In a separate post, I will talk more about that, but until I get that written, one of my students in my Syracuse University class on CIO on “CIO’s and the Global Enterprise”, wrote an interesting discussion about Ambient Organizations.

As I understand the various phrases that use the word ambient in this context, what is being said is that we come across information all the time; conversations, books we read, news sources, and so on. Over time even when we do not realize it, we tend to process and integrate this information often in unexpected ways. This is becoming even more relevant as the number of information sources and the pervasiveness of them increases.

For a simple example, for those of us who participate in such things as twitter or facebook, it is not infrequent that we when we run into someone for the first time physically that we are connected to on one of these social networks, it is as if we already know them. Even when we didn’t notice it, we pick up on what a person is interested in and what their opinions on a variety of topics are.

Helen Patricia McKenna is one of my students in this semester’s CIO class, the class itself in fact is completely on-line; taught asynchronously – that is, no direct lectures. It is part of the on-line graduate curricula at Syracuse University’s iSchool,  http://ischool.syr.edu/. She often posts very interesting comments, this one I thought was of particular interest – I will warn those who go on, that in addition to being interesting it is a bit long.

BTW, in the interests of full-disclosure, I also teach at the University of Maryland University College. I find that the “do not want to appear like an idiot” syndrome forces me to keep relatively up-to-date in the topic areas I teach – which typically range from Cyber-Security Policy to CIO Management to IT Acquisition.Helen Patricia McKenna

What will the CIO position look like in 10 years, and in 20 years?

It is difficult to know what the CIO position will look like in 10 or in 20 years but I would guess that it will have transformed considerably. In responding to part of quiz question number 3 for this course — What would you predict would impact on CIOs in the next 3-5 years — I wrote about the ‘ambient enterprise’ as follows:

In the next 3-5 years I would predict that it is the emergent ‘ambient organization’ or ‘ambient enterprise’ (Elliot, 2006)¹ that will have a great impact on CIOs.  Bjorn-Andersen (2003) defined an ambient organization as:

“a networked entity of organizations that, enabled by emerging technologies, exploits virtual resources, communication and collaboration schemes and defines an organizational structure and business model to create sustainable value.”²

We note from this definition the very technologies and elements that have been coming together to transform business as we know it — collaboration, virtualization, networking, and the ‘social’ enterprise.

Elliot (2006) explores the industry context for ambient organizations and examines their impact on ‘theory and practice.’ He points to “the increasing dependence on alliances as a critical factor in the implementation of transformative strategies.”  Elliot goes on to refer to ambient organizations as ‘amborg’ and proceeds to develop a series of characteristics noting that:

“the Amborg represents an emerging organizational form … there is a move from a focus on activities performed by enterprises to a focus on reconfiguring roles and relationships among a constellation of suppliers, business partners, and customers in order to mobilize the creation of value in new forms by new players.”

And on another level³ “the idea of ‘Ambient Business Intelligence’ simply means that it will surround and inform, even in ways that may not be perceived directly. The value of BI will no longer be assessed by its functionality or ‘ease of use,’ it will be valued by what it can deliver for an organization at the top line and the bottom line.”

Schmitt et al (2008)⁴ encourage us to think of  ‘ambient business’ enabled by open source and mobile technologies allowing for open innovation.  Cripe (2010)⁵ brings ambient to the level of metrics:

“Ambient metrics center on business intelligence that comes not from rows and cells in a database, but rather from unstructured content itself … Tracking and identifying consumption patterns of similar kinds of users in an organization can yield actionable intelligence … This allows relevant content from one part of a company to be suggested to a worker in another part of the company … What makes that information uniquely relevant is its contextual appropriateness to the business problem or business process at hand. What makes any of it workable at all is user-centricity.”

And Hinchcliffe’s research leads him to the development of ‘The Emerging Transition To Social Business Models’,⁶ a component of which is ‘ambient communication’, the notion that “today, everyone can talk to anyone, just about anywhere for nearly … at zero cost.”  Ambient communication, together with the other elements of the model — global information flows, social computing, market discontinuity — are rapidly transforming the business world as we know it and, in the process, the business of the CIO.  My advice would be — watch the ‘ambient business space’ and the ability of the CIO to understand, engage with and navigate this space and its potential.

