Small Halls, Small Island, Big History

Having sat idle for two whole years we decided it was high time we put the camper on the road again. Nature abhors a vacuum, the saying goes. So it seems: an array of wild things had taken up residence in various corners – sow bugs, spiders, ants, even a cricket or three. Ignoring the doctrine of squatters’ rights, we gave them all the heave-ho, washed off the grime and discovered that apart from a balky jack, all of the camper’s mechanical bits seemed to work just fine. We decided to go to Prince Edward Island.

Serendipity made a return performance. En route to the Island we learned that a music event, the Festival of Small Halls, was underway – 42 events over 11 days in 34 small halls – and that a particularly fetching one was set for North Rustico that very evening. We arrived at the Caribou ferry dock just in time to roll on to the 2:45 sailing, the last vehicle through the gate. More serendipity: at the PEI visitor at Wood Island we found that there were two tickets left for ‘Night Out in the Crick’. The sellout crowd ate up the event, literally. As if the musical offerings – from Tony McManus, Catherine MacLellan, Troy MacGillivray, et al – weren’t enough (and they were), the organizers provided free food too, headlined by help-yourself Island mussels. Night Out in the Crick was so swell we ate up two more gigs, ‘Belfast Hosts the Grammys’, Gordie Sampson, Liz Carroll at the Belfast Presbyterian church, and ‘Girls Night Out’ (Liz Carroll again, Andrea Beaton, Meaghan Blanchard and pals) at Munns Road near PEI’s eastern tip.

Without really meaning to we went to the Garden of the Gulf at just the right time. There was plenty of room at the one national and several provincial park campgrounds we frequented. Come a week later, we were told – after Will & Kate have taken their turn – we would find the same facilities booked solid.

Even by comparison to its Maritime neighbours PEI is an oddball. The island is settled throughout, much of it apparently by potato farmers. There is hardly any litter at roadside. Do they shoot people who dare to throw a Tim Horton’s cup out the window? The ‘Garden of the Gulf’ moniker suits: there is no wilderness on the Island, the moose, bear and deer are all gone.

Happily there are still wildflowers and birds. Never having been in the western end of the Island we rumbled to North Cape, where an array of big generators contributes significantly to the Island’s power grid – 18 per cent of PEI’s electricity is wind-generated. Who knew? At North Cape we walked the Black Marsh Trail, saw a fine array of bog-barren wildflowers and soon discovered that, fierce as the North Cape winds are, they weren’t up to the task of keeping Cape mosquitoes at bay.

We walked the storied red sand beach at Cavendish national park. At Red Point it is the sandstone cliffs that are red, the beach is of the ‘singing-sand’ variety, and almost white. After North Cape we drove the whole length of the Island (it’s easy enough to do) to East Point and thus earned our very own Tip-to-Tip Certificate.

Our trip was a history quest in large measure. After the bellyful of Rustico mussels we spend a few hours at Green Gables and had a good feed of Lucy Maud Montgomery. We time-travelled at Orwell Village. In the late 60s the Orwellians, such sensible people they were, decided that preserving the old buildings of the village was preferable to tearing them down.

We had the place to ourselves, wandered the village, snooped about the one-room school (which operated as late as 1969), general store, blacksmithery and church. In the community hall a nice lady served her own fare: chicken noodle soup and the best buttermilk tea-biscuits I ever had. In Georgetown we gawked at the splendid houses surviving from the mid-1800s. At Charlottetown we visited Province House and walked the same halls where – in September 1864 – the Fathers of Confederation decided it might be a good idea to invent Canada.

We’d planned to spend three days on the Island but wound up making it five. By and large the weather was fine, the food good, the people friendly, the ambience just right. I was a tad regretful as we rolled on to the Confederation Bridge but comforted myself with the notion it won’t be long before the land of Ann Shirley and Stompin’ Tom lures us back.

PEI Remembrance

Fair warning to readers disinterested in the Great War, and remembrance of it: proceed no further. My next post in Peregrinations addresses other PEI charms, this one deals with the excellent homage Spud Islanders pay to the Island’s Fallen.

We had other reasons to pay a return visit to PEI but my principal grail quest was to see three First World War monuments. One of the blessings I get to count is that Jan indulges this mild obsession of mine. Thanks to my essential memorial bible, Robert Shipley’s To Mark Our Place, I knew that cenotaphs in Charlottetown, Malpeque and Summerside all feature soldier statues. I knew the identity of two of the sculptors, both highly accomplished and justly famed. But Summerside was a mystery.

