Travel tales: expect the unexpected

One has to be entirely philosophical about travel these days. Anything can happen and frequently does.

One of my neighbours got stuck in New York recently due to an ice storm and he was told he'd have to wait three or four days to get home. Good thing there are still buses traveling north-south. Another friend chose to avoid the wait and drive north, from Florida.

Earlier this month my favourite painter on silk, Holly Carr, took audiences on a musical tour around the world, to places both real and imagined, according to promotional literature. She travelled from “the lit-up bustle of big cities and down Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley in order to feel the pulse of the whole planet in just an hour.”

But before Holly – who is billed as “Nova-Scotia’s pre-eminent silkscreen artist’ -- could enchant a National Arts Centre Orchestra audience with her whimsical live-action art, she had to get there. But winter is the season when just getting there is often the biggest challenge.

Holly gave me a blow-by-blow description of her Ottawa adventure. Her Friday morning flight from Halifax was cancelled due to engine problems. After much wrangling on the phone she managed to book on an evening flight, but it too was cancelled due to a blizzard coming east.

Holly called one of her four sisters, Hope, in frustration. As intrepid a woman as Holly, she immediately offered to drive to Ottawa. So they got on the road— in her Hummer. In the middle of the night in a snowstorm the giant SUV spun out. Holly remembers waking up in the passenger seat during the spin. They landed in a ditch, but being in a Hummer got right out again.

The two women arrived half an hour late for the orchestra rehearsal Saturday morning, but with a cell-phone, they had notified the conductor Boris Brott.

Holly painted her way through two 60-minute young people's concerts in the afternoon, then Hope fired up her Hummer again. The sisters stopped for a nap, but essentially drove through the night once again.

Holly told me she landed back in the Valley by 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon. And a good thing too! She and her husband, Alan, were having a busload of people for supper that evening.

The guests were Stewart McLean and his cohorts who'd performed themselves in Wolfville that day to a rousing reception. Holly had been artist-in-residence on a western Canada tour with Stewart and was looking forward to hosting him.

Of course, any time we set off, the unexpected can happen. As last week's tragic pedestrian accident in Wolfville proved only too well, simply crossing the street can be dangerous. As fate would have it Don and Phyllis MacPherson didn't make it across the road to Measha Brueggergosman's concert.

Afterwards the golden-hearted Measha went up to Valley Regional Hospital to visit Phyllis having heard her circumstances. The promise of a private performance by one of the most talented young singers in Canada today will hopefully be somewhat of an inducement in the healing process.

Go safely all of you.