Free at last…

“Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last.” Martin Luther King, Jr. could well have been speaking for us in his ‘I have a dream’ speech. Yes, we are out of the hospital (sprung Tuesday afternoon)!!! Free at last! It has been a long, LONG five weeks. Free at last!

Anouk is doing GREAT! Her burns continue to heal, which means they are itchy and at times driving her to distraction. There are still months of work ahead, though. We are applying a lanolin cream to her burns, coating them with Telfa and wrapping the whole shebang in 2-inch gauze several times a day. Before we checked out, she was fitted for a pressure garment. This fashionable item (we chose purple for one and teal for the other), which applies constant pressure in an effort to help minimize scarring, will have to be worn for months. We will also have to make a few more visits to St. John's for follow-up appointments. But we are still . . . Free at last!

So what was the first thing we did once we were sprung? We ran a lot of errands in preparation for leaving St. John's and heading north and west toward Bonavista by way of Cupids, Brigus, Dildo, and Terre Nova National Park (don’t you just love their colorful place names?). Another doctor visit, this time for me and my Anouk elbow . . . and shoulder (from carrying mon petite poisson) . . . and lower back. Shopping at Dominion (yes, butter tarts were purchased and have already been consumed). Purchasing a few gifts for some of Anouk’s new friends, fellow patients at Janeway: Brianna, who must be about 9, perked up every time she saw Anouk (and, of course, Anouk just LOVED seeing Brianna . . . an older girl to, quite literally, look up to) and Elouan, a little boy from the French (as in part of France) islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon (Natalie and Anouk loved speaking French to Elouan’s parents) which are between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. And then back to our campsite at Pippy Park. WOW! We spent more time as a family at our campsite this afternoon than we have in five weeks.

Perhaps in unacknowledged anticipation of being sprung, Saturday I ran a 10-kilometer race. At 52 minutes and 19 seconds, my time was not overly fast, but it was an excellent time for me. I employed a combination of strategies I learned from previous running two marathons and one half marathon, as well as my old days of canoe racing. I start off dead last: before the starting gun goes off, I make sure I am at the back of the pack (I want to be the last one over the starting line). I start off slow, warming up, gradually, incrementally increasing my pace. Slowly I start passing people. About halfway into the race, I start putting runners in my sights, speed up just enough to catch them, draft for a few minutes to catch my breath, then pass on to the next person. Using this strategy distracts me from sore muscles and helps make a game out of it. In the end, I finished right in the middle of the 172 runners.

Sunday we went out with a local natural history boat tour operator (following Nat's lead, I will spare the name of the company). Although we did not see icebergs (“hicebergs” in Newfoundlandese . . . for most words that start with a vowel, they add a softly pronounced ‘h’ at the beginning), we saw a couple Minke Whales, hundreds of Northern Gannets, thousands of Black-legged Kittiwakes, and a lone Atlantic Puffin.

A few days before we went out, I was listening to CBC radio and heard an interview with the owner of Iceberg Quest, a boat tour operator who had some interesting comments on the economy. Time was, he said, that if they were seeing a lot of great natural history stuff, he would stay out an extra half hour or so. Now, with the rising price of fuel, a two-hour tour is a two-hour tour.

The sun is shining in St. John’s!

The sun is shining in St. John’s! That’s literal and figurative. Yes, the sun is actually shining, and I am sitting outside in a little garden adjoining the hospital. It is actually a great space, terraced down so that you are out of view of parking lots and hospital buildings, but still absorbing the shining sun. We got some good news today too, and that makes the shining sun all the more bright (augh, I am resorting to clichés to describe things…it is high time we spring Anouk from the hospital and get back to the outdoors for some slightly more inspired writing). The graft donor site is on the mend, and the burn sites that received the graft appear to have accepted it 100%. It looks really good, even to me, and I am clearly the emotional one in the bunch. In an hour or so, Anouk is getting fitted for a pressure dressing which, according to our doctor, will help minimize scarring. Actually, she also told us that the jury is still out in the medical community as to their effectiveness but they certainly can’t hurt, and in her experience she feels they work, so why not? Our docs here haven’t failed us so far, so we might as well keep trusting. It might take some days (even maybe weeks) to get the dressing ready, so we don’t know yet how much longer we are hospital bound, but the good news (ok, let’s be honest, the FANTASTIC news) is that this is the first time anyone has actually said to us that they are trying to get us out of here! Sure, we want to stay as long as we need to for the little one, but I am going a bit batty between four white walls.