After landing at Wood Island we made a beeline for Charlottetown. There, right in front of historic Province House, where the nation was seeded in 1864, is George Hill’s impressive and imposing statue of three Canadian infantrymen marching purposefully toward the Front. The Canadian Tommies are a wonder: assured, resolute, dangerous, fearless. A German pickelhaube helmet lies gloriously trampled underfoot.

We drove on to tiny Malpeque, famed for its oysters. Ordinarily a hamlet as small as this would have a simple monument but Malpeque has something grand: Hamilton McCarthy’s rendering of a Canadian soldier brandishing a flag in his right hand, rifle in his left. As with Hill’s Charlottetown figures, McCarthy’s soldier conveys confidence, conviction, certainty, not a shred of doubt or temerity. How did it come to pass that the citizens of Malpeque have such a grand monument? Did a rich Malpequian lose a son at Vimy or Passchendaele? I look forward to fathoming the question.

Apart from the major targets, Jan puts up with me pulling over whenever I see a community memorial: Alberton, Tignish, Miscouche, Souris, Cardigan, Montague, Georgetown... I stop to look at them all. They all have stories to tell and I am keen to know a few.

Summerside proves a revelation. Without knowing, Jan intuits that Queen Elizabeth Park is the place to search. Indeed it is. There I find the highlight of the entire adventure: a figure of a soldier going into action by the finest of Canada’s Great War memorial sculptors, Emanuel Hahn. I am astonished to find it. Nowhere have I seen a reference to a Hahn sculpture at Summerside. To the best of my knowledge there is only one monument of this design in all Canada, at St. Lambert QE. Hahn is unique among memorial sculptors: his figures are invariably contemplative, pensive, vulnerable. Hahn is never one to glorify or strut. He is unafraid to reflect grief, thoughtfulness or empathy in his soldiers’ faces. For my money Hahn’s are the most powerful, most affecting of Great War memorial sculptures. As I admire the Summerside jewel people walk by and pay no attention. How many townspeople know they have a public masterpiece in their midst?

After five days we leave PEI but the quest is not over: in Moncton NB there is another Hahn to see, another masterwork, ‘Tommy in Greatcoat’ in the city’s Queen Victoria Park. Even on a cheerfully brilliant sunny day Hahn’s Tommy evokes a profound sense of loss. Not the glory but the pity of war. It is beautiful, perhaps the most understated of Hahn’s works, but powerful and very moving. Exactly what remembrance of the war to end all wars ought to be about.

Oui, Madame

Attentive readers of Peregrinations will have noticed that pal Mary, commenting on my whining about the bad weather in my last post, slapped me upside the head. Smartened me up right good, she did. I decided I’d better watch my step for awhile. The weatherman promised a half decent day Saturday so Jan and I ran off with Lynn and Louise after work on Friday, heading to Isle Madame, an Acadian French enclave at the southeastern corner of Cape Breton. En route we stopped at the Bras d’Or Inn in St. Peter’s and dined in high style on steamed and baked mussels.

I’ve noticed before that the Acadians appear to be significantly tidier than the rest of us. Houses and front yards on Isle Madame and its sisters – Petit de Grat, Janvrins and a cast of smaller islands – are neat and tidy; roadsides are uncluttered by litter. We know right away we are not in a Scots part of Cape Breton: stop signs tell us to Arret, road signs all start out with Ch, which stands not for Charles as I pretended to imagine, but Chemin. The Acadia flag flies proudly everywhere.

We stayed – for a bargain price – in one of the simple but charming trio of two-bedroom cottages at Robin’s on the southside of Arichat harbour. When fog permitted, the cottage commanded a fine view of Arichat village. Robin’s hostess, Anita, was the first but by no means last of several friendly mesdames to enhance the visit: on Saturday morning she surprised and pleased us with a delivery of milk, butter and fresh raisin bread.

We spent much of Saturday rambling from one end to the other of roadless Delorier Island. Mary will be pleased to hear that since the skies were sometimes blue and sunny we enjoyed excellent views right across Chedabucto Bay to Canso on the Nova Scotia mainland. Delorier provided much to gawk at, including a diverse array of geology: beach rocks included volcanics, sandstones, vivid red and yellow siltstones, and an assortment of conglomerates, some so striking that Jan took to going on about Mother Nature improving on Jackson Pollock. The birding was good too, headlined by numerous and noisy osprey, herons, willets.