Skarler (2009) explores 3D models for e-managing arguing that, “As we work in different constellations, levels, networks, and sub networks etc., we need to see networking in multiple dimensions, i.e. as ambient organizations.”⁷ ( Skarler, 2009)

Moving on to other thinking on the topic, Watson (2009)⁸ considers whether the CIO position is in crisis and notes that:

Guy Currier, who oversaw our CIO Role study and wrote its accompanying analysis⁹, doesn’t see CIOs disappearing, per se, but says that the function is clearly in trouble. ‘The possibility of the demise of the CIO position seems overblown … but the fact that nearly 16 percent of our survey respondents this year agreed with the statement, ‘The CIO position will have virtually disappeared in 10 years,’ represents a profound crisis brewing for IT leaders.’

Watson goes on to say that “about two in three respondents to our annual CIO Role study believe the CIO role will look very different in 10 years” and by working with this realization the “transition into the future will strengthen the CIO community — and potentially help stave off an even greater crisis in their ranks.”

Research on women and IT leadership, mentoring and other related factors suggests that women are increasing in numbers in the CIO role in higher education concluding that “Higher education appears to be a more favorable environment for the development of female IT leaders than the technology field in general.”¹⁰

Acknowledging the changing role and competencies for the CIO, a ‘Future-State CIO’¹¹ has been established by the CIO Executive Council global community claiming that “outstanding CIOs most resemble outstanding CEOs” and providing a leadership competencies journey document.¹²

In 2008 PricewaterhouseCooper emphasized the ‘I’ in CIO and pointed to the importance of the innovation role for the CIO¹³ while in its most recent report,¹⁴ PricewaterhouseCooper focuses on the CIO and ‘big data’ -

“Big Data isn’t merely a new model; it’s a new way to think about all data models. Big Data isn’t merely more data; it is different data that requires different tools. As more and more internal and external sources cast off more and more data, basic notions about the size and attributes of data sets are likely to change. With those changes, CIOs will be expected to capture more data and deliver it to the executive team in a manner that reveals the business —and how to grow it —in new ways.”

Guterman (2010) claims that:

“As companies with a history of cautious data policies begin to test and embrace Hadoop, MapReduce, and the like, forward-looking CIOs will turn to the issues that will become more important as Big Data becomes the norm. The communities arising around Hadoop (and the inevitable open-source and proprietary competitors that follow) will grow and become influential, inspiring more CIOs to become more data-centric … Whether learning from Google’s approach to Big Data, hiring a staff primed to maximize its value, or managing the new risks, forward-looking CIOs will, as always, be looking to enable new business opportunities through technology.”

Dignan (2009) sees the CIO role splitting into two areas of concern, operational:

“a purely operational group that keeps the networks up, builds and maintains the virtualized infrastructure, and maintains shared business services like email and ERP. Complex and critical, yes, deserving of a C-suite role, no.”

And more importantly, ‘internal consultancy’:

“This group will be equally at home in both the business and technical worlds (just as its colleagues in business units will be extremely well-versed in technology), and will work to leverage corporate infrastructure to build new functionality. This group might advise on a new digital marketing campaign, or it might help finance determine the right mix of outsourced and internal infrastructure to support a new system. Rather than being compensated for technical objectives, they are compensated for business results and succeed or fail along with their business counterparts … the CIO becomes a mix of process officer, information broker and skunk works-type researcher. … the “Information” portion of IT becomes far more relevant than the technical aspects.”¹⁵

FastCompany magazine recently ran a blog series on the C-Suite where Elkington (2010) used the metaphor of the ‘wild card’  referring to CIOs as ‘Chief Innovation Officers ‘ and ‘a new breed of aces’¹⁷ – the CIO, CTO, CCO (chief creativity officers) :

“In the new order, by stark contrast, much of the change is bubbling bottom-up, cutting across established hierarchies, and it turns out that many of the most powerful solutions to the great systemic and market challenges we face are to be found outside the confines of the company. Tomorrow’s corporate Aces will know how to play the wild cards that have [been] so disruptive to earlier generations of CEOs and senior executives–and they will know how to source suitably disruptive solutions, whether from customers, competitors, NGOs, public agencies or social and environmental entrepreneurs.”