Fortunately, we’ve had some great diversions lately. A recent highlight was a visit from my parents, Anouk’s Bonnemamy et Bonpapa. Anouk recognized them from Christmas and fell right into swing hanging out with the both of them. She gave her Bonpapa a run for his money one day as he took charge of chasing her in the grocery store while I shopped. He declared her a smart cookie who quickly understood the meaning of “pas toucher” (don’t touch) and actually obeyed. And her Bonnemamy gave her a goldmine of happiness by simply chatting with her and listening to her chat back. In seemed like in their short five-day visit, Anouk’s understanding of French quadrupled!

Which leads me to the next latest diversion. I would never wish a hospital stay on anyone but am admittedly a bit glad that a little French boy named Elouan landed up here. Our new ward neighbor and his family are from France, St. Pierre et Miquelon, to be specific, which is the last remaining bit of the French empire in the New World, located just a ferry ride away from Newfoundland. St. John’s is the closest big hospital for the 7000 or so residents of la petite patrimone. And so, Anouk, Elouan and his family and I have taken to visiting, chatting in French, and swapping Asterix and Marie-Claire (those who might care know what I am talking about; for the rest of you, Asterix is a famous bande dessinee—or comic book—and the second one is a magazine). Anouk keeps steeling Elouan’s balloons so she is gaining the reputation of chipie. This word (that I have not heard since my days at the French school) is reserved for girls and means something like “you sweet but mischievous little bird.” How fitting.

And finally, we had some fantastic family medicine yesterday in the form of a boat ride! Anouk had another get-out-of-jail free pass and it was sunny (oui, Papa et Mamy, il y a VRAIMANT parfois du soleil ici!) so we went to the waterfront to see if there was a way to get out on the water. If there is one thing that brings a smile to my face, it is time on the water. And so we bought a couple tickets for a boat ride which took us down to the harbor, out the narrows, and into the wide open Atlantic. The icebergs were gone, but we saw a few Minke Whales, and a very cool colony of Black-legged Kittiwakes, known locally as "tickle-asses" because they fly so close together, it looks like one bird is tickling the ass of the one in front!

Once you are out of the harbor, it is uncanny how quickly the urbanity of St. John’s disappears. It looked like a totally undeveloped shoreline. I couldn’t help but imagine this waterway back in the great age of sail, when the schooner fleet came back to port with hulls full of fish (in Newfoundland, fish = cod, all other species are named specifically) or seal pelt. What a sight that must have been. I will spare the name of the company who took us out because the interpretation was a bit too sparse for our liking (hard to please a couple of naturalists on someone else’s boat I guess) but as Rich said, on a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 9, just getting out on the water merits a nine!

And I came to a really useful conclusion related to my sabbatical project on this boat ride: I am not so much evaluating the specifics of the tourism industry and its content delivery, but more evaluating the role of tourism in helping people move forward since the cod collapse. The two themes are linked but separate and this realization enabled me to relax and have a great conversation with the captain, a former fisherman. For him, obviously, tourism has had a positive impact: he has work and his work keeps him on the water. Yesterday, the sun was shining on the water in Newfoundland, and that is a good thing for everybody.

Butter tarts…

I have recently learned what I long suspected: butter tarts are a uniquely Canadian delicacy, “flaky pastry shells that are filled with a sweet mixture of butter, brown sugar, and eggs.” If you have never had a butter tart, think pecan pie without the pecans.

Growing up, my family vacationed in northern Ontario at Camp of Two Lakes, in Orville, east of Parry Sound. One of the many joys of those summer retreats was a little, hand-held pie: the butter tart. This is a treat I always associated with Canada. As a self-avowed sweet tooth, I have long looked for butter tarts in the States, but to no avail. So it has remained one of the reasons I travel to Canada. As I am sure Natalie will be all-too-happy to attest, each time we cross the border I begin the hunt for butter tarts.

