Marie's Musings

We are experiencing tragedy here and I've tried to copy the news story as follows. I couldn't get the pictures up. I used to live in the Lake Echo Trailer Park and have friends in that area. The church I used to attend there has recently finished a building project and it is, as far as I can tell, in the path of this fire. It is all so worrisome.


A massive wildfire was still raging across the Porters Lake and Lake Echo areas east of Halifax on Saturday.

About 4,000 people have been evacuated from close to 2,300 homes, Halifax RCMP Cpl. Joe Taplin said early Saturday afternoon.


There were unconfirmed reports that two homes have been destroyed.

“They are confirming now which homes are either severely damaged or destroyed,” John Webb, director of emergency social services with the provincial Community Services Department, said Saturday morning.

“And they are going to try and get hold of the people if there are those places. That’s the trouble. There are still rumours.”

The Lake Echo Trailer Park has been evacuated.

Jeanne Day, who lives on Shoreline Drive, said she saw a home on Candy Mountain Road burn to the ground.

She said as of 9 p.m.Friday, her home, a three-storey Victorian built just two years ago, was still standing.

“I am very scared,” Ms. Day said from her parents’ home in Cole Harbour. “We’re worried about our neighbours. It’s devastating.”

Highways 107, 207 and 7 remained closed as of mid-morning Saturday.

Yvon Nadeau, whose family was told to evacuate their O’Connell Drive house in Porters Lake at around 4:30 p.m. Friday, said everyone was back home by evening.

He said at about 11 p.m. he could see flames from trees burning about three kilometres away, but when the power returned shortly after midnight, he said he could only see smoke.

Mr. Nadeau said he got up every hour through the night to make sure the wind hadn’t changed.

“So far so good,” he said. “It’s hard to sleep when you are worried about something like that."

Jennifer Gavin, a spokeswoman for the provincial Natural Resources Department, said about 50 firefighters were battling the blaze, which is about five kilometres long and one kilometre wide.

Three Nova Scotia Halo helicopters and three fixed-wing water bombers from New Brunswick were on the scene and crews were awaiting a large water bomber from Newfoundland. That plane was expected around 11 a.m.

Two people were arrested in Mineville for trying to get back into the mandatory evacuation zone. They were released without charges being laid, Cpl. Taplin said.

The Salvation Army made breakfast for the 40 or so people who sought shelter at Cole Harbour Place, as well as for staff and volunteers. The evacuees were given comfort kits that included tooth brushes, tooth paste, razors and face cloths.

A fire that started Friday in the Tantallon area of western Halifax County was still burning Saturday morning and had consumed about 80 hectares of land.

Cpl. Taplin said about 12 homes from two areas of Tantallon — Old Halifax Road and Bailee Drive — have been evacuated.

“That fire from yesterday, it’s kind of flared up a bit today and they are assessing whether they are going to evacuate some more residents,” Cpl. Taplin said.

Ancel Langille, a volunteer and team leader with the Red Cross, said an emergency shelter has been set up at the Tantallon Seventh-Day Adventist Church on Highway 333 in case it is needed.

Ms. Gavin said two helicopters are in the Tantallon area, scooping up water from nearby lakes and dropping it over the flames.

As well, ground crews were battling a new fire in Marshalltown, near Digby, Saturday morning, but Ms. Gavin did not have any details on its size.

She said three other blazes around the province — in Lawrencetown in Annapolis County, Queens County and Windsor — have been contained but are not out. A fire in Bridgewater and another in Milton have been extinguished.

Cpl. Taplin said a media briefing on the fires in the Halifax area is scheduled for 1 p.m.at Cole Harbour Place.

He said he wasn’t aware of any injuries from the fires.

The RCMP spokesman said the wind in the Porters Lake and Lake Echo areas is “wild out here again today.”

According to Environment Canada, winds at Halifax Stanfield International Airport were from the north at 40 kilometres an hour,gusting as high as 59 km/h, at 10 a.m. Saturday.

People have been very co-operative when told to evacuate, Cpl. Taplin said.

He said RCMP have been in contact with a couple of riding stables in the area and the horses have been evacuated.

With Devin Stevens

(asmith@herald.ca)

To add my greetings to all the caring women on this day. I have a lovely pink carnation from church but can't post a picture. For some reason every picture I have tried to post lately turns into one I took last year of Pumpkin after he was shaved and that is not my favourite moment. I have no idea what I am doing wrong but obviously photography in any form is not one of my talents.

Spring has arrived in Nova Scotia and our crocus, daffodil and tulip displays are lovely. We've had some warm days, 18 C the warmest so far, and the trees are sprouting buds. Unfortunately today is wet and windy as was yesterday. But we are used to that.

Sadly, New Brunswick suffered bad flooding this year. They had soooo much snow and too much rain following. A lot of property damage but, thankfully, no lives lost.

These are taken from my mother's photo album captioned 1927.

This is the grandmother I didn't get to know although she was able to see me as a baby before she died and the greatgrandmother I did get to know and love before she died.


This is my father before their marriage with Mom on his right and her friend from nursing school on his left. I'm amused but not impressed by the styles.


Mother titled this one 'Making hay amongst the rocks of Peggy's Cove'. I note the ladies make hay in dresses which I find hard to imagine.


However, my mother, home on vacation from the fashionable U. S., is dressed in the very latest casual style and isn't she proud to show off the heights to which she has risen away from the backwards Nova Scotia.

My son’s printer stopped working and mine certainly wasn’t doing a very good job so we took a trip to Future Shop and BOTH bought new printers. Of course, he got one that cost twice as much as mine but I am very pleased with the results anyway. Since he was able to install his printer on his own I felt I should be able to do that too. All I can say is that I got my exercise for the week that day. Knee bends, weight lifting, touching toes, stretching, bending and tearing out hair. Had it all ready to hook up to the computer and found out the clerk had sold me the wrong USB. So the next day I had my exercise walking to the corner and climbing on and off buses as well. But, VOILA, I now have a working printer and a beautiful job it is doing.

I was surprised to find that today’s printers come with scanners (at no extra cost) which I am finding very handy. My thought is to take three-quarters of a century, plus, worth of snapshots and transfer them to CD’s which should eliminate a couple of cartons of albums the next time I move to say nothing of cleared space that I can clutter up with keepsakes and ornaments. I sorta figure it will take me the rest of my life to do them all but I will be enjoying the thought of clearing some space so I can begin to clutter it again.

Here are a couple of snapshots, one of my great-grandmother and I on the verandah of the house I was brought up in and the other with my friend’s dog in their driveway.

I’ve known for some time I was putting on weight and lately it has been bothering my breathing as well as my energy level. So I finally got up enough courage to step on the scales to see just how bad the damage was. Carry a twenty-five pound sack of potatoes around for a few days and you’ll know how I’m feeling. Shocked but not surprised. Since my Fella has gone I have not been walking, partly because it was too sad to see the places we enjoyed together (which was every part of the neighborhood), and partly because I no longer had a reason to get dressed and go out. Add to that the fact that I was stuffing my face all the time, especially in the evening watching tv, with comfort food (chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate) and the result was foreseeable. In my twenties it would have been difficult enough to lose those pounds, at this age it looks like an impossibility! However, I now know what I have to do if I want to stop puffing and panting – if not diet, at least learn to eat sensibly. ‘Twon’t be easy but I will HAVE to try.