Heart's Content Cable Station

Location: Heart's Content, Newfoundland, Canada
Address:  NL-80
Date: June 2017
Website: www.seethesites.ca

  In these days of cellphones and unlimited internet access it is hard for some to imagine a time when communication was a luxury.  Transmitting a message from Canada to Europe used to be an impossibility.  A small town in Newfoundland played a big part in making the impossible a reality.  We visited Heart's Content to see where history was made.

  Across the road from the Heart's Content Cable Station are a few monuments which explain how it all came to be. 

  In 1858 there was an attempt to lay a cable for transmitting telegraph messages between Newfoundland and Ireland.  The photo above shows the two nations shaking hands.  Two steam boats, the Niagara and the Agamemnon met and joined the cable.  Messages were sent between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan, but the cable failed shortly afterwards.

  A huge ship called the SS Great Eastern was built.  It was designed to be a cruise ship and could hold 4000 passengers.  It proved to be too expensive and too big to keep operating as an ocean liner.  It found new life as a cable layer since it could hold the 4300 km of cable needed to make the cross-Atlantic attempt once more.

  This time the attempt was a success.  There was now a cable between Heart's Content and Valencia Ireland.  With the telegraphic cable in place, Heart's Content became a busy communications hub and life was very good there.

    Inside the station we visited the cable operating room.  It was filled with equipment used for transmitting and receiving messages.  At the peak of its operations, it also would have been filled with staff handling the equipment.

  There would have been operators switching cables to make connections as well as groups transmitting or re-transmitting messages.

 

  They would have transmitted these messages using morse code.  Above is an original morse code sheet as well as a re-typed one to make it easier for visitors to read.  See if you can use the information above to decipher this message.

-... . - - . .-.   --- -.   ...- .- -.-. .- - .. --- -.

  In order to get the messages across the Atlantic Ocean, there are submerged repeaters which do just what their name implies.  They take a message received and repeat it.  This keeps the signal strong and allows it to be more easily interpreted at the opposite end.

  More and more cables were added to the network and the Heart's Content cable station ran until 1965 when newer technologies made it obsolete.  The station now stands as a reminder of how it changed the world.

   The box above is where the cables entered the station.

    From there they ran towards the water where a morse code plaque reads "Between England and the continent".

 

  On the beach across the road some of the cables still remain.

  From there the cables headed across the ocean floor past the Heart's Content candy striped lighthouse and into the open ocean.  Somewhere thousands of miles away the message was received.  An amazing feat for its time.

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Map of Our World
Heart's Content Cable Station

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Post # 199

Gentlemen's Expo

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address:  222 Bremner Blvd.
Date: November, 2016
Website: www.gentlemensexpo.com

  The Gentlemen's Expo 2017 is coming to Toronto this November 24th to 25th weekend.  We won some tickets and attended the event in 2016.  It focuses on clothes, grooming, drinking, eating and sports.  Despite being the Gentlemen's Expo it was fun for both genders.

  As we entered the Expo we were treated to the drumming skills of a Sasquatch.

  There were many booths offering grooming.  Many men stopped in for a haircut or a beard trim.

  There was a booth run by Tenfed where you could jump from a tower into an air matress.  Tenfed is a company which sells clothing and for every item sold they feed ten hungry children.  They were running a similar program for every jumper.

  Rick Mercer was filming an episode of his show, The Rick Mercer Report, from the Expo.  He was playing a ball game at a booth selling specially designed underwear for men called MyPakage.  It reminded us of a commercial spoof he did on his show called "Knee in my Package".

  There were a few booths from OLG (The Ontario Gaming & Lottery Corporation) where they were warning about gambling and giving out free scratch cards.  They also had a vending machine where you selected a number in hopes of getting the candy you wanted, but it didn't always give you what you selected.  Just like the lottery.  You could choose A5 in front of a bag of chips and instead a bag of skittles would drop from another row in the machine.

 

  The Hockey Hall of Fame had a section set up featuring hockey memorabilia and trophies.  One of the jerseys on display had a 93 on the back and read Gilmour.

  Former Toronto Maple Leaf hockey players Doug Gilmour and Wendel Clark were on stage for a live interview.  They are best known for their time with the Maple Leafs in the 1990s.  They shared some stories and took questions from the audience.

  This year at the Gentlemen's Expo, former Toronto Blue Jays Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter will be on stage.

  During the 2016 Expo we watched an interview with then current Blue Jay pitcher, Jason Grilli.

  We also saw an interview with Big Wreck singer, Ian Thornley.  Big Wreck is best known for their songs "That Song" and "Blown Wide Open".
  All of the above as well as using drink tickets to sample various alcoholic beverages and repeat visits to the Dr Oetker pizza truck for pizza slices made for a fun night for all.  As we left the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, even a moose statue (top of post) was dressed up in his suit looking like a perfect gentlemoose.

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Map of Our World
Metro Toronto Convention Centre (South Building)

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Post # 198

Mavrovouni Dining

Location: Mavrovouni, Greece
Address: Mavrovouni 232 00
Date: Aug 2015

  There is no shortage of restaurants in Greece.  To get yourself a good meal you can usually just walk into any one you please.  This blog is about some of the restaurants in the area of a small village called Mavrovouni.  It is also not so much about the food, but the dining experiences.

  The beach area is a popular tourist destination.  Everyone wants to enjoy a meal while watching the waves of the Mediteranean Sea.  Hotels and restaurants line the road that runs the length of the beach.

  One place that we chose to eat was Ammos Restaurant.  Its blue chairs and checkered tablecloths sit in the shade of the covered patio.  Aside from good food, it has another feature that is very common in Greece.  Cats.

  As soon as we sat down, we knew that we were being watched.  A scan around revealed that feline eyes were spying on us from behind planters or from the bushes.  They were watching in hopes that some scraps would fall to the floor.  Once in a while they would walk past in hopes that they might entice you to drop something for them to eat.

  A small kitten came up to us and tried to use its cuteness to score some scraps.  While we did admit that it was cute we still did not part with our meals.  The kitten became more and more aggressive and less cute.

  We managed to finish our meals with minimal feline interference.  The small kitten was not pleased.

  The next morning we enjoyed some crepes at STILVI cafe.  It is near the main road away from the beach.  The crepes were delicious and the collection of coloured chairs on their patio were delightful.  It looked just like a postcard.  There were no cats in sight.

  We traveled further down the beach that evening.  The mountains were different shades of blue across the water.

  We walked until we decided upon a restaurant.  We went inside.   Little did we expect that we would  have an unusual dining companion this evening.  We had to do a double take as at the table next to us was a chicken.  It sat there quietly during our meal and only stood up once or twice to look around.  We did not see it eat anything while it was there, but whatever it did eat would have been the chicken dinner.
 Always an interesting dining experience in a small village by the sea.

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Map of Our World
Ammos , STILVI cafe

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Post # 197