Yes, the word “pissing” is not a typo. Not “posing”, or “passing”, or “poising”. We were going to travel almost a thousand miles and spend a ton of cash in gas for no better reason than to urinate on the soil of our nation’s eastern provinces. West Side, motherfuckers!
I’m not even sure why we did it. We were blind soused one night. The conversation meandered aimlessly (as drunken conversations are wont to do), and finally settled upon a much-beloved topic of discourse among my group of friends: our dislike of all things French.
In a fit of drunken enthusiasm, Garreth proposed we drive to Quebec, ten hours away, just to piss on a “Bienvenue a Quebec” sign. We got on Google Maps, and quickly realized that the logistics for such a venture were unfeasible. What was possible: a day trip through New Brunswick to PEI. Four hours there, four hours back, about 900 km of driving.
Too bad about Quebec. But New Brunswick, as Canada’s only official bilingual province, is ALMOST French. PEI was just an afterthought in our plans... just as it is in Canadian politics. I also want to add here, in a very loud voice, that I would never dream of pissing on Nova Scotia or Newfoundland.
We managed to get a Yaris (Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun! Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun! Dun!) from the local Enterprise Car Rental. Garreth reported that it steered like a drunk ox, but at least it was pretty economical on gas. 
I won’t pretend. The drive was as dull as the Canucks-Stars series. Scenic, I suppose- or at least, it will be in another month. The trees on the West Coast come into full bloom a good two months before those in the Maritimes. All the forests and thickets we passed by had huge barren patches of winter-ravaged trees; bare, grey branches with just an occasional hint of budding leaves. Nor were the fields we saw amber waves of grain or rolling, wind-rustled meadows- they were mostly just big brown swaths of dry, brambly grass. When June and July come, perhaps their wide open spaces will burst into half-a-hundred radiant shades of summer, and the Maritimes will be absolutely beautiful. But as it was, the scenery made me recall BC’s evergreen forests and craggy whitecaps, and I shook my head.
We finally got to Target #1: “Bienvenue/Welcome to Nouveau/New Brunswick!” We urinated on it with great satisfaction. How dare you welcome us in two languages? Don’t you know who won on the Plains of Abraham? Wolfe beat Montcalm, damn it- you can read about it in your Socials 11 textbook.
We then took a little detour to Moncton; we wanted to have a meal in every province we went through. It’s a cute little area in its own fashion; not quite small enough to be a town, but too isolated and not populated enough to be a true city. This is true of most of Atlantic Canada’s cities- they hover in limbo between the modern amenities, architecture, and brash noise of the big city and the homey familiarity and quirky eccentricity of small towns.
Moncton is, of course, fully bilingual. You can walk down the street and hear a conversation switch rapidly and casually between English and French. Everything is labeled in both languages. A street sign will say “Rue CHURCH Street”, the local mall will say “Le Baie/ The Bay”, and Moncton Place, the city square where City Hall is located, has the singularly absurd misfortune of being labeled: “Place Moncton Place”- as the word “place” is exactly the same in both English and French.
On we drove to PEI across the 12.5 km Confederation Bridge. An aside: I later asked someone who paid for the bridge to be built, the federal government or the PEI provincial government- it was only 5 years old. Knowing that I was from BC, the person deadpanned: “You did.” I laughed- of course we did. Ottawa regularly takes money from the rich economies of provinces like Ontario, BC and Alberta to give to the poorer provinces of the Atlantic, the prairies, and the north. And Quebec, of course, but that’s another story. 
And we found the “Welcome to PEI” sign. Bladder-emptying time! Though, in light of what happened later, I wish we had done more.
Garreth told me on the drive over that he’d heard that PEI was the potato-growing capital of Canada. I called bullshit on him; there was no way that a province that small could produce more spuds that Ontario or Saskatchewan. In retrospect, however, I think Garreth might have been right. That province is a mass of potato fields. Lovely, lovely place: great patchworks of furrowed farmland interspersed with those wood-boarded colonial-style houses I’ve grown so used to. I think I finally understand a little bit about the sentimental attachment small-towners have to those isolated hamlets where they grew up. 
Charlottetown is apparently quite busy in the summer, but not this time of year. The place was dead. We were there long enough to take a shot of the Province House where PEI’s legislature meets. It is also the place where the original delegates of Canada’s British colonies met to discuss the formation of Confederation- PEI’s claim to fame. It’s even on their license plates- these read: “Birthplace of Confederation, PEI.” I told you the Atlantic had a huge focus on the past.
On our way back across Confederation Bridge, we were slapped with a $40 toll. Garreth almost fell through the windshield, and incredulously told me that he should have taken a shit on the PEI welcome sign. You see, coming to PEI, we’d seen a sign telling us that Confederation Bridge charged a toll, but ONLY on the way BACK. You could not see what the return toll was- and you automatically assume you would not have to pay more than 10 bucks. It is only on the return journey that you are confronted with a large sign (and unbearably friendly toll booth attendants that you just can’t get mad at) that you are to be heavily taxed for going to PEI to see a whole lot of nothing. The fact is: if the casual traveler knew how much it would cost to leave, he’d never enter PEI in the first place. So PEI tourism lures you in, and then makes it hard (or at least expensive) for you to leave.
I laughed. I knew that people were leaving the Atlantic provinces in droves for job opportunities in the West. We joked that we had no idea that the exodus had gotten so bad that the PEI government felt it necessary to charge an exorbitant toll to prevent people from leaving the province.
We got back to Halifax at close to midnight, just in time to show Mike the pictures and play a few rounds of Guitar Hero II. The next morning, when we took the car back to the rental place, we discovered that we had committed insectocide on a truly unprecedented scale.
So, to sum up the road trip according to a well-worn formula:
Renting a Yaris: $100.
Two full tanks of gas: $90
Tolls at two checkpoints and one bridge: $70
Eating three different meals in three different provinces in the same day:
Priceless.
Too bad I didn’t get to piss on Quebec.
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