Driving with the Sasquatch

Driving through a roundabout (or rotary, as they were called in Nova Scotia where I learned to drive) was never the scary part. I took my cue from a friend who rolled down her window as she approached and yelled, “Coming through!” The adrenaline surge always got me to the other side.

The scary part for me, inexplicably, was four-way stops. I made the mistake of telling this to my laid-back driving instructor, Dave. Our very next lesson, he picked me up at the office and took me on a tour of every bloody four-way stop in every single godforsaken neighbourhood in the entire city of Halifax. I cursed him constantly and fluently under my breath, while that despicable reincarnated priest of the Spanish Inquisition smiled serenely from under his beard. I hated him. But not as much as I hated to admit I was over my irrational fear within forty-five minutes.

As he dropped me off at home, Dave asked nonchalantly if there was anything else I was afraid of. In a moment of unguarded honesty, I told him that the two Halifax bridges spanning the harbour terrified me even as a passenger, let alone a driver. “Then that’s next week’s lesson,” said that loathsome Son of Satan.

The fear of four-way stops was nothing – less than nothing – compared to the terror of those bridges. Two of them loom over “The Narrows,” the part of the harbour which separates Halifax from Dartmouth. When the Bridge Commission finishes inspecting, maintaining and painting each of the bridges, they start over at the other end. It’s as if they are constantly looking for problems. Those bridges are constricted, they are high, they make a funny noise, and once you are on one, you can only go forwards. If there is ever any trouble up ahead with going forwards, there is only one other direction you can go – and that is straight down, down into the Narrows.

For the next week a small black lump of coal burned in my stomach. On the afternoon of the day of my driving lesson, I phoned Dave. “I have a headache,” I explained reasonably, “and I need to cancel the lesson.” “I’ll be waiting at the front door of your office at four o’clock,” that hateful bearded Bluenoser drawled placidly. Damn. He knew both where I worked and where I lived, and apparently nothing was going to stop him from earning the money I had already paid him.

Dave’s plan was to cross to Dartmouth on the Old Bridge and come back to Halifax on the New Bridge, so I could experience both. That furry-faced wretch was prepared in advance with bridge tokens, which I had to hurl at the giant maw of the toll booth. And then it was up and over in the rush-hour traffic.

The bridges towered above the Halifax Harbour, giving a far-reaching view to the Bedford Basin and all horizons, but I was fixated on the Naval dockyards directly below, where the bridge would land if it suddenly collapsed. The warships looked like plastic grey bathtub toys. I forced my eyes ahead to the rising arc, foot on the gas, and that demonic presence next to me calmly turned on the radio, fiddled with the knobs, and asked what station I wanted. Dave believed that distractions help new drivers learn how to handle them. Son of a seasick sailor!

When it looked like I had survived this torture test, the sadistic dungeon master had one last dirty trick up his sleeve – the traffic lights at the top of Duke Street, which sloped upwards from the harbour to Halifax Citadel at an angle approaching forty-five degrees. He was the symphony maestro, and I was the sweaty student as he made me play that clutch like a violin. Jerk! Jackass!

I was never so glad as the day I finally took the test and passed. All my ordeals were over at last.

My hairy sasquatch was lounging against the car, waiting for me as I exited the Licensing Bureau. “Congratulations,” he grinned.

I leapt into his arms and hugged him with all my might.