but haven’t ridden her yet. She has continued to be sound as can be and I have looked long and hard to find a driving trainer that I could continue lessons with and perhaps start Olivia driving. We attempted it once before with my trainer, Tom O’Carroll, in Texas, but she didn’t stay sound for it. Since then, we have had her on Naproxen, and she has stayed sound. The bad news is I can’t find a trainer. Most people on the island harness race which is, of course, not the same at all. I have, however, made a couple of friends who drive (not competitively) – carriage in the summer and sleigh in winter. So, I am going to get a bit of sleigh experience this winter. I am really excited about getting to sleigh this winter. The two horse experiences topping my list for PEI were riding on the beach and sleighing.


As most of you know, our Ophelia sustained a devastating injury on a back leg on Thanksgiving Day and the prognosis was extremely poor. It was felt by all that it would have caused her great suffering to attempt to fix it and in the end, we would have been putting off the inevitable. So, the decision was made and Gil was with her until the end. Of course, Ophelia was out of my mare, Olivia, and we were there at Dr. T’s when she was born. Alli took care of the farm while Gil and I spent every evening/night at Dr. T’s watching Olivia on the monitor, playing lots and lots of cards, until finally 3 weeks later, at 2 a.m., Ophelia was born. She would have been 3 years this January. This has been extremely difficult for both Gil and I, but especially Gil. He was bonded to her (and her to him); the way Olivia and I are bonded. It is so tragic and sad and we will miss her so much.

Gil started working on 01 September and is really enjoying small town medicine again. He sees patients at the clinic in O’Leary and also has some on-call time at the O’Leary Hospital. Of course, he has beat the “evidence-based medicine” drum since arriving and is now back to doing some teaching. He has just gotten a medical student who will be doing a one month rotation with him. Since he was a hospitalist at S&W the last 8 months or so before moving here, he wasn’t doing any teaching, so he is really enjoying having a student and teaching again.

There are lots of changes in medicine going on here though. For many reasons, they are consolidating services on the island and toward that end, they closed the ER and hospital (acute care beds) in Community Hospital O’Leary, where Gil works. Alberton’s hospital, which is 15 minutes from O’Leary (and closer to where we live), will serve as the local ER and in-patient hospital for acute care and when Gil is on call, he will work out of Alberton. All that sounds good, but we are not entirely convinced that Alberton’s ER/hospital will remain open either. It seems, what would make the most sense, is to have all ER and acute care in-patient in the 2 largest centers – Summerside and Charlottetown. Eventually the only services left in the small communities would be clinic/urgent care. These decisions and changes are very unpopular with the people of these communities, as all the individual communities want their own fully functional hospital/ER, so I imagine these changes are going to come piece-mill and slowly, but I think they are inevitable. So, this makes it difficult to know how to proceed with the horses.

Aside from helping a great deal with this kind of change, Gil is also doing here what he does everywhere he goes, seeing what needs to be changed to make patient care better and setting to work. Providence seems to have led him here for this reason, above all. There are many huge changes which are occurring here and change is something that is difficult for anyone, but it seems especially difficult for the good people of Prince County. The way they have done things in medicine for the past 50 years is being turned on its head and they are being catapulted into the 21st century of medical practice. In so many ways PEI is like the U.S. was in the 50’s and early 60’s and it is refreshing, but not in medicine. It will take probably a good 5 years to really implement these changes and have them running well. For all of you who really know Gil, that will be the time we will be ready to go on to our next adventure…

Willa and Isobel are very happy here. They love the snow, although it is s a little difficult to see Isobel dashing through it as it usually deeper than she is tall!! Lucy bird is great too. It is somewhat cold for her and we have to keep the house a bit warmer than we would otherwise and I keep an oil heater on next to her cage. She seems very happy there though. She is dangling off toys in her cage and talking smack constantly! We also brought Dory, one of our barn cats from the farm. She is now an inside cat, as she doesn’t care for the snow or the cold much!

Gil and I learned what it is to prepare for winter in a north Atlantic region. Everyone here utilizes two sources for heating – oil and wood. Oil is extremely expensive, so everyone uses it sparingly. So, we ordered our 7 cords of wood for the winter. Wood makes more of a warm/cozy heat than oil does as well. Our wood was dumped on the front lawn, 3.5 cords at a time, by the entrance to our basement and we had to get it down there and stack it. I won’t lie – it sucked. I am used to walking over to a thermostat and putting it to whatever temp I would like the house to be. Well, that really isn’t an option here. As our good fortune would have it, Alli and Jesse came for a visit for U.S. Thanksgiving and helped us with the second 3.5 cords. What a huge help that was. Gil had discovered on the first 3.5 cords that he isn’t 20 anymore!! After helping to get 7 cords down to the basement and stacked, I like the thermostat thing even more. Imagine this though – there are 70 and 80 year old men here who stack 7 cords by themselves every winter. Holy cow!

