Posts tagged Editor's Desk

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Editor’s Desk

by Dave Wagner, Firemen’s Grapevine Editor

My wife and daughter wanted to spend a week in Paris this summer but I convinced them that Quebec was just as French – and a much shorter plane ride. I told them that Montreal has a Notre Dame Cathedral (not quite as old as the one in France), and that the pommes frites at the McDonald’s in old Quebec City were better than what you could get on the Left Bank.

The trip was going well - with a bicycle tour through Montreal and a whitewater kayak trip in the mountains to the north – when disaster struck. A sudden flare-up of a recurring infection required us to seek immediate medical care for my daughter. Out of the U.S. (is Canada really a foreign country?) and knowing little of how their medical care system worked (socialized medicine?) caused us some concern. We soon discovered that Canadian pharmacies do not carry the OTC medicine that works so well for her at home, and that she would need a prescription for an antibiotic. After waiting three hours in our room for the doctor that the hotel said they had on-call, we decided to strike out on our own.  Read more…