Last June we came to Newfoundland for two weeks. I searched high and low for butter tarts, continuously salivating in Pavlovian anticipation of my not-so-secret passion. ACK!!! Not a butter tart in the entire province!!! Granted, I was distracted by a new, month-and-a-half old Anouk, but still, my butter tart senses could not have been dulled by daddy-hood, could they? I was a wreck! Months of anticipation had built up my desire, nay, my need, for the tart, only to be denied!

Well, now I am sitting in Anouk’s room at Janeway Health & Rehabilitation Centre—Anouk is sound asleep in my lap—while I savor yet another bite. MMM, mmm good! After years of enjoying butter tarts, I now have a tool at my disposal to readily learn more about my favorite indulgence. I Googled ‘butter tart’ and came up with 147,257 hits, so I decided to peruse a few.

According to a 1991 archived CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio story, butter tarts are considered one of only a few recipes of genuinely Canadian origin. Wikipedia states they “were a staple of pioneer Canadian cooking, and they remain a characteristic pastry of Canada.” Canadian butter tart authority Charles Pachter, in the CBC broadcast, described butter tarts thus: “It’s a nice little tart without much pedigree but I know you’ll be amused by its lack of pretension.” Not only are butter tarts part of the Canadian national psyche, apparently they are so Canadian that county fairs in Nova Scotia offer awards for the best ones. Apparently, butter tarts are to Canada what the croissant is to France and the donut is to the United States. There is even a proper stance for eating butter tarts (according to the CBC broadcast, it is standing, leaning slightly over the tart, similar to the stance you employ when using an outhouse . . . hmmm, doesn’t that just get the juices flowing?). No wonder I like Canada and Canadians so much!

Many of the various Web sites I perused state there are many opinions as to what makes the perfect butter tart. Raisins. No raisins. Currant. No currant. A dry and flaky pastry. A moist and robust pastry. So runny it oozes out onto your shoes. Thick as a firm gelatin. Well, let me offer my opinion: the perfect butter tart is whichever one is currently on its way to my mouth!

So what makes a butter tart a butter tart? They are small, fitting nicely in your hand. These are not some fluffy French or nouveau riche pastry, these are a working people’s treat, you eat them with your hands, three, four, five at a time. To experience the taste sensations I am vainly trying to describe here, head across the border to your nearest Tim Horton’s, or go to the bakery section of a Dominion or Sobey’s supermarket. Better yet, make your own. A Web page on boutell.com lists a butter tart recipe from the turn of the last century as follows:

INGREDIENTS:
- 2 eggs
- 1½ cups brown sugar
- ½ cup corn syrup
- 3 tablespoons butter, melted
- 1 cup currants or raisins
- ½ cup chopped walnuts
- 2 tablespoons vinegar
- pinch of salt
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 batch pie crust

METHOD:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Beat the eggs well. Add sugar, syrup, and melted butter and beat again. Add the currants, walnuts, vinegar, salt, and vanilla extract and mix vigorously.
- Put a small amount of corn meal into tart tins or muffin pans OR use cupcake papers (the latter is recommended). Place circles of uncooked pie crust into the pans. Fill the shells ⅔ full and bake until pastry is light brown, about 20 minutes. For runnier tarts, cook 15 to 17 minutes.

NOTES:
- Recipe yields two dozen tarts of approximately 10,500 [sic] calories each.
- The tarts should cool before they’re eaten. Store in a sealed container at room temperature. Consume within five days, if they last that long. Freezing is OK but may result in loss of flavor.

One last note: Some recipes use maple syrup instead of corn syrup and lemon juice instead of vinegar. And don’t blame me if you become as addicted to this wonderful little pie as I am.

