In the post below, there was some mention of enjoying smoked salmon as an appetizer. Today, on an excursion to Shediac, I was delighted to find another kind of fishy business going on. Ice-fishing! I am completely bemused and befuddled by this undertaking. If I ever espy little colonies of brightly coloured ice fishing shacks gathered out on the frozen waters I am beside myself with delight. I can hardly think of anything nuttier to do than to haul a small shed out into the middle of a frozen body of water, install a woodstove of sorts, cut a hole in the ice, put a hook on a line and drop it through the hole, then sit in the dark and the cold (in spite of the stove) and wait for some fish to be as curious as me about the whole enterprise. I understand that there is some considerable consumption of alcohol involved, purely to keep warm. of course! It's not really the acohol that warms, but the repeated lifting of the bottle to the lips.
If you look closely, you'll see two bucket sized lumps of ice to the left of the picture. These would be likely have something to do with the making of the holes in the ice. Leaning on the other side of the wee hut are the sliders that this ingenious fisherman would have used to drag the thing out onto the ice. I wish I would have seen that. He was apparently inside, because there was smoke coming from the chimney.
Now, I have never been ice-fishing, although I was once invited. But Pierre has been, so that's where I got my information. In fact, another time he actually filmed two musicians "enjoying" the experience of ice-fishing. One of them happened to be a singer from Haiti, who hardly even knew what winter or snow was before being invited to New Brunswick to be teamed up with another singer for a documentary. Imagine this rotund, albino Haitian gentleman cozied up to a tiny, blonde Acadian woman, both swaddled in layers of winter clothing and blankets, singing songs to the fish supposedly swimming beneath their feet. It was utterly charming.
I can only hope that if our Haitian friend is in his homeland, that he is somewhere safe, still cherishing his memories of frozen lands and happier times.
There was a very impressive, heartfelt concert put on by many well-known musicians the other night to raise money to help Haiti find its feet. A recording of the concert is available from iTunes.
Apple, the labels, and the artists are donating their share of the proceeds from the sale of the album Hope for Haiti Now and any of its individual live performance tracks to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, Oxfam America, Partners In Health, Red Cross, UNICEF, United Nations World Food Programme, and Yéle Haiti Foundation. Apple, the labels, and the artists are donating their share of the proceeds from the the sale of the individual studio track, "Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour) - Version 1.0," featuring Jay-Z, Bono, The Edge, and Rihanna, to Partners In Health.
