The facts in the brochure have it that there are 275 permanent residents of Pelee Island. As always when I travel, my first thought is, "What's it like to live here?". Then, in talking to a woman who works at Alles Gute bakery as well as having her own convenience store elsewhere on the island, my imagination was further whetted hearing that from December (sometime before Christmas) until April there is no ferry service from the mainland. For some of the elderly residents this necessitates passing those months elsewhere where they can have access to medical attention if their health is not good. For the rest, one quarter of their year is truly "living on an island", isolated from most of our North American consumer culture.

Try to imagine, where you live, not visiting a store to buy groceries for three and a half months of every year! The woman at the bakery says she plans out her menu for the whole time. I don't usually know at the beginning of the day what I'm having for supper that night, but the supermarket next door makes even such short-term menu planning unnecessary. (I'm sure Sonia can relate to this aspect of living on an island.)

Socially, I hope you get along with your neighbours because you're not seeing any fresh faces for awhile. I have a sense from my couple of days here that most residents here have experienced "community" in ways that most of us will never know.

I'll leave it to you to imagine-out the rest of the island life scenario. Personally, I think I would enjoy the yearly discipline of being socked in without ferry service. It would be like a prolonged lent or a sabbath - both, disciplines that give us a perpective on our lives. Not that I would act like a hermit just because I was cut off from most of the world. I would hope for rich opportunities to get to know the 180 or so who winter here. In a place of fewer distractions I think that spiritually, socially, physically and emotionally I would thrive.

But even on Pelee, it would be a choice to live that way, a discipline, deciding to spend time with God, with my neighbour, with my wife. I could choose equally to watch TV (great local reception) or live in an artificial internet world (my internet provider is just a local call away in Windsor). If I really want the benefits of this island I can live that way in Montreal. Not creating a pretend virtual island where "divertissements" aren't available to me, but choosing the best way in the land of distraction.

So, I'd say it has been a profitable vacation. Whenever spending a little time in another sort of environment shows me how to better live in my own world, I like that. To flip around a popular notion: "A vacation is as good as the change ( it brings home)".

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