Busy Time at Camp

Hi friends!

I must apologies to all of you for not blogging during the past few weeks.  Carole and I were quite involved with finalizing the purchase of the trailers that replaced the two that were written off during the freak wind storm on Canada Day.  When you purchase something substantial in Quebec, the paperwork is out of this world.  Both my wife and I sat in the dealer’s office signing documents for more than 45 minutes!  Once we had all that was finished, we arranged the delivery of our new trailers and the pickup of the damaged units.  It all went off without a hitch.  Well, actually, that’s not true.  They included hitches…for towing 🙂

I picked up my son’s trailer on Thursday, August 21 and towed it to the site.  The contents were transferred between trailers and his damaged unit was moved to the field for pickup by the insurance company.

The next day the dealer delivered our new trailer and set it up.  We then spent the rest of the day transferring our contents.  Boy, have we collected many things over the years.  The damaged trailer was also moved to the field.    The insurance company now own both damaged trailers.

With our new trailers finally setup, we discovered all the trouble was worth it.  They our beautiful and we were able to enjoy them for 6 days.  After this, we spent more than one day with the closing and winterizing process.  We also did laundry to save us time when we got home.  Even then, I (Yvon) spent most of Tuesday this week doing laundry at home!  Was it coincidental that Carole was scheduled to work that day? 🙂

The last day in Quebec was very busy.  We had to blow out the water lines, empty the hot water tank, pull the plug, antifreeze the lines and install the winter cover over the trailer.  The cover is stored in our shed and when we retrieved it, we found uninvited visitors – a massive family of bag ants decided to call it home for the summer!  They ate through a few places that we had to patch.  Most of the ants were eliminated.  Oh, well. It’s just another adventure to add to our summer of non-rest 🙂  At least the fish in the lake had a break from me!  Not next year!

We arrived home at 12:30am Sunday morning and I’m still recovering from my summer as a lumberjack, trailer repair tech, carpenter, pest control agent and just about everything other than fisherman 😦

I am now getting ready for Election 2014 on October 27.  Printed material and signs are being finalized and will go to print in the next week.  The first of two mailers should be delivered to Ward 2 mailboxes and I’ll be out and about the ward canvassing beginning about the third week in September.  See my calendar for details.

If you live in Ward 2 and would like to volunteer to help me with my campaign or you would like to put a campaign sign on your front lawn, contact me.

Make sure you come and look around my website (www.yvondoucet.ca) to find out more about me and my campaign.  I will be blogging more often and about the issues.  Please feel free to comment and ask questions on the postings or on my Facebook page.  Yes, you can also contact me by email and telephone.

Thanks again and I look forward to meeting everyone in Ward 2 over the next few weeks, that is, when I’m not dreaming about the big fish stories that never happened this summer 🙂

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Home here we come!

We are into our 3rd week of holidays – ha!ha!ha!  We have been working hard every day trying to recover from the microburst that took out about 15 trees. We are now at 37 dump truck loads of branches that have been hauled out and we have also cut and split 8 cords of wood for future camp fires!  There are still 9 trees to go!

The camp site is now looking cleaner and has a semblance of the past but without the trees.  They were our shade and pride.  We are happy to be safe and healthy after such an ordeal.

The insurance company is working on all of the details of the damage to our property.  They are telling us that both trailers will likely be written off.  Only time will tell.  I hope to have it all resolved by mid August.

Although these activities have kept us busy, there has been time for fishing.  I have been catching four to six pound black bass from shore.  This place never lets me down when it comes to catching big black bass! 🙂  As for pickerel, my grandson caught one.  It was small but he was happy with his catch.

Fish can be dangerous and people can get hurt.  I’m no exception.  I reeled in a big bass that got very wiggly while I was removing the lure.  It fell off and a hook went through my finger.  What a predicament.  The fish had caught me 🙂  We retrieved the pliers and shortly after cutting the hook, it was out of me and the fish.  My wife played nurse for a while and then I returned to fishing.  That’s my big fish story except to say that the bass would have had a “big people story” for all its pals had I been nice and released it.  I wasn’t nice.  There is no way one fish is going to embarrass me! 🙂  FISH BE WARNED!!

There is one bit of good news about the storm damage.  The insurance company is still working on our file and they want us to stay in the area until they are finished. GREAT!  It means our vacation has been extended by a few days so we get to delay packing up!  Here fishy fishy!

We will return to our fantastic oasis in this very active world probably in a week or so.  See you soon.

Survivor: Gatineau

Hi everyone!

If you look at the post just before we went on vacation, you will see that our trailer and site looks quite different than today.  That’s because on Canada Day we had weather.  No, I mean “WEATHER!”

Violent thunder storms with high winds blew into the area in the afternoon and it wasn’t long after that we were all diving for cover.  The storm  destroyed both of our trailers!  Environment Canada has confirmed that our area was struck by a type of downburst called a microburst.

We can now see our trailer through the downed trees and we have been finding new damage every day.  Carole and I have been able to use the living room only.  We are all OK and very lucky.

The cleanup process is slow.  We have already taken 5 truck loads of branches to the dump and you would never know the difference when looking around!

Dealing with the insurance has been interesting.  They are very co-operative but being that we are in the middle of nowhere isn’t helping much.  I finally found a local person with equipment that can take the trees off of our trailer.  We hope it will be done by next weekend.  An insurance adjuster/estimator should be coming to see us today.  We should have more information about what happens soon.

On a brighter note, I caught some nice black bass from shore on my downtime from cleaning up the property.  The fish have been plentiful in the past and this year is no exception.  One was close to 4 lbs and put up a good fight.  I caught three others in about fifteen minutes!

This is a relaxer in this time of stress and hard work.

So, we are survivors here in Gatineau and have not been kicked off the island yet 🙂  I think we will win.  Too bad there isn’t a million bucks in it for us!

I will keep you all informed of our progress during the next few weeks. It will be an interesting time.