We really like it here though. The pace is MUCH slower here than in the U.S. I will say that has taken some getting used to. I tend to approach most everything with a snap, snap, snap, get it done now approach. You can forget that here. No one is in any hurry ever for anything. There is no such thing as running by someone’s house quickly to drop something off. If you go by, you have to come in for at least an hour for hot tea and conversation! Everyone here loves to talk. Even if you go into a store in search of something and have to ask for assistance, you will usually get at least 15 minutes of conversation before you get the answer. We went into a shop in Charlottetown which has woolen knitted clothing to look for a sweater for Gil – one sweater – we came out about 2 hours later! Even in the checkout line at the Farmer’s Co-op (grocery in O’Leary), a bit of conversation occurs within the check out timeframe (and if you don’t conclude it and move on, they will keep talking while folks just stand behind you and wait – and they will just stand there and wait patiently for however long and listen to your conversation!!) and it will almost always include comments about the weather. EVERYONE loves to make a comment on the weather conditions of the day. In fact, the other day I was sitting at the kitchen table working when I noticed the recycle garbage truck coming down our street and realized I hadn’t yet put out or recycle bags. So, I rushed to throw on warm clothing, grabbed the bags, and ran out to the street just in time. The garbage man, took my bags, threw them in the truck, and then proceeded to talk to me for the next 15 minutes about… the weather!!! He told me all about a horrible snow storm they got in the 1982 and how the snow was almost to the top of the telephone poles and how winters here have been really mild in comparison since… and on and on for 15 minutes. The garbage man even loves to talk! He was very pleasant and we had a very nice conversation.

I will have to say though that the folks we have become good friends with the quickest here are also people from “away”. That is was the locals call folks who move here and are not from the Island, even if you have moved from Nova Scotia. They say, oh you are from “away”! When folks say that to me, I say yep, we are from “way away”, 2400 miles, to be exact! Our good “from away” friends Pam and Jim, originally from Ontario, but have lived many, many places, are headed to Nunavut (above the 60th parallel) for the next year for Pam to work. It is only one year and they will be back, but we will miss them so much. We have had so many wonderful dinners with them and, in fact, that is where we will be on Christmas Day.

Being on PEI has been such a wonderful learning experience and we have only been here a short while. We know what it is like to stand in the midst of a blizzard, drive in one (the first snow of the season was pretty close to a blizzard and I had to drive home from the barn – 45 minutes away!), drive in a mixture of snow and then rain (slicker than poo you’d find in microbiology!) the smell of a woolen mill, the taste of exquisite ADL dairy products, the flavor of fresh (out of the ocean less than 2 hours, boiled in ocean water on the boat) lobster, and what it feels like to stack 7 cords of wood.

So, that about wraps up our year. It has been one of learning, joy, and sadness. We are still at the same e-mail addresses and you can always find what is new in our day-to-day lives by visiting Gil’s blog.

Seven layer what?

I have heard of seven layer cake, seven layer dip, and even seven layer salads. What I have never heard of is seven layer dinner. That’s right, seven layer dinner.

Why do I mention this?

Well, yesterday evening when I was on call at the hospital, I wandered down to the cafeteria for a little something extra to go along with my homemade sandwich. I was hoping for a little soup or something along those lines. As usual I inquired about the offerings for the evening and was told that they had barley soup, homemade pizza, and seven layer dinner. I guess my face did not hide my complete and utter ignorance, because the ladies in the kitchen all chuckled at the queer face I must have been making.

Seven layer dinner?

Yes I had heard them correctly, it was in fact seven layer dinner. What pray tell is seven layer dinner you ask? Well let me tell you friends it is nothing like seven layer cake. The seven layers of the dinner refer to the layers of ingredients with which you line the casserole dish. In the case of our hospital, the kitchen had chosen the fresh veggies that are currently available throughout the countryside at any of the many roadside stands. It begins with potato halves, then green beans followed by bell peppers, corn, peas, macaroni noodles, tomatoes, and ground beef. When it is dished up it looks a lot like any other casserole you have ever seen. Since I had never heard of such a thing, I immediately went to Google to find out more about this culinary invention, and I found several different versions of the same basic process. Like any good recipe it is easily modified, and so I found the following options for the dinners.
1 c. rice