Elkington goes on to speak about innovation, sustainability and the new business environment claiming that:

“The tragedy is that so many business schools betrayed their students for so long by failing to equip them for a world where environmental, social and governance issues are becoming part of the C-Suite agenda in one sector–and geography–after another. Having worked with MBA and other postgraduate students at business schools and universities around the world, we have experienced at first hand the incredible appetite of so many of these young people for exposure to these new challenges and to those who are innovating solutions.

And Elkington sees “sustainability as innovation’s new frontier” rather than a choice “between the largely social benefits of developing sustainable products or processes and the financial costs of doing so.” He concludes by suggesting that:

“whatever your business, it’s time to find and learn how to play your Aces. Ranking as either the highest or lowest card in the deck, depending on the rules, the Ace symbolizes the top-down, bottom-up world into which we are headed. But however it gets into your hand, it is the most powerful card in poker–a key to making the highest possible pair, straight, flush, or full house. It’s time to find these people, whether inside or outside today’s C-Suite, inside or outside the corporation. And to work with them to create new forms of capitalism fit for the new century.”

Changing values and the pace at which technology is changing is demanding massive transformations for business and in how we conduct business, in and around the social and organizational  structures we create.

¹ Elliot, Steve. (2006). Technology-enabled innovation, industry transformation and the emergence of ambient organizations.. Industry and Innovation.

² Bjørn-Andersen, N. (2003). Ambient organizations. Centre for Electronic Commerce. Copenhagen Business School.

³ Hired Brains Inc. (2007). Ambient business intelligence: pervasive technology White paper.  Framingham, MA: IDG Connect.

⁴ Schmitt, Christian, Schoder, Detlef, Fischbach, Kai, and Muhle, Steffen. (2008). Towards ambient business: enabling open innovation in a world of ubiquitous computing. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

⁵ Cripe, Billy. (2010). User approach, processes and ambient metrics differentiate Enterprise 2.0 strategies.  Washington, DC: FierceMarkets.

⁶ Hinchcliffe, Dion. (2010). Exploring why social business will drive 21st century enterprises. Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog.

⁷ Skarler, Viktoria. (2009). eManaging ambient organizations in 3D. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, v. 4(3):30-42.

⁸ Watson, Brian P. (2009). The CIO in crisis mode. CIO Insight.

⁹ Currier, Guy. (2009). CIO blowback. CIO Insight.

¹⁰ Brown, Wayne & McClure, Polley. (2009). Women as current and future CIOs. EDUCAUSE Review, 44(6).

¹¹ Kelner, Steve & Patrick, Chris. (2010). Your leadership portfolio: developing the competencies of a Future-State CIO. A Leadership Competencies Development Series from the CIO Executive Council and Egon Zehnder International.

¹² Egon Zehnder International & CIO Executive Council. (2010). Leadership competencies journey.

¹³ PricewaterhouseCooper. (2008). I for innovation*: the next-generation CIO. Center for Technology and Innovation. (* connectedthinking).

¹⁴ Guterman, Jimmy. (2010). Revising the CIO’s data playbook. In: Making sense of big data. Technologyforecast: a quarterly journal, Issue 3, p. 45. PricewaterhouseCooper.  < http://www.pwc.com/us/en/technology-forecast/assets/PwC-Tech-Forecast-Issue3-2010.pdf >

¹⁵ Dignan, Larry. (2009). The CIO is dead (long live the CIO). ZDNet, News & Blogs.

¹⁶ Elkington, John. (2010). Wildcards for tomorrow’s C-Suite.  Fastcompany Magazine.

¹⁷ Elkington, John. (2010). Playing aces: going for the C-Suite flush. Fastcompany Magazine.

“Did I want anything”, she asked. “What do they sell at Target?”, I wondered aloud.

“Well,” she said, “would you like detergent?”

“What?”, I responded in confusion, “Detergent?”

“Yes”, she said, “Would you like some laundry detergent for your clothes?”

