Magical History Tour

Finally the rain stopped so we enacted a plan to vacate the summer shackri-la for awhile to explore back roads in mainland Nova Scotia.

A Livingstone ancestor imported the family bloodline to New Scotland in 1790. We saw Livingstone Cove in Antigonish County where Malcolm established a homestead; we visited the St. David’s churchyard where ten or twelve old Livingstone headstones slowly lose the battle against the elements and the ravages of time.

My ancestor fought with the Highland Stuarts at the calamitous Battle of Culloden, which ended Bonnie Prince Charlie’s adventure and put the sword to the Highland clan system. The battle occurred 264 years ago, but even today it resonates strongly in both the Old Scotland and the New. At Knoydart a roadside sign pointed the way to a monument I’d never seen or even heard of. In 1938, a MacDonald clansman, still possessed of strong feelings about the atrocities visited by the English following the 1746 debacle, built a cairn honouring three Culloden survivors who made good lives for themselves in Nova Scotia. The monument stands on a windswept headland clearly selected to evoke the highland moor where the Highlanders fell. The monument plaque reads, in part:
Let them tear our bleeding bosoms
Let them drain our dearest veins
In our hearts is Charlie, Charlie
While a drop of blood remains

Whew.

Our road trip morphed into a magical history tour. Jan urged a stop at the NS Museum of Industry at Stellarton. Later we saw the Sutherland steam-powered sawmill at Denmark NS, the nearby Balmoral Grist Mill and finally the Maitland site of the shipyard where William Dawson Lawrence built the largest wooden sailing ship the world had ever seen. At each of these fascinating stops I was struck by the energy, industry, initiative and inventiveness of 19th century Nova Scotians and pondered the changes that have led to Stephen Harper feeling entitled to talk about the region’s “culture of defeat”.

Defeatists were not evident at sparsely-populated Wallace. If you are ever in the neighbourhood you might want to consider pausing at the Jubilee Cottage Inn. It was the nearby national wildlife area that drew us to Wallace but having seen the Jubilee included in a list of five things ‘not to miss’ on the Northumberland shore we took a room in the century-old house. The room was charming enough but the capper was a fabulous 5-part dinner feast produced by Carol, the female half of our husband-and-wife hosts. Carol is a brilliant country chef and she delivered one of the best meals we’ve ever enjoyed, anytime, anywhere.

Carrying on to Black Rock for a sibling weekend with my three sisters and their rhyming spouses, Donnie, Ronnie and Jonnie, we enjoyed a surfeit of Cape Sable lobsters and evening outdoor fires. On Saturday the eight of us stormed the Marigold Cultural Centre in Truro for a virtuoso performance by one of my favourite singer-songwriters, Lennie Gallant, the best-known, best-loved native of Rustico PEI.

Now we are back at Big Bras d’Or, a few pounds heavier for our gustatory indulgences but with head swimming with ideas for the next round of historical pursuits and rambles.

Alan

Of Barrens, Bananas and Bunnies

The Cape Bretoners should retain us as rainmakers. Through the first five months of 2010 year-to-date rainfall levels were half the normal level. Then we arrived and now farmers jump for joy. June’s rainfall figures are twice normal. Hallelujah.

We had one sunny day in the last seven. Fortuitously it was the one we’d scheduled a hike with Lynn and Louise. On Saturday they shared another of their secret destinations, the trailhead just a few kilometres from iconic, much-photographed Cape Smokey. In Nova Scotia pink ladyslippers are neither rare nor retiring. Indeed they are among the showiest, most visible of all the native orchids. We normally expect them around the end of June but here near the foot of Smokey they ran riot. Sometimes, particularly in northern parts of Cape Breton, pink ladyslippers aren’t pink at all, but white. On Saturday nature provide us with an abundanza of whites, deep pinks and the whole spectrum in between.

Our ramble led to an open barren commanding terrific views in every direction. It evoked earlier hikes in Newfoundland and Arran in Scotland. I was hard-pressed not to award a ten on my 10-point appreciation scale. The weather held for the six hours we spent in the hills. By the time we returned to Big Bras d’Or the rain returned too. No problem. All four of us had eagerly looked forward to the second half of the day’s agenda almost as much as the first: a no-holds-barred, go-for-the-throat Bananagrams slugfest.

