Warm in the Autumn Woods

Late-September Big Bras d’Or is seductive enough that we feel inclined to leave the truck where it is, wandering only as far as feet permit. More distant adventures must be 4-star to entice us away.

We traveled to scenic Broad Cove to see Alex and Geraldine McKinnon, friends my mother recently and happily added to her stable. Doris was confident I would find plenty of common interest with Alex and promised we would like them both. She was right. Alex took me to see the fine memorial display at the Inverness Academy where a long school corridor is lined with photographs of soldiers from the Inverness area who fought in the world wars. His grandfather and father served together in WWI. His father, Murdock, fighting in the Machine Gun Corps near Cambrai, suffered a shrapnel wound October 11, 1918, one day after my cousin David Livingstone was killed in action whilst commanding a machine gun battery in the same unit. I have no doubt they knew each other.

The next day I savoured a magical history tour with Cousin Julia Moore, a granddaughter of Capt. Rod Livingstone, the only survivor of four Black Brook soldier-brothers who went to Flanders. Jan and I were able to show Julia her grandparents’ grave at Glace Bay’s Greenwood Cemetery; she had never seen it before. Julia is gift of the Internet: we share an enthusiastic interest in exploring our Cape Breton family roots. She was steered to me by someone familiar with my Great War archival photographs on Flickr.

The three of us visited Cousin Sarah Mae Livingstone MacPherson, a niece of the Black Brook brothers. A visit with ‘Sadie’ is always a reward in itself but there was a bonus: Sarah Mae gave me a book David sent to his sister Annie at Christmas 1916, shortly after his brothers died at Ypres and the Somme, and less than two years before he too would be killed at Cambrai.

It was a cousinly week. I last saw my father’s niece Deborah Bartlett in the early 1960s when she was a child of about 10. Visiting from Ontario, Deb came to see us at the cabin; we entertained each other recollecting childhood memories then went off to Baddeck to revel in a feast of mussels and lobster.

The early days of fall are a revel of a quieter sort. Most days at Bigador we have to ourselves, or share only with our joint tenants, the rabbits, squirrels, jays and eagles. I completed the task of splitting the small mountain of birch and maple built earlier in summer. The woodshed is full again. Cool evenings are unproblematic: with plenty of firewood the reliable Drolet warms the cabin as we curl up with a good book, listen to CBC Radio or try to thrash one another in a vicious game of Scrabble. Jan wins most of the time; I comfort myself with the notion it was I who taught her to compete like a sewer rat.

Alan

Arrivals and Departures

Buoyed by the blithest summer weather in memory, ‘The Resort’ continued to attract visitors well into September. Some nights the cabin sheltered as many as eight. Kathleen and Jon spent four convivial days with us around the Labour Day weekend, sharing Bigador’s abundant amenities with nephew John who came with Naomi, Hannah and Sara. We introduced the youngsters to some of our favourite cohabitants: red-backed salamanders, garter snakes, snowshoe hares, et al. We showed the little darlings some of the Carboniferous fossils cluttering the beach below the cabin. We flew kites – as many as three at a time – in Bob Nagel’s fields and waved farewell to the Bobby Labonte delta flier after it shed its tether and vanished eastwards, hell-bent for the Atlantic.

For the first time in years Jan celebrated a birthday at the cabin rather than the more exotic locations she has grown accustomed to: the WWI Western Front, the Scottish highlands, the Magadalen Islands. We have a fine new restaurant in North Sydney, The Black Spoon, that would shine as brightly in Vancouver’s west end as it does here. It made a fine venue for Jan’s birthday dinner.

I made more time than usual for reading this summer. I sometimes irritate Jan by saying life’s too short to waste time on fiction but lately I have read almost nothing but. Sublime Sebastian Faulks has rewarded me particularly well. I found Charlotte Gray in a Halifax used bookstore. Bob Nagel spotted On Green Dolphin Street among the books being discarded at the North Sydney Library. Jan found the only copy of The Girl at the Lion d’Or available in Vancouver bookstores and brought it back in August. I relished them all. With no other Faulks works at hand I reread Birdsong and found it even more astonishing and rewarding than at the first reading a decade ago.

On Saturday a superb new war memorial monument was dedicated at Big Bras d’Or. Along with an honour guard, decorated old soldiers, and a host of local people with relatives remembered on the monument, dignitaries included local politicians and Nova Scotia’s Lieutenant-Governor. Many of the soldiers named on the monument are my relatives, seven of whom died in the First World War. The monument pays worthy tribute to their memory.

I am not alone in feeling that the passage of time accelerates the older one gets. Bob Nagel, beloved by all, arrived at the end of June but summer flew faster than ever and he departed for Boston Monday. His second last evening was balmy and clear. We sat on Bob’s back deck under the glittering Milky Way. An occasional meteor flashed across the night sky while a pair of barred owls serenaded each other in the woods beyond his field. Big Bras d’Or is never the same without Robert but late September brings compensations: fine cycling weather, waves of migrant songbirds, the first taste of fall colours.

Alan