Fredericton

I’m a creature of habit. Anyone who knows me knows this, to their great exasperation. But every now and then, to keep people on their toes, I change my habits.

As people who know me also know, I like beer and the beer I’ve been drinking for ages is Stella Artois. Don’t ask me why. Back when I tried it, it clicked. And I’ve been drinking it ever since. However …

For some time now, I’ve been thinking I should change, not because I had lost my Stella fixation but because another aspect of my personality – let’s call it the joiner – has been trying to persuade me to go another route. That route is “local.”

Like many people, I like the idea of local – local food, local news, local … beer.

Here in New Brunswick, we have Moosehead out of Saint John. And we have Pump House, out of Moncton. And from Fredericton (where I live), we have Picaroons. Unfortunately, my Stella focus has held me back. But now that has changed.

I was at the Urban Deli in Saint John on Saturday – they’re a restaurant opening on Monday and are owned by a good friend of mine, Liz. One of her goals with her restaurant is to be as local as possible. Part of that has been to go with the local breweries: Moosehead, Pump House and Picaroons. So when I was down at the deli for a “preview evening” prior to their opening on Monday, I went with a local beer: Pump House Cadian.

Today I went to liquor store and bought more. Yes, I liked it! I’m drinking it right now.

Is my Stella on the ropes? Possibly, possibly …

I am not a connoisseur of beer. If you’ll pardon the boorishness of it, I like what I like. I wouldn’t know an ale from a lager from a stout. (Well, actually, I do know a stout. But ales and lager? I dunno.) But I do know I like this Cadian from Pumphouse. They describe it as, “A golden coloured ale lending itself to the wonderful malty aromas layered with just a kiss of spicy hops for a clean, smooth finish …” You can read a bit more here.

Now, I’ve tried Moosehead. Here in New Brunswick they’re fairly ubiquitous. But while I’ve tried some of the Moosehead brews, and generally like them, none has swayed me yet.

As for my local brewery, I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t tried Picaroons yet but it now rests at the top of my list of things to do. I’ll probably start with either their Best Bitter or Blonde Ale. As a general rule, I like beer that tastes like beer (whatever that means). Once again, that’s the boor in me speaking. As with coffee, I like things to stay true to themselves and not add additional flavours to jazz them up (like lime).

Yes, I know that brewing techniques and ingredients affect what the final brew tastes like.

(If this reads as if it ends aburptly, that is because I was interrupted as I was writing it. For what it’s worth, I wrote this yesterday afternoon but didn’t post it till this morning. So, no I’m not drinking beer at 9:00 in the morning. Morning equals coffee in my world.)

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I’m annoyed with myself for allowing a kneejerk response to escape. There was a story about Fredericton (where I live): Habitat for Humanity’s request for free land denied. I disagree with the decision and was angered when I read the article. So, of course, I had to post a comment. It was this:

This is the mentality of a backwater. A “No” to 21st century solutions. We are a retirement village whining about needing young people, more “stuff” the rest of the country has and with no interest or will to do anything except keep our little lawn bowling capital the way it has always been – dull, tedious and self-centred.

Question: do you think anyone is going to pause, thoughtfully consider my opinion, and consider changing their mind? Do you think calling someone you disagree with an idiot is the best way to get them to change their position?

No. You’ll be ignored, as you should.

That’s why I’m angry with myself. The Internet offers many things. Unfortunately, one of the things it offers is immediacy and the opportunity of opening your mouth before you think.

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I recently used Facebook to do a very informal survey. I wanted to get outsider perceptions so I asked of friends and family outside the province, “What do you think of when you think New Brunswick?” The answer was essentially this: “We don’t think of New Brunswick.” Words and phrases like forgotten, vague, don’t know and generic popped up in the answers. More disturbing than this was the fact that many of them had pretty distinct ideas of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. It was interesting to find the Confederation Bridge was quickly associated with P.E.I. but no one seemed aware that the place where it connects to Canada is New Brunswick.

Here’s the irony: since coming to New Brunswick everyone I’ve met has a very distinct idea of what this province is, who they are and what it means to be a New Brunswicker.

I started thinking about this lack of identity outside our own province and started to do some searching. As far as I can tell, New Brunswick is not on Facebook or Twitter. Fredericton is not on either. Moncton appears to be but it is done independent of the city government. (On the other hand, NB Power is on Twitter. So is CBC New Brunswick. And Saint John may have recently joined Twitter.)

How in the world can the province and cities of this province talk about bringing people to the province, particularly young people, and not be using social media tools like Twitter or Facebook or Flickr? That is where the country is; that is where the world is. Where are we? It doesn’t matter whether we like tools such as these. If we need to get our message to people we have to be where they can hear it. You don’t go to northern Saskatchewan to speak to the people of Montreal. You don’t go to a retirement home to speak to young people.

Since coming to this province about 2 ½ years ago, I have spoken to many people in western Canada and most of them have been intrigued about the province. Some have entertained the idea of moving here. Some want to make a trip here, at the very least. Where do I speak to them?