1 c. whole kernel corn

1/2 (5 oz.) can tomato sauce

Salt and pepper

1/4 c. chopped onion

1/4 c. chopped green peppers

1/2 (5 oz.) can tomato sauce

3/4 to 1 lb. ground beef, partially cooked

4 to 6 strips of bacon on top

1 1/2 lbs. hamburger

1 c. green beans, drained

1 c. kernel corn, drained

1 c. sweet peas, drained

6 servings of instant mashed potatoes

1 c. spaghetti sauce

Salt & pepper

2 c. sliced potatoes

1 c. sliced carrots

1 c. chopped onion

1 lb. hamburger - browned

Salt and pepper to taste

1/3 c. raw rice

1 c. chopped celery

1/2 c. chopped green pepper

1 qt. tomatoes

1/2 cup uncooked long-grain white rice
3 potatoes, sliced
1 onion, sliced into rings
2 carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 (15 ounce) can green peas, with liquid
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed tomato soup
1 (10.75 ounce) can water
1 pound pork sausage, sliced and browned
salt and pepper to taste

As you can see, there are many options for the seven layers of deliciousness that could have come you way in the cafeteria, but I having a sandwich already opted for the barley soup in a cup.

While on the subject, I should make it very clear that life in a small town hospital is infinitely more fun than you would possibly expect. For instance, the cafeteria is run by the same ladies who have been there for ages, and all the meals are made from scratch using as much local produce, meat etc as possible. The meals, while different from the fare of Texas, are none the less satisfying and very good. The next nice thing is that in very short order you know absolutely everyone in the place, and there are no longer any strangers. You see these folks whenever you are out and about in town, and when you are out for a walk on the trail. Each and every one of them is ready and willing to help you with anything in which you might be interested.

As an example, I am very interested in getting some wool sweaters made prior to the arrival of winter. The woolen mill where we had gone came across two sweaters that they thought might fit me, and so when Nancy ran into the manager in the grocery, she mentioned this to her. She had put them back and was preparing to call me at the clinic to let me know that she had them and I should come try them on. During their conversation, they realized that with my schedule I would not be by the mill for some time, so they gave the sweaters to Nancy to bring to me for fitting. Understand that these are fantastic sweaters that are probably worth $300 or more in the states, and they just handed them over and said give them a try. We did in fact try them on and I am keeping one of them, a pullover that is very nice. We have looked at some other places for sweaters, but they are all marked up far too much for my taste, so I put the word out that I would be interested in “commissioning” some sweaters from any of the knitters in town. I have several names which I will be going through this week to see who has the time and inclination to knit some sweaters for me this year. I can assure you they will be very warm, very pretty and a whole lot less than the ones in the store.

Very soon I will post some photos of the hospital on the blog so you can get a better feel for my life north of the 40th parallel.

The wool mill around the corner

It appears that some folks reading the blog have become curious if all that is taking place at the new homestead is the steady drill of painting, unpacking, sleeping and repeating. Well I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact there has been a great deal more taking place than this simple four step cycle represents. There has been grocery shopping, the eternal quest for Fritos, trips to the barn, work with horses, setting up an office, painting, deciphering the mandatory recycle system, searching for Fritos, sleeping, unpacking, going to the hardware store, painting, and of course, sleeping.

In all seriousness, the quest to get everything important unpacked, as well as finishing the painting so that the rooms can be organized has occupied a significant amount of time. However, we are venturing forth to explore the surroundings as we make our way north and south across the island on the regular trips to the barn and clinic. Today we ran into a most amazing place which we have passed several times, but today decided needed closer inspection. It is the MacAuslands woolen mill and it has been in operation since 1870. The building itself is newer having been rebuilt after the fire in 1948, but the mill itself has been operating on this site since 1870. We have driven past it several times as it is on the way from O’Leary to the Kent Hardware (think Lowes or Home Depot). Today we popped in and took a look around (Link to flickr photos). It was fantastic. The equipment is wonderful, and the women who were working away on it moved with a sense of finesse and grace as they ran the spindles that created the yarn. We talked with the owners for about half an hour prior to taking our leave. They put me in touch with a lady who knits wool sweaters and I will be visiting her soon to get a few in my size.

This weekend we are hoping to head to the northern and western most point of the island to the town of Tignish to see a beautiful Catholic church and enjoy the sites. Also, since we now have a reliable internet connection at home I will begin uploading more photos of the travels.

In case you are curious as to the multiple mentions of Fritos, we are having great difficulty finding these chips in Canada.