“You know,” I said, “In almost 30 years of marriage, I can honestly say you have never asked me that question before. I have no idea as to if or what detergent I would need. I have never figured out which kind works with what kind of clothes or in what circumstances. I just take the container closest to the washing machine and hope that is the one that would work best.”

That last part got me to thinking. There is a lot in my life over the years where that approach, take the closest thing and use that, has explained how I deal with issues that are not critical to me.

When I was in college and got to my senior year I was able more and more to take the classes I chose; not just because I was moving to electives but also because juniors and then seniors had a higher priority in class selection. My senior year I selected all my classes by how class they were to each other. I was able to arrange a number of classes so they followed each other and were in exactly the same classroom.

A good friend of mine provided me advice I often follow when attending a larger lunch or dinner. He told me that he felt he only had a certain number of correct decisions that he was able to make in any one day. He would identify the most important person at the table and then order whatever they ordered, saving the number of decisions to be made for other times. Not only do I often follow that, but I use that story to flatter the person I am copying, thus achieving two goals; saving decisions and sucking up.

In business, whenever I face a problem I do not have much background in, my first thought is to find some organization or person that I admire and see how they solve that problem and then copy them.

I use an 80/20 rule to show emphasis. Most successful people I believe 80% of the time make decisions based on experience, sort of mental muscle memory. That allows them to concentrate on the 20% of the decisions they are not as familiar with, rather than having to think about everything. It occurred to me that these habits I follow are my attempt to increase the amount of decisions that fit into the 80% side.

One other piece of information I wanted to pass on. Some may wonder if the fact that I do my own laundry is a sign of someone who is trying to share household chores and be a sensitive, albeit aging husband. Sadly the answer is no.

When my two daughters were younger they would take clothes from my wife and use them, later it was jewelry. When it came time to doing laundry, fights would break out between my two daughters and between them and Ellen. I got tired of being involved with the struggles and decided to separate my laundry and do it myself so I wouldn’t have to deal with any of it. On reflection, this was a corollary to the above. It has served me well over the years and now is second nature. Or at least it will remain so as long as my wife leaves the right detergent near the washer.

Outside the Cows Plant

We took the tour along with a number of other visitors, including four guys who were members of the Harley Davidson club in Idaho Falls, Idaho. They brought along with them their fake snake Chester. It turns out they hold a 50-50 raffle each meeting. The winner not only gets 50% of the money paid into the pot but they also get Chester who (which?) they are obligated to take around with them until the next meeting where they hopefully will not be a repeat winner.

Ellen on Tour

Dan on Tour

Someone a picture of Hell’s Angels didn’t come to mind when talking to four guys on an ice cream tour with one holding a toy snake.

One other product that Cows makes is tee-shirts. They do lots of them with silly slogans. However, even here the conflict between the Washington Caps and Pittsburgh Penguin hockey stars rages on, as the Moovechkin and Cowsby tee-shirts are evidently big sellers.

Second Rate Parody About Second Rate Hockey Player

Moovechkin is the Man, or well, Cow

After the tour and the free sample all tour members get at the end of the tour, we spent the rest of the day wandering around the Eastern part of Prince Edwards Island. We saw many (many) beautiful beaches, almost no stop lights, and little traffic. We had a wonderful lunch at Windows on the Water in Montague, http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g499319-d710689-Reviews-Windows_On_The_Water_Cafe-Montague_Prince_Edward_Island.html, and spent an hour learning about life on PEI looking through the Orwell Corner’s historical site, http://www.gov.pe.ca/peimhf/index.php3?number=1015696.

At The Historical Site in Orwell

Lunch in Montague

This evening we had another great fish dinner at an Italian restaurant, Sirenella, http://www.sirenella.ca/. Our final event of the evening was to get our last ice cream from Cows and then watch the PEI light show telling the history of the island and the beginnings of the country of Canada; the confederation movement started in PEI, http://www.walkandseacharlottetown.com/pei-sound-and-light-show/.

Tomorrow we head over to Halifax stopping to have a maple syrup and pancake brunch at the Sugar Moon Farm.

