Ditch Doc

I found the above-mentioned winery on a roadtrip with my brother through BC’s wine belt, the length of the Okanagan Valley* from Osoyoos up through Kelowna. While I wouldn’t encourage anyone to weigh my opinion on wine with much gravity, here’s what we liked and could afford, and therefore bought, from south to north:

‘07 Pear wine - Forbidden Fruit Winery, Cawston (These guys also make a DELICIOUS cherry port, but it costs $30 a half bottle.)

In justice, I really ought to mention Burrowing Owl, the first Oliver winery we visited. Very good reds we couldn’t quite afford, but I neglected to take notes, so I forget which ones we tried.

‘07 Kerner - Oliver Twist Winery, Oliver

‘06 Pinot Noir and ‘05 Late Harvest Kerner - Stoneboat Vineyards, Oliver
The Pinot is dark and flavourful, and the Kerner is an ambrosian desert wine, well worth the $20 for half a bottle. For general delectability of range, this winery was the find of the trip.

‘07 Pinot Blanc and ‘06 Meritage - Lake Breeze, Penticton
There was also an interesting Gewurtztraminer, so spicy it was almost hot, but we had to leave it behind.

‘07 Gewurtztraminer - Township 7 Vineyards, Penticton

‘06 Pinot Noir - Greata Ranch Vineyards

‘06 Cabernet Sauvignon - Mission Hill Family Estate
Mission Hill is B.C.’s foremost winery, perched on a hill with a bell tower that makes it look like an abbey. The von Mandl family’s coat of arms contains a pelican feeding its young with its own blood. I asked the keeper of the guest book if she knew what it meant. She said “Uh, something about altruism…” I set her straight.

‘06 Pinot Meunier - Recline Ridge Winery, Tappen

‘05 Kerner - Granite Creek Estate Winery, Tappen
This winery and the last are not actually in the Okanagan, but the Shuswap Lake region a bit further north, the distinguishing features of which seem to be extravagant mixes of exotic flavours and a tendency to sweetness. Neither winery is large or widely acclaimed, but both Recline’s reds and Granite’s whites are plenty tasty for me. Granite Creek’s store is in the basement of a log cabin that seems to be the family home, next to a vineyard that backs onto pine forest. A semi-surreal and utterly worthwhile trip down the spur line.

*For my American friends, the Okanagan is Canada’s southern California. Dried up hills covered in sage brush, just waiting for a little irrigation to bloom like Eden. Resort towns, unbearable summer heat, lots of wine and lots of orchards. The most obvious differences are snow in the winter and fewer Mexicans.

Come to think of it, the Catholicism in Bella is a lot like the Catholicism in New York, where it’s set: all you can point at is a nun here and a handful of palm leaves there, and yet it seems like the whole city is vaguely aware of the presence of Christ. After you see Bella, go visit New York.

So I just got back from a three day, 50 km hike into an isolated boreal lake. Too many stories for now, but here’s the summary: two healthy paramedics and a young veteran of the Chilkoot Trail were thoroughly embarrassed by a 75 year old man with a fused spine and a pack ten pounds heavier than any of ours, using a 12 gauge as a walking stick. More on ‘Pappy’ when I get to the rest of the story.

OK, I can’t not post this stuff. The intersection of the Liard River and the Alaska Highway is four hours north of town, in the geographical centre of no-where. The water from the springs is hot enough to support an eerily jungle-like spread of greenery in an area that reaches -40 in the winter, and the characters who drift through or set up camp are even weirder. Here’s a brief dramatis personae: 

Trapper Ray: Pretty well the definitive hotsprings legend. Built cabins over a wide area of the Liard watershed, ran a trapline, and used to own the Hotsprings Lodge. Founder of the Fur Spider Hoax (See March ‘06). Once shot a moose from across a river, and carried it back in pieces across the shifting ice floes just after breakup. Was allowed by the government to shoot possibly the only Kermode bear ever observed in the Northern Rockies, because they didn’t believe that he’d seen one.

Stanley the Buffalo: Used to hang out at the Lower Lodge and watch the customers through the windows. Sometimes he would stand aimlessly in the gas station for several hours at a time.

