SOWERBY'S ROAD
Hall's Harbour haul-out
A winter tow can be a fulfilling adventure

Getting stuck in the snow and managing to shovel your vehicle to freedom is one thing. But bogging down to a point where towing is necessary is an inconvenience that none of us desire. Egos are bruised and wallets often take a hit.

But when there's little, if any damage to your vehicle, needing a tow can sometimes turn into an adventure in learning and fellowship. Feelings of camaraderie with complete strangers surface as the incapacitated vehicle is set free.

I offered a tow hook and one of the roofers went to work attaching a yellow rope from the front of the van to the front of the Colorado. Then I put the torquey 5-cylinder Colorado into low range and yanked the lumbering hulk out of its chilly trap. The rope held. The roofers cheered. I felt like a hero.

The incident was over in a few minutes, but a bond had been formed. Word would obviously travel through the Georgian Bay roofing community about the two strangers that pulled the boys out of the ditch down the dump road.

A few weeks later, while developing a road game, Lisa and I found ourselves in tiny Hall's Harbour, Nova Scotia. The rustic fishing village is located in a cove surrounded by tall basalt cliffs on the Bay of Fundy coast. It's an uphill battle to get anywhere from Hall's Harbour.

A snowstorm was lashing the ghostly, coastal community with a healthy dose of winter the night we pulled our Subaru TS Impreza sedan onto the commercial wharf, clearly the village's main attraction in the bustling summer season. "You want to do this here?" laughed Lisa.

"Let's get it over with." I slipped a blindfold over her eyes and led her down the dark, deserted 'main drag' of Hall's Harbour.

Through the driving snow, I could make out the silhouettes of huge hunks of frozen Fundy stranded high above the waterline, a testament to the sweeping 16-metre tides indigenous to the area. Fishing boats sat on their hulls on the bottom of the harbour. There was not a soul around other than me leading my blindfolded wife, attempting to learn something about trust.

Then headlights appeared. An old Chevy pickup truck drove by, very slowly. I wondered if the driver could make out Lisa's blindfold through the blowing snow. An enormous German Shepherd dog stood sentry in the truck's bed.

We hurried back to the Subaru and were just about to pull away when the Chevy appeared from the other direction and pulled up alongside Lisa's window.

"You guys got trapped down here, too, eh?" Bruce Millett looked normal enough as he peered down at us from the cab.

"No, we need to find out the population of Hall's Harbour." Lisa, still working on the road game, seemed relieved.

"I'm just passing through and can't get up the hills at either end of the village," he yelled over the howling wind. "You got a cell phone?"

"There's no cell service down in this hole. Do you want to come with us?"

"Well, no. I got the dog and all."

While Bruce talked, I tried to stare down the German Shepherd as it loomed over Lisa. From my perspective, its head seemed twice the size of Lisa's and I concluded the dog would completely fill the back seat. Just what we needed, a strange, massive dog stuffed into our Impreza.

"How about a tow up the hill?" I offered, figuring a man with a dog like his must have a chain onboard capable of towing a pickup truck or two.

"With that?" snorted Bruce, eyeing our unpretentious all-wheel drive Subaru.

We agreed to try one of the hills without hooking up, to see what we were dealing with. The agile Impreza scurried up the snowy hill like Spiderman. The truck, a 2-wheel drive model with nothing but a large, wary dog for weight, spun out a quarter of the way up.

I turned around at the top of the hill and drove back down to the wharf where Bruce Millett and his beast were planning their next move.

"How about that tow?" I asked.

We hooked up the chain and started up the steep, slippery hill. The Impreza's symmetrical all-wheel drive system went to work like Mighty Mouse, scratching its way to the top of the hill, decrepit guardrails on either side and the blackness of the Bay of Fundy beyond. There was never a time I thought we wouldn't make it.

Bruce was elated. He invited us to his nearby farm for a visit, a summer holiday even. His canine partner whimpered with excitement as they both respectfully eyed the Subaru.

And I'm sure there's talk around the Millet farm these days about that dark and stormy night that the little unassuming car hauled Bruce's truck out of Hall's Harbour.