Janeway Health & Rehabilitation Centre - week 4

Today marks the fourth week of Anouk residence at the Janeway Health & Rehabilitation Centre (a fancy name for children's hospital). After last Thursday's skin graft, we were told the dressing would be changed in five days . . . today. Well, Dr. Akhtar, the pediatric surgeon and her primary doctor, has just looked at the graft and was pleased with the rate of healing. With that he also said we should plan on at least another week in the hospital. I certainly want to do the right thing by our little girl, but I sure look forward to seeing more than the medical side of the province. As you can imagine, a month in the hospital is enough to make anyone a bit stir crazy.

So, when life is less than some good, perhaps things are not going as you planned, and maybe you feel stuck in a rut, it can be hard to change things for the better. Thank goodness we are in Canada! I can run down to the Dominion, or perhaps Sobey's, and buy a package of butter tarts! I will report back after I have done just that....

Surgical success!

As I write, Anouk is out of surgery and sleeping in Natalie's arms. Dr. Cluett, the pediatric plastic surgeon, is pleased with the results and said the opertion was a complete success.

A small patch of skin, about nine inches square, was grafted from Anouk's right upper thigh to her right bicep. To ease the initial pain, they gave her a dose of morphine...you can tell by the twin pinhead pupils and and her itchy nose. Now we play the waiting game -- we just have to wait five days to see how the graft fares.

The medical staff here at the Janeway Children's Health & Rehabilitation Centre continue to be wonderful. The front-line medical care-givers -- the nursing staff -- are compassionate, friendly, and professional. The doctors are approachable and check in regularly. And, believe it or not, our insurance company has also been cooperative. Considering that we have now spent most of our Newfoundland time in the hospital, this all makes the stay easier.

Anouk update

Anouk's continues to heal, but...the Dr. Cluett, the pediatric plastic surgeon was in and she is not happy with the progress of the skin regeneration on the bicep, so they are going to do a skin graft at 10:30 (Newfoundland time) tomorrow morning. A patch of skin will be taken from Anouk's thigh and grafted onto the burn. A groggy Anouk will be back in our arms by about noon, and then she will need at least another week to heal. We wil try to post again sometime tomorrow afternoon.

Hospital-based adventuring…

We are still in St. John’s, still camped out at the hospital, perhaps for another week. Anouk is definitely recovering, but the healing process is slow. Certainly, most of the burn is healing, but there are a couple spots where the skin is taking its time to regenerate. The good news is the doctors are fairly certain that healing is progressing well enough to prevent the need for skin grafting, probably. And so we wait. Meanwhile, as you know our little girl, Anouk smiles and giggles her way through the day, playing "coucou" (peek-a-boo) behind the curtain, wandering down the hall to meet every human in sight (new ones she pretends to be shy for about 10 seconds), and crying only at dressing-change times when, of course, it hurts. She amazes me. She’s also working really hard on sounds, trying hard to say "t-t-t-t" (short for tigre=tiger) and "ch-ch-ch" (short for chien=dog, though she is also working on "d-d-d" for dog, being the bilingual baby!)

So how about Newfoundland? What’s it like? With the doctor’s get-out-of-jail-free-day-passes, we’ve resumed the exploration that we are after. Yesterday it was Bowring Park (a lovely urban park with flower beds in full spring bloom, and a duck pond that is clearly the meeting ground for all young parents with corn and bread-tossing kids). A few days before, it was a hike with Anouk snoozing away in the soft pack on my back through the Battery (a neighborhood of St. John’s where the tiny homes are stacked up the cliff like nesting birds on ledges) and around Signal Hill. Signal Hill is visible from anywhere in the city (this is actually true, we can even see it when biking out of the campground). It was the center for communicating to the city about any sea-going vessel approaching the harbour; depending on the time in history, it might have been the enemy or the men returning from the seal hunt. A few days before, we visited the Rooms on a rainy day (it is a capital offence in Newfoundland to do anything indoors when the sun is shining). The Rooms is an architecturally remarkable museum designed on the model of traditional fishing rooms, family owned structures on the waterfront used for fishing and fish processing up until the cod moratorium in 1992.