For those of you who haven’t read the books (I haven’t) nor seen the TV shows/movies (I only vaguely remember them) it might be a wonder that a fictional character has this kind of impact. I think that LM Montgomery, who wrote the books, was so strongly associated with Prince Edwards Island (all but one of the books was located at PEI) and local pride; there is lots of that we have learned helped.

In the morning we went to the Canadian Parks protected area where the home where Montgomery grew up is located and where they have created a version of the house and farm described in the books.

A vaguely interesting fact is that all brochures there are in three languages. The normal Canadian French and English as usual. And also in Japanese where evidently Anne of Green Gables is a big hit. We had noticed the large number of Japanese tourists we had seen wandering around Charlottetown where we are staying.

The walk around the grounds was fine, everything is well kept. At the end of the Haunted Woods trail, named after a trail in one of the books, is a museum maintained by the descendents of the family where Montgomery grew up. We heard a talk by the young great-<add another great perhaps>-grand daughter about the grounds there.

After that we drove along the north shore of PEI stopping at various beaches to walk around and having great fish and chips at Richards, a stand on the beach just before Dalvay, a victorian house (and associated cottages) where evidently many PEI citizens and visitors get married.

Last night we attended the 45 year old Anne of Green Gables musical, which has been shown pretty continuously since its original presentation. The lead had played the Anne role for four years earlier and had just graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. The actor playing Matthew, the bachelor brother who with his sister Marilla adopts Anne, had many years ago played Gilbert, the hate/love interest of Anne. Having said all that, my quick summary is that the musical was energetic, sincere, and long. I enjoyed seeing it once, unlike others my lifetime count is likely to stay at one, whether I return to PEI or not.

We had dinner at a restaurant called the Globe World Flavours, http://www.dinedrinkdance.ca/. I had a wonderful salmon dinner while Ellen had very good dried tomato risotto.

Interestingly when we asked people in Cape Breton about PEI, they almost always said that it was pretty nice but they rarely visited there. One person described PEI as a potato field surrounded by water which we thought pretty funny. We found when we landed in PEI, the reverse was equally true. There they all said that Cape Breton was very pretty, but rarely went.

For one thing it is free to drive over the very short causeway to Cape Breton. It costs between $40 and $60 to take the ferry, or drive over the bridge, from PEI back to the mainland one-way. It is free to enter PEI. So once there, the trick is to figure out to sneak out and avoid the toll. 

Returning to our day, we started with a nice breakfast at the Inn at Glenyer in Mabou and headed to the PEI Ferry. We dropped by some craft places but found nothing of great interest. The ferry takes about 75 minutes to cross over to PEI.

While on the ferry we saw our first Canadian Mounted Police which do have a striking uniform. For some reason recalling the moose warnings from the Cabot Trail, I kept thinking of Rockie and Bullwinkle, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocky_and_Bullwinkle_Show.

Once off the ferry, we stopped for a quick lunch at Tim Horton’s which is a chain of quick food restaurants all over Canada. For those who haven’t gone it is a combination of a stripped down subway and a Dunkin Donuts. For example I ordered a chicken salad combination which came with a sandwich, a drink, and a donut. While we both felt this was an important check the box moment in our trip, like our visit to Lik-A-Chik, not to be repeated.

After checking in at our B&B in Charlottetown, Heritage House, located in the center of PEI, we spent most of the afternoon wandering around, and seeing all of, downtown Charlottetown.

I was very shocked to see a remnant of my life from some 20 years ago, a Microage Computer Store.

I was one of the early Microage Computer Store franchises during one of my first entrepreneurial crashes and burns. When your franchisor enters chapter 11 two months after you open your store, it ends up being what we might call today ‘a teachable moment’.

We had dinner at one of the very trendy PEI restaurants, Lot 30, http://www.lot30restaurant.ca/index.php . We both had fish, it was truly wonderful.

Afterwards we attended a show we wandered by during our walk, a local production about the life of a local radio announcer Loman McAulay who broadcast on station CFCY, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFCY-FM, for 44-years. Among other local artists he discovered were Anne Murray and Gene MacLellan. The latter wrote Snowbird and Put Your Hand In the Hand.

It was what one might call ‘very local’. The singers were pleasant and it gave us a sense of the love the residents have for their home institutions.

