WestJet kicks off Regina to Halifax route
Regina Watch
WATCH: WestJet made its inaugural flight from Regina to Halifax on Sunday. The route will run for the remainder of the summer season.
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CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Meet the man planning to row from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia
James Tarantino has gotten used to people telling him he's crazy. This summer, the 63-year old is planning to row from Gloucester, Mass., to Lunenburg in a small wooden boat he's named the Heart o' Gloucester. When word of his plan started circulating in Gloucester, Tarantino said dozens of people reached out to say it couldn't be done. "[They say] the tide up there and the currents are too strong, you can't do it in a dory, you're going to die," he said. But Tarantino has a trick up his sleeve — a traditional Grand Banks dory built in Lunenburg. "It's a very, very safe boat," he said, adding that's what makes him confident about a trip that includes two nights in open water crossing the Bay of Fundy. "Semi-confident," he clarified. Lunenburg-Gloucester connection goes back centuries Tarantino will set out from Gloucester in late July with a dory mate, rowing the 1,100 kilometres to Lunenburg. It will take about three weeks. Gloucester and Lunenburg have a connection that goes back centuries. Gloucester was mapped by Samuel de Champlain in 1605, and incorporated as a town in 1642. In the 19th century, fishermen travelled from Atlantic Canada to work on the Grand Banks schooners that sailed from Gloucester. "All your best guys in the late 1800s wanted to come to Gloucester — they could make more money, they could feed their families better," said Tarantino. In the 20th century, that became a rivalry between Lunenburg and Gloucester over who could build a superior schooner. The Bluenose prevailed. Since then, dory racing has maintained the relationship between the two towns, including for Tarantino, who's been dory racing since he was 17, going to Lunenburg for competitions many times. "There's something about a fishing community, the character resonates, and there's a pride there as well. So it's fun to meet people from … another country that still share those same values." As he got older, Tarantino began dreaming of rowing between the two communities. He's not one to shy away from a challenge, or — as a former contestant on the television show Survivor - the limelight. "I always like attention," he said. "I'm a character, as you can tell." When it came time to have a dory built for his journey, he heard about a builder in Lunenburg, and made an appointment while attending a dory race in town. But when he saw the other dories that Andrew Rhodenizer was making, Tarantino was taken aback. "I said, 'Well, I want a dory — I don't want a [expletive] Viking warship." The dory, built in the traditional style, was bigger and heavier than the dories Tarantino was used to racing. Rhodenizer, who works with the Big Boat Shed on the Lunenburg waterfront, said the Grand Banks dory was traditionally used in the fishing industry, most often on Grand Banks schooners, where their design made them easy to stack, and able to carry an immense amount of weight for their size. Over time, that style has become less familiar, Rhodenizer said. "The kind of boat that we build here is a rarer thing these days … they're very traditional." Rhodenizer said they use traditional linseed oil paint and make their own pine tar. They also make the frame, otherwise known as the knees, from wood that is not bent, but cut from the roots and lower trunk of the hackmatack tree. "We try to practise really sustainable methods for going out and harvesting the materials that we use in the boats here, that's a big concern." Rhodenizer said the more Tarantino learned about their process, the more convinced he was that it met his need for a trustworthy vessel. "Using the construction methods that we do, you end up with a very rugged vessel," he said. "Truthfully, I wouldn't trust any other way." "We always say the dory is going to end up somewhere. It's just a matter of whether you can hang on." Journey raises awareness of tradition Wooden boats are hardly an anachronism, says Rhodenizer. Even as the community has changed, Rhodenizer said they remain an important part of Lunenburg's character "The maritime skills that are involved here are super important to us," he said "I don't know what the culture would be if it wasn't somewhat focused around maritime skills." Daniel Moreland, who runs The Dory Shop in Lunenburg — which has been making dories on the waterfront since 1917 — notes that at one point, every town on the Eastern Seaboard would have had dory shops. Lunenburg had three. The community doesn't need three any more, he said, though The Dory Shop still sells about 20 dories a year. Still, he's turned down offers to sell the shop for businesses like a tea house. "It's a pretty spot, a lot of people would like to have it for something other than building dories. But once you lose it, it's over." As for Tarantino, he said he intends the journey as a way of raising awareness of the importance of preserving those skills. Over time, Gloucester has changed. Groundfish have dwindled and employment in fisheries has declined. Tarantino said it's important for people to retain a connection with a sense of place. He said that in Gloucester and Lunenburg, that includes the skills that have characterized those places for centuries.
