Maine and Maritimes like two peas in a pod

Mark Twain wrote that nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits, and I suppose the old boy’s observation applies splendidly to we formerly ink-stained wretches who can’t pick up a newspaper without mentally repackaging the content. As in real estate, where location is everything, in the newspaper business, packaging – the grouping of related news stories, pictures, commentary and the like – is the ticket.

Thursday morning’s paper was a case in point. With perfect 20-20 hindsight it occurred to me that the Page One story, “Maine firms seek to narrow wide trade gap with Canada,” by Deborah Turcotte Seavey, could, as a service to readers, well have been packaged with the MaineDay story by Berm Banville headlined, “Ashland revives winter trek to Quebec.” To make the Hail-Canada package complete I would have included a story about a budding grass-roots campaign headed by Mike Gleason of Bangor to urge the Adelphia cable television outfit serving much of eastern Maine to add programs of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to its basic cable offering.

All three stories suggest a desire by Mainers to get cozier with the friendly giant that outflanks us and would, were it not for another foreign country – the Other Maine to the south – have us encircled. Not that that many people here in The Real Maine have, until lately, seemed to notice this geographic quirk. Generally speaking, when we think trade we think north-south rather than east-west.

Which is what the trade seminar involving participants from both sides of the border on Wednesday was about. The conclusion drawn from the session seemed to be that Maine buys a lot more from Canada than Canada buys from Maine, and the state should catch up by smartening up. “The Canadians have done their homework on Maine, but not the other way around,” said Dana Connors, president of the Maine State Chamber and Business Alliance. Sure, the trade gap needs to be narrowed, participants agreed. But people need to be enlightened as to how strong economic ties between Maine and the Atlantic Provinces will benefit both areas.

The story out of Ashland reported that the Ashland Rotary Club is reviving the formerly annual motor vehicle caravan over logging roads from Ashland through the deep woods to Quebec City via Daaquam on the Quebec border. It will mark the 45th anniversary of the event, conceived by County promoters as a publicity stunt promoting the idea of a highway linking Ashland with Quebec City as an economic boost for The County. Each February for 13 years, concluding in 1967, a band of hardy Maine pioneers made the annual trip to participate in Quebec City’s annual Carnaval, its renowned winter celebration. There, they were wined and dined to a farethewell during special Maine Day festivities. Ah, sweet memories of carefree youth, when our merry band could eagerly manhandle a buddy’s1959 Pontiac convertible out of snowbanks in blizzard conditions from the outskirts of Ashland well into Quebec Province and still have strength to party on. (Sensibly, we didn’t lower the car’s rooftop until making our triumphant run into the city.)

There is no talk these days of building a Maine-Quebec highway. Rather, participants will make the Feb.15 trip just for the hell of it. And to promote Maine in the heart of Quebecois country, of course.

Meanwhile, Gleason has e-mailed a suggested letter to several thousand of his very dearest friends to be sent to Adelphia and local town governments asking for CBC programming. Most of us live closer to Canada than to Portland, or New Hampshire, or any other state, he points out. Yet seldom do we get Canadian news from local media outlets.

Maine has as much – if not more – in common with the Maritime Provinces and the province of Quebec than it has with most of the other states, he suggests: Weather, a common history, a contemporary population, culture, agriculture, aquaculture, industry, business, languages, religions, ideologies, values. “We are allies. We are world trading partners,” Gleason’s letter reminds the cable company.

The availability of CBC in Maine could help counter woeful ignorance of things Canadian, Gleason contends. “We do not need additional sports channels,” he writes. “We do not need additional home shopping channels…We don’t need news piped in from Portland, or Atlanta…What’s happening in Atlantic Canada and/or Quebec, however, can have very immediate and long-term effect on our personal and professional lives here in Maine…”

So there you are. Viva la Canada meets God Bless America. Not as titillating a subject as the gem in Friday’s paper about official consternation over nude females streaking down Orono’s main drag, to be sure. But then, that’s a pretty tough act to follow.

Kent Ward lives in Winterport.

His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.