Tomorrow we explore the north-central part of PEI, the home of the home of Anne of Green Gables, followed tomorrow evening by our seeing the musical Anne of Green Gables. So the question for tomorrow is, is there any other place where a fictional character is so visited outside of a theme park? To avoid the truly cynical answer, perhaps I will limit it to fictional characters written during the last few hundred years.

The Lantern Inn & Hollow where we stayed overnight was on the Atlantic Ocean. That morning, we walked on the beach.

And here a picture of the jellyfish we referenced in the video.

We came on the beach near low tide after jellyfish were left on the sand. As the tide returned, some were then washed back out to sea. For those interested in reading more about jellyfish, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish.

Ellen wondered whether in some other language, jellyfish were also called well, jellyfish. I wondered whether modern jellyfish have significantly developed over the millions of years since the first one. Neither question was answered in Ingonish.

We had breakfast at restaurant called Main Street, though to be honest there doesn’t seem to be many more streets in Ingonish other than Main Street. It was very good. I had a Cape Breton ‘standard’ of fish cakes, beans, and eggs. All very good. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g499216-d1812400-Reviews-Main_Strete_Restaurant_and_Bakery-Ingonish_Cape_Breton_Island_Nova_Scotia.html

On the way to Baddeck, we stopped at a number of craft places. We bought a beautiful bowl at one and enjoyed wandering our way slowly heading west. We ended up in the Inn at Glenyar, which was a house about 2 miles off route 252 just outside of Mabou. We wandered around Mabou that afternoon, stopping briefing at the Mabou harbour.

That evening we had dinner at the Red Shoe Inn, owned by the Rankin Sisters who are part of the Rankin Family, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rankin_Family. Naturally there was live entertainment, a guitar player. We had a great Halibut dinner, the fresh catch of the day.

After we went across the street to the Mabou Community Center where we attended a Ceilidh. For those who know my love of the TV show Firefly, Ceilidh is pronounced Kaylee. In Mabou there is a Ceilidh every Tuesday night. We were able to listen to some wonderful old time music and see some local step-dancing.

Tomorrow we are off to Prince Edwards Island and by the weather reports, our first rain of the trip.

To finish off a comment on our stay in Baddeck, a lovely community on the shore of a truly beautiful lake, Bras D’Or, our B&B we stayed in called the Water’s Edge Inn, was a great place physically, really nice room, and very centrally located in the town. However, it was pretty ordinary when it came to breakfast. The only juice was Apple, the breakfast consisted of a pre-measured container of fruit-salad, you know with that heavy syrup stuff, a plastic bag with two slices of white bread which could be toasted, and an optional cup of waffle mix which could be poured into the waffle maker. Ouch.

The Alexander Grahme Bell museum was pretty interesting. Perched on a hill overlooking the lake, it told the story of how his life-long focus on helping the deaf came from his father and grandfather in Scotland where he grew up. He ended up marrying one of his students, a deaf teenager from Boston. His work on the telephone derived from that focus.

I had no idea that he was so interested in flight, sponsoring the first manned flight in Canada or boating, he worked with early Catamaran’s, and kites, he made many enormous tetrahedral-shaped kites. And, of course, I was unaware until I came to Baddeck that in his desire to get out of the very pressured life he was living in Washington DC that he established a home in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, where he spent most of the last 40 years of his life. And that his younger daughter married a photographer he hired while President of the National Geographic Society, Gilbert Grosvenor, who went on to become the first full-time editor of the magazine and was the namesake of the metro stop near where I live.

Leaving Baddeck, we went northwest to start our clockwise trip around the Cabot Trail. We entered the Cabot Trail Park at Cheticamp going around 2/3′s of the way by the end of the day stopping at Ingonish.

The drive is beautiful, often stunningly so. The road is an easy drive, whether on the inside or outside contrary to my earlier worries. The views of the water, our hikes into the forest, the walk we took on planks through a highland bog were all peaceful and interesting.

While we did not have the time to linger as much as we would have liked, I can see that if we were to return, staying at a B&B in the middle of the drive, perhaps at Pleasant Bay, and spending more time on the trails would have been a relaxing and enjoyable experience. I suspect that in the fall, the colors would be spectacular.

