By John Francis,
Bruce Peninsula Press
Remember five years ago when the little red car drove into the harbour? It seemed pretty funny at the time. When we posted Andrea Vincze’s photo on Facebook, it got 140,000 hits.
Everybody agreed that the driver was neither drunk nor stupid, but still — it couldn’t possibly ever happen again. Could it?
I remember at the time, thinking that it might be pretty disorienting to drive into downtown Tobermory for the first time on a rainy night, when rain glistening on everything looked just like the glistening of the water in the harbour. With a 40 km/hr speed limit, no centre line on the road and no checkerboard to lead you around the corner in front of Craigie’s Restaurant. With your GPS droning in your ears, “Turn right on Bay Street and follow…”
But hey, no worries, mate. Warm water made it a relatively easy swim.
And this couldn’t possibly happen in winter, could it?
I mean, the water’s a totally different colour than the pavement and nothing ever happens in the winter that reduces visibility…
And nobody clueless ever comes to Tobermory in the winter, right? Nobody ever stops you on the street in the winter and asks you when the next ferry is? Or how to get to Flowertop Island?
I remember something that happened a few years ago when Wanda and I were in Toronto. Must have been a few years ago, because the subway was crowded and nobody was wearing a mask… I remember we maneuvered our way through the crowd to be right beside the door when the train came into our station, only to find that we were at the wrong doors — the platform for this station was on the other side of the train. “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,” we muttered, elbowing our way through the crowd to the open doors, feeling like a couple of rubes.
I mean, we’re not stupid people, right? We know what a rattlesnake sounds like; we recognize poison ivy and wild parsnip; we know how to walk on wet limestone without slipping. We know when it’s safe to walk across the harbour on the ice and when it’s not. We know that if we can’t get cell reception along the shore we should climb up the cliff and try again.
But subways? Not so much.
It’s the same for city people when they come up here. The difference is that up here cluelessness can kill you.
We’ve had several deaths and countless near-misses this year as people learn the hard way that up here, street smarts are not enough.
The solution in downtown Tobermory is obvious — lines painted on the road, a checkerboard sign and a gate across the boat launch at night.
But we also need to think of ways to keep unskilled people out of canoes and kayaks until the water gets warm, ways to get clueless hikers out of the bush long before it gets dark. And so much more.
All of these issues fit into the general category of “communications problems”.
Some of them can be fixed with a checkerboard and a couple of lines on the pavement. Others will be more difficult. But they need to be fixed, all the same.
