Up early and out the door, I decided I wanted to see the city and what it has to offer. What I discovered were miles of walking trails, acres of public parks and gardens, neighbourhoods full of people painting their houses and once I hit the downtown area – countless bars. Fredericton as it was told to me has a population made up largely of students going to one of the two universities or four colleges. That’s a lot of beer on a Friday night; it explains all the bars, but definitely not the churches. In the downtown core alone, a 6 block area there are five historic churches.
People that I spoke with today were a lot friendlier, helpful and very open about their city. I was pleasantly surprised by the slight accent they have and even more surprised to learn that I have one they’ve not heard.
I noticed a couple of things today. The first being that almost everywhere you look someone is painting something, a door, windows or the entire house. There are a lot of heritage buildings here dating to pre Confederation; it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some of these houses are older than Canada itself.
There seems to be a lot of red heads walking around in downtown Fredericton. Sitting on a bench drinking a cup of coffee I spotted three women and one man at the corner all waiting to cross the street. None of them looked like an out of the bottle dye job either, lots of freckles and pale skin. Definitely not dye.
Interesting city this Fredericton – lots of bars, churches, young people, green space, parks and trees, there just isn’t much to do.
I'll be gone for a few days - not that it matters much, but I'm off to go speak in Fredericton at an accessibility event. I'll also be there to teach the following day.
Looking up Fredericton online is a bit like pulling teeth. At least it is when you are trying to find out about the area without looking at a government web page. The local paper The Daily Gleaner isn't much help either, so what I've been able to discover about the city - comes from the Delta hotel chain.
Fredericton is a small city, with a town like atmosphere. History gives it a place on the map, but tere isn't much around other than a military base 40 minutes away. Nope, I've never been to Fredericton, so this will all be new to me.
With an attitude of - "I'll find out for myself", I'm looking forward to visiting another part of Canada.
Abso-freakin-lutely a gorgeous day! But I'm not here to type about the weather, of which I will be heading back outside in a few minutes to enjoy even more; instead I wanted to post a quickie about Canadian Heritage.
In Canada, we are proud of our history. So proud of it that we have a Minister of Heritage who if you ask politely will send you a free Canadian flag. Yes, tax dollars at work. Makes me proud.
For years we've been bombarded with these cutesy "Heritage Minute" video clips that show us what Canadians have done to make a difference in the world. Unfortunately what they never show is the average Canuck.
I'm here to change that with a little bit of help from Rick Mercer one of the smartest people I know.
I'm a fan of anything funny. Be it TV or real life, makes no difference to me as long as it's funny. I was searching around for funny oddball type news and decided to turn in a different direction.
The Red Green show is where I ended up. For years I was a fan of his and even though the show had run its course when it was finally ended; I still miss some of the common sense it did its best not to have.
Running on Canadian television from 1991 to 2006, Red Green was the average man talking to the average man. Set in the fictional town of Possum Lake it offered us a humourous look at male life.
The man's prayer still recited by many of us:
I am a man but I can change If I have to I guess
The show also made us all aware of the many uses for duct tape and in fact at one point 3M the makers of duct tape were not only supplying all the tape used but were the shows main sponsor.
With a cast of many unforgettable characters choosing a favourite is hard. For myself I'd have to go with Edgar Montrose the towns local demolition expert. Over the years his use of explosives has caused him to lose most of his hearing. As he says, "What doesn't kill you, makes you hard of hearing."
Edgar Ka Boom Montrose also gave us the great weeding your lawn tip of putting gasoline in baby food jars next to those nasty weeds in your lawn. The sun heats the glass, the gas explodes and the weeds are gone.
You can check out a lot more Red Green clips at ilaugh.com
Here we have the beautiful Jasmine, daughter of the Sultan, only a few days short of her 16th birthday.
WIDGETIZE