Beachcombing on Delorier delivered other, not-so-natural finds. The islands are lobster country; we spotted bait boxes, bait bags, and those little rubber thingies fishermen put on lobster claws to ensure they don’t nip your fingers off. My favourites are the ones marked ‘Wild Canada’. Their size is perfect for another purpose; slipped on the business end of a walking stick at boot-top height they make excellent depth gauges – before stepping into that questionable bog, take a reading to ensure you won’t go over the top. To my eye the most intriguing find was a framed portrait – rather Goyaesque I thought – of an outstandingly appointed young woman wearing nothing but a sassy pair of brown leather boots. Perhaps the lobsterman who owned it had grown tired of the splendid Chedabucto vistas, but how did the fine art wind up going overboard?

After the day’s exertions we stopped at the Arichat Coop to buy the wherewithal for a sumptuous Sunday breakfast. At the adjacent NSLC outlet another friendly madame kindly informed me that a medley of Vitamin B6 and magnesium oxide are the clear thing to fend off future kidney stone attacks. Seldom do my beer store stops reap such useful intelligence. We left Stony’s Takeout with a feed of seafood and clam platters, sufficient to founder a horse. Back at the cottage we submitted to another bananagrams thrashing at the hands of Lynn and Louise.

Sunday brought the world back to customary fog and drizzle. Never mind, with Mary in mind I soldiered merrily on. I had taken it into my head to look for Harry Whittier, the most memorable and influential of my Dalhousie English professors, who lives on Isle Madame. Yet another friendly lady, at the D’Escousse store, assured me that, yes, Harry is alive and well, and told me where to find him, at the end of the road to Cap le Ronde. Alas, Harry was not at home but I left a note for him with the lady at the D’Escousse store.

On the homeward leg of our little adventure we stopped at the historic St. Peter’s canal. Business was so slow here that the bright young historic parks guide dashed out to greet us and convey all we needed to know about the old locks. At Big Pond I remedied long-standing negligence: I had never accommodated Jan’s wish to visit to Rita’s Tea Room. Perhaps due to the inclement weather, we had Rita MacNeil’s establishment to ourselves. Rita herself was not on site but her son substituted capably. The tea and oatcakes, it goes without saying, were of the highest order. Grand, dear, just grand.

It was a weekend made all the better for having been comprised entirely of simple pleasures. Now of course the usual fog and drizzle have returned. But don’t mistake me – I’m not grumbling – the prospect of another of Mary’s smacks upside the head has me in my very best, cheeriest form.

Disordered by Seasonal Affect

Day after day delivered the all too familiar blend of drizzle and steel-grey skies that seems de rigueur in June of 2011. Then euphoria: Saturday morning brought barely remembered sunlight. In no time at all I caught myself rapt in the sun-dappled Great Bras d’Or and said to Jan, Wow, it’s beautiful here. Remember the old Allan Sherman song, Camp Granada? Hello Muddah, hello Faddah, the kid writes. He complains about everything in sight, begs to be extricated from the hellhole Camp Granada, pleads for mercy. The sun comes out, the kid instantly changes his tune. I am that boy. Give me a sunny day with a small list of worthy projects and I am instantly the grinning village idiot.

Both Saturday and Sunday were blithe. I accomplished much. Big Bras d’Or charmed me all over again. HJ claimed that a long list of evidence proved I was no son of his. One marker of my halfwittedness was that I care about the weather. Only softheaded people care about weather. I might have pointed out that it was easy for him to say so since my father spent most of his time indoors -– the weather wasn’t relevant to poker-playing, rum-swilling, reading, watching The Price Is Right. Still, his point was valid: perhaps I do care a tad too much.

I needn’t look far to see a different model for playing the hand one is dealt. Lynn and Louise never grumble about anything. They really don’t. A rainy day -– or week or month –- is just another opportunity. The cousins love life regardless of sunlight or season. In all these years I have never heard them grumble about anything. They never experience a sour hour let alone a mirthless month. In my acquaintance only pal Mary –- currently swinging Scotland by the tail for all she’s worth –- rivals L & L for making the best of every minute nature affords.

Now a new week is underway, the sunny interlude is over, a steady tattoo of rain beats into the rain barrels, the long-range forecast is for more of the same: drizzle, showers and my personal favourite -- ‘rain, sometimes heavy’. Camp Granada darkens. I am to be tested yet again. Next weekend the mooted plan is for us to head to Isle Madame with Lynn and Louise, tramp the headlands for hours, find a suitable eatery after the day’s exertions, look for a charming-looking B & B with an unleaky roof. And above all to emulate my darling cousins: have a whale of a time come hell or high water. But here’s the rub: my 100-pound cousins are stalwart souls, the sort we’d call real men if they’d been born with alternate anatomy. By contrast I am a wimp, a wuss, a weather-worn wanker. It’s a wonder they give me the time of day.

