Happy Dumping Day!

Nope. I also had no idea.

Just when you start to think you understand your new home, the municipal government jumps up to declare “Dumping Day.”

As an old Hamiltonian, I immediately assumed this was the local equivalent to Hamilton’s “Big Garbage Day”, when you could place literally anything, of any size, on the sidewalk in front of your house and it would be carried away. I’m talking stoves, ten year old Leon’s leather sofas, Ford V8 engine blocks…

Except that the local big garbage day was a few weeks ago, so that couldn’t be it.

Turns out that “Dumping Day” is the start of the annual lobster harvesting season, and there will be local politicians at most local fish docks at 6 am tomorrow.

Here’s how the dumpingday.com website describes it:

"Dumping Day, Last Monday in November."

Dumping Day 2018 was delayed due to bad weather and the fishery opened up 5 days late on Saturday December 1st. In regards to Lobster - They say that Southwest Nova accounts for 40% of Canadian landings and 23% of the North American market. Yes, that tells you how important the lobster industry is to our local economy but it also identifies, "we have a lot of eggs in the same basket."

Dumping Day, is the day that Lobster fishers on the south shore of Nova Scotia drop their 375 pots in the water, in anticipation for the catches to come. Fishermen will leave the wharf in the dark and race to the fishing grounds. Because of the massive amounts of gear on board and the dropping of pots, it can be a dangerous day for crew members.

And if you don’t think lobster fishing sounds dangerous, here’s a string of traps being offloaded into the water. The string of traps is sent off the stern. Buoy, anchor, string of pots, anchor and lastly the buoy.

Of course at this point we know that this weekend we have to eat lobster. That poses a problem.

Thirty-five years ago we would just toss the live lobsters into a big pot of boiling water without a thought. Hell, in Vancouver back in the day we would have lobster races with them on the kitchen floor before we cooked them.

Now, in these more enlightened times we’re left thinking “Dear god no. That’s got to be a horrible and painful death…” I don’t think I can do that any longer.

On the other hand Beatrice the cat caught, and left for us, another mouse last night. I see a pattern developing.

Postscript: Today I paid next month’s rent on the Alencon apartment, and it looks like we’ll be back in France in January. Our future, and our visas’ futures are still up in the air.