Email. Facebook. Twitter.

I took a walk with friends around Fredericton soon after I arrived here. I took a lot of pictures. I made a video of them and posted it on You Tube. So far, it has been viewed by about 2,000 people. Some have left comments, including someone from Scotland who had visited us and said our city was beautiful. There were some negative comments, which is to be expected, but most were positive and many were from people who had left New Brunswick and felt homesick.

Although it may seem as if I’m arguing for these social media tools, that is not my point. My point is that we seem to talk only amongst ourselves and not the country or the world. Yet it is outside the province where the message has to be communicated. Some of the easiest ways to do this are through social media and, other than time and attention, they cost next to nothing.

Our slogan is, “Be … in this place.” You can’t be in a place if you don’t know what or where it is.

An aside:

Of the top seven Intelligent Communities in the world, two are Canadian. Where are those Canadian cities? Both are in New Brunswick! Why is the provincial government not making noise about this? I see no reference to it on the NB government web site. It’s certainly not on the home page. (Admittedly, the page is so cluttered it could be there and I just didn’t see it.) I can Google it and find stories about this fact, but none are from the New Brunswick government.

Why?

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I’ve been looking everywhere in Fredericton for answers to some questions I have about the “free wireless network,” Fred eZone. Couldn’t get them – anywhere. But I got them right away on Twitter from a tech guy in Moncton.

I couldn’t figure out why so many organizations etc. in Moncton were called Codiac. I searched and searched online, all I got was Codiac RCMP, Codiac Transit and so on. On Twitter, I got the answer right away – from a guy in Toronto.

I also just saw an item from a guy named Jay Rosen (in New York): “You know, the notion that Twitter truncates everything to 140 characters is crap when 17 of those characters are hypertext.” Exactly. (Also why Facebook is more Twitter-like now.) (Note: When he says “hypertext” he’s referring to the fact that tweets often contain links.)

btw … Codiac and Moncton? Codiac more or less means “bend in the river,” which is a reference to the Petitcodiac River, a bend that occurs at Moncton. (I knew you wouldn’t sleep until you learned that.)

(Once last thing … if you look at the Fred eZone page you may get the same sense that I did which is that it hasn’t been updated since about 2005, four years ago. At least, that was the latest date I could see referred to on the pages. On the main page there is a reference to a planned maintenance but, as there is no date, that could have been years ago. I just don’t know and I don’t think anyone else does either.)

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A few random musings …

Will spring ever arrive? And when it does, what will it bring? Given that the drains on my street are somewhere under about four feet of snow and unfindable, I expect a big, watery mess. I fear Fredericton, and much of New Brunswick, will not only have flooding again, but flooding that makes last year’s flood look like a minor incident due to a leaky wading pool.

Facebook is talking about another homepage change. I wonder if this one will be greeted as enthusiastically as the last one? People don’t like change and a certain hostility towards Facebook has grown recently (can you say terms and conditions?), so I wonder how well this will play.

Since the initial implementation of Fredericton’s Fred-eZone wireless network years ago, has that network ever been upgraded? Made more robust? It seems spotty at best and a frustrating crapshoot whenever I need to work from a remote location. Was this another case of put something in place then forget about it?

My movie blog, Piddleville, seems to be getting a lot of traffic these days via Google images search. I’ve no idea why.

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As usual, I’m just asking questions because I really don’t know.  Both Fredericton and Moncton have been named to the top seven list of intelligent communities by the ICF (Intelligent Community Forum).

It sounds great. It’s one of the reasons I moved to Fredericton two years ago. But while this is wonderful for Fredericton and Moncton, what about the rest of New Brunswick? I’m not sure where Saint John might rank but I would guess it’s okay, relatively speaking, given the population size and some of the businesses located there – but I don’t know.

What I wonder about, though, is how things stand once you get out of the three major urban centres. Where are we at in the north? What about the rural areas? And how are we in terms of demographic penetration? Even within these cities, who is using this broadband and how? I ask because I sense a divide between white collar and blue collar (for lack of a better term). I recall reading recently that New Brunswick, having been in the lead years ago, has now fallen to the bottom, or close to, as far as uptake was concerned. Is that true? If so, how did that happen?

I recall something Kurt Vonnegut once wrote. Paraphrasing, it was this: everyone wants to build but no one wants to do maintenance. I think of this because once things like the Fred-eZone wireless network (in Fredericton) was put in place, was it updated? Upgraded? I know I’ve had problems connecting to it. I sent an email a few months ago to what appeared to be the correct address asking questions but it went into the void.

How many people in New Brunswick are on Facebook, Twitter etc., and what about the businesses?

Is there any data available on how many New Brunswickers are using the Internet? Who are they? Where are they? How are they using it? What are they using?

I may be completely wrong. I’m really asking questions out of utter ignorance. But I have a sense there is a divide in New Brunswick, maybe based on age, maybe based on income, maybe based on career, maybe based on location … maybe all of these and more.

Is there a report somewhere that draws a picture of all of New Brunswick and has answers to these questions?

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