Those not acquainted with Bananagrams will have no idea of its addictive allure. Perhaps it’s just as well – if you’re not already hooked perhaps you should steer clear. I consider myself a decent player. Louise and Jan are good too. Lynn is another matter entirely. For the first two-thirds of the marathon I stayed pretty much even. Then, like the great Secretariat stirring from a somnambulant effort in the early going of a major stakes race, Lynn moved to a higher gear and blew the field away. She is a stone-hearted assassin.

On Sunday my treatment for a bruised ego was to immerse myself in useful projects. What likes rain? Why a garden of course. Jan completed her spring planting – beans, peas, radish, carrots, lettuce, parsley, basil – and I did my bit too. In previous years our resident rabbits – varying hares to be precise – helped themselves to some of the garden proceeds. The real men of our Boularderie neighbourhood have an answer for such a problem, one flowing from the muzzle of a .410 shotgun. Even if Jan allowed such a solution which she most assuredly does not, I wouldn’t have the stomach for it. So the garden is now defended by a staked chicken wire perimeter. I am counting on rabbits being less skilled than squirrels at penetrating human defences.

Meanwhile the rain is back but that’s okay; it gives us an excuse to linger indoors working at strategies for coping with The Assassin.

Alan

Rites of Second Spring

Imagine how charmed we were to arrive at Bigador May 20 and find the summer shack-ri-la uninvaded by human intruders. True, squirrels had built winter dens in the outhouse and woodshed and the workshop showed signs of having provided off-season sanctuary to a deer mouse or two but those sorts of interlopers we can stand.

May 20 was our earliest-ever arrival date at the old Big Bras d’Or farm, early enough to deliver us a second spring. We found the woods carpeted with wildflowers -- violets, clintonia lilies, lily-of-the-valley, wild sarsaparilla et al. Already we have seen 50 species of birds including eleven warblers. Eight of them are summer denizens of Bigador including some of the most beautiful you’ll find illustrated in the Peterson guide – Blackburnian, Magnolia, Black-throated Green, Parula – but migration is still underway: we were early enough to see a warbler gang ‘just passing through’ that included Yellow, Wilson’s and Yellowthroat. Northern Gannet is an offshore seabird. Unusually, one flew into the waters of the Great Bras d’Or just opposite the cabin, entertaining us with a spectacular dive from great height for a seafood lunch. We don’t even have to leave the building for good birding. Our feeders are installed and well attended. A pair of Hermit Thrushes is raising a brood under a little pine right just 10’ away from the dining room window.

Mammals thrive too. The neighbour man used to shoot every four-footed thing that moved, but by recently going to his reward the wild things are rewarded too. The feet and undersides of the varying hares still show white traces of their winter garb. Foxes are on the rebound. Scat dotting our roadway indicates it’s only a matter of time before our first coyote sighting. Best of all, with no guns blazing from the neighbour’s place, a white-tailed deer showed up the other day near the cabin, the first laid eyes on in three decades.

The Darlings – Lynn and Louise– did their level-best to commit a homicide last Saturday by way of a 10-hour slog up four hills, down four dales in CB Highlands National Park. Near death though I was by the end of it, I managed to stagger back to the vehicle feeling every one of my 63-year-old aching joints and muscles. Jan was tested too but she is a better soldier than I and sucked it up for the homestretch. The twins? Of course the effort was absolutely, well, effortless for them. At the outset I would have claimed our party comprised three women and one man but the day’s events proved conclusively that the roster actually included three cow moose and one soft, spongey wimp. Tomorrow, Saturday, we are scheduled for a return engagement with the 100-lb Wonders. I have been in training all week and hope to embarrass myself a little less grandly than I did the first time out.

Bigador is wonderfully quiet at this time of year. The fjord is mostly devoid of boat traffic, summer visitors have yet to arrive, Old Route 5 is only lightly travelled. When the sun shines we spend hours rambling in the woods and fields. Now that Steve Nash is out of the NBA playoffs, I feel not the faintest need for a TV; if we need to know what awful things are going on in the Gulf of Mexico, Afghanistan or the Gaza Strip, CBC Radio keeps us in the loop. Otherwise, fiercely contested games of Bananagrams keep us distracted while honing our competitive edge; when that gets to be too much there is no place for reading a worthy book quite like the old rocking chair parked in front of the warming Drolet woodstove.

Alan