The traditional cod fishery is a central theme in almost any tourist venture, or any public event, or anything at all in Newfoundland. How could it not be? It is the central theme of life in Newfoundland. And it is gone. Locals tell us there are still fish out there, they sometimes catch them for their personal consumption, and there are some small scale openings, but the commercial fishery on the scale of yesteryear will never come back. That, at long last, appears to be the dire consensus of the scientists and managers who just a few short years ago, still clung to the belief that the moratorium need only be temporary. Not so.

The rippleffect on society was, and by all appearances still is, catastrophic. Just yesterday I read in the paper about yet another outport closing up shop for good, most residents had moved out (outmigration from the province is on the order of 50% of the population of individual outports, I was told recently by a researcher at MUN, Memorial University of Newfoundland). There is one shining economic light and that is oil. The city of St. John’s, ironically, is actually booming. We see evidence of this every day as we navigate the traffic-heavy streets and wander the downtown region (which by the way, downtown St. John’s is fabulous, more on that another day…). The juxtaposition between an urban, booming oil economy and devastated tiny rural villages is jarring, at least to this visitor who probes perhaps a bit deeper than most tourists on account of this thing called sabbatical research.

On the topic of research, my project is in full swing and I am loving it. Rich and I have settled into a rhythm of taking turns taking care of Anouk at the hospital; not so great for having any quality time together unless we are off on pass, but great for both of us to have time to get lots of work done. And thus, I have now conducted more than half a dozen informal interviews with folks representing the slate of human ecological perspectives: Department of Tourism, a high-end tour operator/conservation professional, Nature Conservancy Canada, Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador, and several researchers at MUN. I’ve also found the groove for how to seek good info from the folks we encounter at museums and stores and even the hospital, some of whom I am forthright in stating the purpose of my research, and some I just let conversation flow. I am attempting to write lots, though finding the time between hospital stays is a challenge, but I have begun to make use of a voice recorder Sea Grant sent me off with, and I am finding that my journal keeping habit is morphing to computer-based rather than notebook-based...it just goes faster.

A few of you, our friends and family, have cautiously, concernedly, asked: are we going to tough it out up there in the far north, or find care for Anouk back home? Right now, we are in a holding pattern. I will admit that sometimes it feels a bit lonely to be so far from all of you as we deal with this event in our lives, but Anouk is doing well. She is well cared for here. We trust this health care system. And Rich and I are accustomed, as you know, to being far from home on long adventures. We are taking it one day at a time but my guess is that we are here for the duration, assuming Anouk continues to be the trooper she is. Anyone want to come visit?

Anouk update (and St. John’s area), week 3…

Dr. Cluett, the pediatric plastic surgeon supervising the treatment of Anouk’s burn, and Dr. Akhtar, her pediatrician here at Janeway Children’s Health and Rehabilitation Centre, visited earlier today. Although Anouk’s burn continues to heal, but Dr. Cluett has urged us patience so that she can continue to monitor the burn, especially the area on the bicep. Dr. Cluett continues to hope the whole burn will heal well enough to avoid a skin graft. Soooo…we are maintaining status quo for at least a few more days, probably the rest of the week, but the overall message is that Anouk is healing!

Based on our experience, I would have to categorically say that the Canadian healthcare system is GREAT!!! All of the medical staff made it clear that their number one priority is healing Anouk. Dr. Akhtar pops in multiple times every day. The medical residents are friendly and treat Anouk like a queen. And, of course, the nursing staff are the best!

Recreationally, I have discovered a 78-mile (126-km) network of trails akin to the Carriage Trails of Acadia National Park…perfect for running, walking, and bird-watching. One section connects Pippy Park (where we are camping) to the Janeway Centre. There is a 1.7-mile (2.7-km) loop around Long Pond, which is easily accessible from Pippy Park. On Sunday I ran 9.5 miles (15-km) around Quidi Vidi Lake (yes, I am intending to run the Newfoundland Marathon in September).

Over the weekend, the docs gave us a pass to take Anouk out of the hospital. On Saturday, while walking around old town St. John’s, we heard a teenage girl say to one her male friends, who, apparently, was a bit hyperactive, “What, do you have a squid jigger in your pants?” Now, at the time, I did not know what a squid jigger was, but it sure presented an evocative message.