Field trips

When I was in school in Sackville, NB, we went on a few field trips.  One was to the nearby National Historic Park Fort Beausejour. (There was a sign there that you had to keep all your guns in your car unloaded and dismantled.)

Another place was to the Enterprise Foundry, a local factory that produced stoves and stuff.  When Moira's class went there and they offered to answer any questions, she asked, "How much money do you make?" Today she's ashamed of having asked such a stupid question, but at least it was less stupid than the one I asked when my class visited.  We had a Westinghouse stove at home, so I asked, "Do you make Westinghouse stoves?" He replied impatiently that they only made Enterprise stoves.  Another kid asked, "What's the most serious type of accident?" I was jealous that I didn't think to ask that instead!

In grade 5 my class went down to Springhill to visit the Miner's Museum there, commemorating the 1956 and 1958 disasters.  That place included a mini-mine that we could enter in hard hats and even gather some coal.  Our guide was a man who'd survived the 1956 explosion.  To show us what it was like being trapped underground, after asking our permission, he turned the lights off for a second.  I freaked out. (Goodness knows, I was a sensitive kid.) The worst thing about it was that a classmate made fun of me on the bus going home.

I could never work in a mine.