Globe and Mail
2 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Driving to the Arctic Ocean in an EV
The tripmeter on Patrick Nadeau's car read 19,739 kilometres when he pulled into Hyundai's head office in Markham, Ont. on June 24. It was last reset when he drove away from the same spot on April 24. That's two months of driving as far north-west as the road can take you, and home again, and all without using a drop of gasoline. Nadeau owns an all-electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 and this spring, the automaker provided him with a 2025 model to drive to Tuktoyaktuk, on the Arctic Ocean just north of Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. Surely, Hyundai proposed, if an electric vehicle can drive from Toronto to Tuk, it can drive anywhere. In 2022, Nadeau drove his Ioniq 5 to Mexico to join his family there on vacation. That experience proved long-distance travel was quite possible in an EV with a little planning and, perhaps, some patience, though he says his account on Facebook generated hundreds of negative comments. People accused him of faking his story and its photos, because the distance to Puerto Vallarta was seen as too far to travel on electricity alone. So how would it be to Tuktoyaktuk – to the end of the earth? Most of the drive was straightforward, he says, and he used online apps to always plan ahead to the next fast-charging point. The Ioniq 5 can travel up to 460 kilometres on a single charge, but he would normally drive about half that distance, not letting the battery drop below 30 per cent and charging just up to 80 per cent – that's when the speed of the charging slows, to not damage the battery. On average, he'd charge at fast chargers for about 35 minutes each time. 'Most of the time,' he said, 'I needed it, for a break after driving maybe 250 kilometres, not because the car needed it.' In a normal driving day, starting out with a fully charged battery every morning, Nadeau estimated the electric charging added about an hour to his time, compared to fill-ups at gas stations. The new Ioniq 5 can charge at Tesla charging stations and Nadeau says it was never a challenge to find a place to recharge. Well, except for the Dempster Highway. The Dempster is 740 kilometres of mostly gravel that runs between Dawson City in the Yukon and Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. There's only one place to recharge on the highway, at Eagle Plains, at roughly the halfway point. And the Level 2 charger there was not working. 'There was another guy there, another French Canadian, in a Tesla, but he had to plug in his Level 1 charger for three days. So he turned back,' said Nadeau. A Level 1 charger is any 110-volt household wall socket, which charges slowly. A Level 2 is a 220-volt outlet, often used for household dryers or garage equipment, which is usually good for about 30 amps and can provide perhaps 35 kilometres of range in an hour. A Level 3 is the fastest and most powerful of all, delivering up to 100 kilometres in perhaps 10 minutes. At Eagle Plains, Nadeau had an adapter cable and plug that he was able to hook into the garage's 220-volt plug, but the Tesla driver did not have the correct adapter to be able to do so. There was a Tesla charger there, but it needed to be updated and there was no wi-fi available to do this. As well, north of Eagle Plains, the Peel River ferry was closed because the water was still frozen, and the ice was no longer solid enough to drive on. 'We had rain for two days, we had snow, we had mud this deep,' said Nadeau, holding his thumb and forefinger apart by about five centimetres. He'd already waited two days at Dawson City for news the ferry would be open, but when he arrived, it had closed again. Fortunately, it re-opened soon after, but the deep, slippery mud took its toll on his EV's driving efficiency. 'It was 365 kilometres from charging at Eagle Plains to Inuvik, and when I arrived, there was zero per cent left on the battery,' he said. 'You have to realize that you're in the mountains with that much mud – it gives a big resistance all the time. Other drivers were waiting at Eagle Plains for the road to dry, and some people with gasoline cars had to bring (spare) gas jugs because they knew they couldn't make it. But I made it, and that was the only moment when I was that close.' Nadeau's overall average consumption for the entire drive was 5.3 kilometres per kilowatt-hour, and in the northland, most of the public chargers were free to use. He'd hoped to reach Tuktoyaktuk on June 7, his 46th birthday, but the closed ferry delayed that arrival by a couple of days. There was nowhere to stay or even to eat in Tuk, where the tourist season had not begun, and he slept that night in the car at a campsite. Nadeau is a professional photographer who runs his own virtual reality company at home in Disraeli, in Quebec's Eastern Townships. Before heading north in the Ioniq 5, he drove west to Vancouver Island and took the time to film some virtual reality footage in some of Canada's national parks. The 360-degree film will be made available to children fighting cancer, through Hyundai's Hope on Wheels, a non-profit organization that funds paediatric cancer research. The videos, viewed through VR headsets, are intended to help children's imaginations escape their hospital beds to experience some of Canada's beauty. 'If you can afford the time, a trip like this is the kind of thing you have to do once in your life, for sure,' he said. 'Take the time to travel in Canada and you're going to discover beautiful landscapes, but you're going to discover yourself, too.'
CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
How this Toronto artist evokes Nova Scotia nostalgia
A Toronto-based textile artist has found inspiration in Nova Scotia and created what she's calling The Scenic Route. It's a punch-needle embroidery series that highlights summer road trips on the East Coast. The CBC's Cassidy Chisholm has more.