Crazy Old Bill: Maybe not exactly crazy, but definitely a little odd since he cut down a tree onto his own head. Used to run a jade mine, which produced many green rocks, some of which, it stands to reason, may well have been jade.

Lucy: Grossly overweight stray horse that begged food off whoever would cough it up at the Hotsprings Lodge.

Kenworth the Buffalo: Still goes by the moniker he earned when he was hit by a Kenworth truck on the highway and survived. The truck was a write-off.

Ranger Al: The duty to remove fur-spider crossing signs from the highway and explain to tourists that the creatures were imaginary fell to Ranger Al. Consequently, he didn’t get along too well with Trapper Ray.

Jan: Fugitive from the FBI who just showed up at the Lodge one day and started working. Picked an assortment of wild mushrooms one day, and then disappeared for a week. Eventually hauled off by the mounties.

Cowboy Ron: Former inmate of the Kingston pen, and artisan of a still so sophisticated that it now belongs to the collections of the Penitentiary Museum.

And all this without even mentioning Toad River! Maybe one day.

On fighting fires in Australia:

“No, I didn’t go. The guys who went were telling stories about crazy-ass spiders and crocodiles in pump sites and shit. I’ll take mosquitoes and black-bears any day.”

When I interviewed at Dalhousie, I had somehow managed to be one of 50 applicants from a pool of 400 who interviewed for 9 out-of-province spots. With stats like that, Dal gets to pick the absolute cream of the out-of-province crop, and for the whole weekend, I didn’t meet a single person besides myself who wasn’t either working on or in possession of an M.Sc. or a Ph.D. It seemed like everyone had done AIDS work in Africa, or at least putzed around South-East Asia on a motorbike. What’s hardest to believe, they were mostly articulate, funny people with wide interests and good taste in beer. I don’t recall ever having been so humbled.

At Queen’s, we got a campus tour, provided by a couple of first year meds. Here’s how it started:

Student 1: Uhh… Here are some pretty buildings… That one’s the theology building…

Student 2: Wait, theology’s, like, religion studies, right?

S1: Well… Um… It’s part of the arts faculty…

Revelation: “Did I interview better than you two? Yes I did.” I hope they thought I was smiling at the pretty buildings.

I grumble about Chapters, Starbuck’s and Walmart as much as the next guy, but that doesn’t prevent my appreciating a clever turn of physical marketing when I see one. For example, when you enter the Barnes & Noble on Broadway in Manhattan, the escalators are lined up in sequence to shoot you straight to the fourth floor cafe and magazine section. On the way down, though, the escalators are disjointed, so that you have to walk past a few hundred feet of bookshelves to get to the exit. Brilliant.

First year Dalhousie Med student on the difficulty of failing out of med school: “Yeah, they say this profession is like the mob: It’s a bitch to get in, but once you’re in you can never leave.”

I’ve finally discovered how to keep the seat next to you on the bus unoccupied while maintaining a decent state of hygiene: when the bus comes to a stop, all you have to do is be sincerely and unfeignedly asleep on it. Nothing convinces like the truth, it turns out. “But I can’t sleep on buses!” Well, that’s because you don’t have enough luggage. If your backpack with your coat crunched up on top is shoulder high in the coveted next seat, and you sleep on it, nothing will wake you until Cosacks raid the bus and take your bag.

Like the other night, when I finished up a ten hour lab day in Calgary, stumbled out into the snow, and wandered through the streets looking for a burger joint. No burger joint appeared, and I slowly became aware that I had wandered myself into the ritziest part of what should be a far more down-to-earth city. Music thumped vaguely out of every door, and as club followed club, I wondered how much I was willing to pay to stop walking. I was about to bypass yet another polished, unfriendly house of overpriced dim lighting when I glanced out of my hood and saw the first approximation of my state of dress in the last several blocks. Our paths converged just as a sleek black overcoat stood out of the Mercedes at the curb. My fellow itinerant sized me up: unshaven, hands in pockets, no car, coat too heavy for the chinook. I watched his gaze shift, and as I passed the car, the first words I’d heard in an hour of glittering lucre were: “Hey, can you spare some change?”