Standing in the middle of the forest, with almost complete quiet except for the sounds of birds, I was again reminded of the tension between the need to do ‘something’ during our short-time alloted to us versus the sense of place in a much longer and larger surrounding. I suspect that most of us, myself certainly included, do not balance that conflict very well.

We bought stuff at two of the many craft places we visited along the way. At Larchwood, there were many, many wonderful cutting boards, Ellen tells me they are very famous. At Cape Breton pottery, a great variety of beautiful bowls and other pieces. We bought a cutting board at the first and a bird at the second.

We ended up at the Lantern Hill Inn on the beach at Ingonish. We are in the main building in a large and spacious room, though it is only the first B, not a B&B. There are also cottages which are a bit too big for just us, that actually are on the beach. We had dinner at a restaurant called Seascape. The food was both great and beautifully presented.

Breakfast at the Louisbourg Harbour Inn was great, if you are in Louisbourg, recommend going there.

You drive over to near Fortress Louisbourg and park at the visitor’s office. There you catch a bus which takes you to the Fortress.

Fortress Louisbourg was constructed originally by the French in the 1700′s to defend their interests in North America. Unfortunately for them, they built their guns facing the water where they expected to be attacked; not from the land which was in large part marshy. The English in the 1740′s waited until the ground was frozen and dragged their cannon over the frozen marshes to within range of the fort. They put in place a blockade in the front and had troops thus surrounding the fort, after a few month siege the fort surrended.

At the end of that particular war, by treaty the fort was returned to the French; the English were given land elsewhere. Amazingly the French repeated the same mistake in 1758. This time after the English captured the Fortress they demolished it so there would not be a third time.

In the 1930′s Canada turned the Fortress into a National Landmark and reconstructed a number of buildings, turning it into sort of a mini-Williamsburg with many locals dressed in period clothes; telling the story of the Fortress and details of the lives of the people who lived there in the 1740′s.

BTW, for those who wonder if the French finally learned their lesson, might read about the Maginot Line.

We were there for almost six hours, it was really great. We learned a lot about the Cod trade. The some 1000 fishermen who lived near the Fortress, almost 2000 people lived inside, caught on average 30 million pounds of fish per year. Cod was worth 3-5 times as much as the more well known fur trade to France.

We ate at a restaurant inside the Fortress which served period food. You put you napkin, really a cloth bib, around your neck. If I used such a thing at home I would clearly have less need to take ties to a dry cleaners. You are given a single spoon to use for all your food.

Next was driving over to where the first Lighthouse was built in Canada, across the water from Fortress Louisbourg, near the current town. A very beautiful area overlooking the water.

Afterwards we wandered around Sydney, where there was a Busker festival, and swung through Florence to have dinner at Lik-A-Chick where we had chicken (duh); really a bit too fried food’ish, but I really wanted to eat at a place called Lik-A-Chick. Once again Ellen, this time to a bit of regret, agreed.

We ended up at Baddeck at the Water’s Edge Inn, our second b&b of the trip. Tomorrow is the Cabot Trail, lots of crafts shops, ending up at Ingonish and the Lantern Hill & Hollow.

Many of our friends were surprised to find out that there are direct flights from Washington to Halifax, or at least there is one, a United flight. So off we went Saturday, July 31^st, early in the morning.

Last year we went to China to see a total Solar Ellipse. The relevance of this is because of that one flight I was able to qualify as a Premier flyer on United for the first time in years. United’s new policy is that whenever there are first class seats available then they fill them with their frequent flyers who are already on board. So Ellen and I were upgraded to first class. On the other hand, on a regional jet, which this was, the main advantage of first class was that you got served coffee or juice before you took off.

Our first day in Nova Scotia was mostly a driving day. Nova Scotia is pretty long, pointed from Southwest to Northeast. PEI is toward the north end and is itself due north of Nova Scotia. Unless you are going to spend more time than we had, you have to pick whether you will go to the south of Nova Scotia, Bay of Fundy and that kind of thing, and then PEI, or the north of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and then PEI. We picked the Cape Breton alternative.

We went from Halifax which is sort of in the middle of Nova Scotia and headed north and then to the east, ending up at Louisbourg on the Atlantic Ocean. Louisbourg is the home of the former Fort Louisbourg which we were told was a pretty interesting place to see, more on that later on.

On the way we stopped in Antigonish, a small town about two hours from Halifax. There we ate at the Tall and Small Cafe. The Tall and Small is the kind of place you would expect to find near a University. Really young, informally dressed wait staff; being pretty disorganized. Lots of strange sandwiches, not often you can get a peanut butter and banana sandwich in a restaurant; things with sprouts.

And happily for Ellen the book store she wanted to visit in Antigonish was next door. Ellen makes independent book stores wherever we visit happy.

The drive was otherwise pretty uneventful. Beautiful scenery, especially when we drove by the large internal lake in Nova Scotia, Bras D’or. We saw two hitchhikers, something I haven’t seen in many years in the States – in Canada, one refers to the US as ‘the States’.

In Louisbourg, we are staying at the Louisbourg Harbour Inn, one of the bed & breakfasts we will visit while on the trip. A beautiful old sea captain’s house. We overlook the harbour (well duh) in what was the old master bedroom – I try and get nice rooms, remember that Disneyworld goal.

Dinner was fish at the Lobster Kettle restaurant, a short walk away and also on the harbour. Sadly the less said about that the better. Overcooked Halibut, a steamed, sliced baked potato which annoyed Ellen, and slow service – like the old borsht belt joke, the food was terrible and the portions were small. We did finish up by walking around the very small downtown and buying an ice cream cup which helped a little. Ice Cream was advertised everywhere we drove, so the advertising worked.

The one big decision that Ellen agreed to dealt with Cape Breton. When you visit the north part of Nova Scotia you end up driving the Cabot Trail which is described almost everywhere as one of the ten most beautiful drives in the world. Now, for those of you who are height unhappy, I should point out that ‘beautiful drive’ almost always is a synonym for driving in mountains and looking out over beautiful vistas.

You can drive the Cabot Trail clockwise in which case you are on the inside lane on the generally two-lane road hugging the moutains, admittedly small mountains. Or you can drive the Cabot Trail counterclockwise in which case you are on the outside lane which often does not have things like a shoulder next to the beautiful mountain side. Not having realized all this, I had set us up to drive counterclockwise.

When I read all of the literature that talked about making sure you had strong brakes and how most people prefer the clockwise drive, I suggested to Ellen that we reverse the plan even though that would add perhaps an hour to the overall trip. She kindly agreed.

Two other quick things.

First, while we do not travel that much internationally, the last few years we have done a bit. Each time we come through customs on the other side is inevitably a country one needs to get used to with customs that are different – one of the reasons one does this kind of travel.

Today it felt strange for almost the opposite reason. We went through customs and almost nothing was dramatically different other than the currency and the metric thing. The relationship with Canada is so natural we really do take this extraordinary tie too much for granted.

Second, the owner of the Louisbourg B&B it turned out plays senior hockey where Sidney Crosby played hockey as a kid but is a big Washington Capitals fan. He was very disappointed, as of course was I, when the Caps were eliminated in the first round. We both are looking forward to this year’s season.

During the time I worked on that effort, I got to know a number of the IADB staff. One of them who was born in  Spain, married an American wife, and now lives in the US, told me that in his opinion there was one particular thing that made America unique. It was that unlike any other country America was founded on the principal that all Governmental power was derived from the people. In most countries, he said, the opposite was the case.

I am not enough a student of International Political Science to know how accurate that conversation was. But I do believe in the first part, that is that the premise of the American experiment was that Governmental power was “derived from” not “established for”.

Quoting from the Declaration of Independence, a document which will be often quoted today, July 4th, but not paid enough attention to:

“”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

As a second generation American, all of my grandparents were born in Europe, I remain thankful to be a small part of this continuing attempt to expand the barriers to freedom that America has and continues to represent. I continue to believe that freedom is at its most basic not “freedom from” but “freedom to”.

While I worry that currently we are losing our way a bit, like most American’s for these over 200 years, I remain optimistic that the experiment will continue unabated.

Happy July 4th to all friends of liberty.