Fogbound Among Bras d’Or Ghosts

At Bigadore miserable weather perseveres. Every reveille produces the same vista: fog, drizzle, showers, cold, interminable grey. Many days the fog persists all day. The opposite shore of the Great Bras d’Or is but a mile away. Above it vaults Kelly’s Mountain. Frequently the whole day passes without a sight of the mountain. Hummingbirds shiver at the feeder, then topple over from hypothermia. If there is good news it is only this: judging by their absence the blackflies suffer too. The woodstove comforts, provides stored sunshine. Last fall I left the woodshed choked to the rafters with bounteous good fuel: maple, birch, apple. I begin to fear the stockpile will not last through June.

Latin scholars need not have me point out that Nova Scotia is Latin for New Scotland. The moniker suits. A few years ago Jan and I spent a month in Scotland on the bikes with best buds Mary and Mike. It rained every day but four. The following July, at Big Bras d’Or, the rains fell every day but two. So far June seems hell-bent on shattering the record, on making Old Scotland look good.

Lately I’ve been asked a good question: what is it that keeps me coming back to Big Bras d’Or. A very good question indeed. Blue skies and sunny days seem relics of the past. Feathered and furred wild things hide out from the weather. The binoculars are useless, the camera stays on the shelf. True, we are still far removed from the madding crowd. Of late there are no crowds whatsoever, madding or otherwise.

The more observant among our small gang of loyal readers may have noted in an earlier post that we celebrate Bigadore’s ruby jubilee this year. Forty years have passed since I first set saw to board, hammer to nail. In 1971 I was but 24. My best friend was 77. If Big Charlie were still living he would now be 117, almost the age attained by the incomparable Jeanne Calment. Kitty, my favourite aunt, hated my Shangri-la for precisely the same reason I loved it: at the end of my half mile of narrow winding woodland road it felt like the end of the world. Perfect, I thought. For Kitty it was Hell itself.

My neighbour Sarah Murray McPhail Patterson MacLean –- the world knew her as Sadie -– was a stalwart pal: good kitchen company and never any objection to the outrageous boob squeezes I perpetrated upon her person. Up on MacKenzie Hill Wally and Edith took pity on me once in a while, gave me a feed of cod and boiled potatoes. Now they are all gone. Every one.

Over the years Bigadore has availed an endless stream of projects. Never was I heard to say, ‘There is nothing to do.’ Over a string of fall weekends in 1974 I raced the 250 miles from Halifax in the wee smalls of Saturday morning, raced back on Sunday evening. With twelve hours of work each day I soon had my screened-in porch, still the best place on earth to achieve a good sleep. For a quarter century starting in ’75, whilst toiling in my Victoria saltmine, I had to make do with a month a year, always August. Emancipation in 1999 brought about a building boom: the sunroom in ’02, bathhouse in ’03, workshop in ’06. Along the way there interior improvements too: fridge, proper woodstove, skylights, cabinets, a bit of paint here and there. Not everyone appreciated the changes. But they would if it was four months they spent at the cabin rather than a few days.

Forty years will change a fellow’s perspective a tad. It isn’t novelty that brings me back, or a change in the cast of wild things that share the old place with us. No new buildings clamour that I pick up hammer and saw. Is it ghosts that draw me back? If ghosts are real -– many Cape Bretoners insist they are -– there must be a good number of them hanging about.

Back in 1971 I had a stretch in a Halifax hospital. A fellow patient, George Murray, taught me the rudiments of house framing. Ted Squires, himself a fine carpenter, supplemented the instruction. I left the hospital in April, came to Cape Breton, dismantled the derelict house then standing at Bigadore and, using hand tools only, framed the cabin in three weeks.

My great-uncle Harrison –- great in more ways than one –- insisted that it was the best thing I could possibly have done, that I saved my life by doing so. George, Ted, Harrison -- all of them now ghosts themselves.

Is it ghosts that bring me back, or merely habit? Perhaps I’ll wait to see whether the sun ever shows itself again before venturing an answer.

Wild and Crazy

Up on MacKenzie Drive the foxes established at Wally’s old house continue to entertain. The bravest of the pups emerges from the basement den to look us over, wondering who the heck we are and what we’re up to. Last year a pair of two-legged squatters briefly occupied the vacant house before the RCMP showed up. I find the current squatters substantially more appealing, but wonder what Wally would make of it all. If he still walked among us the old guy would be 102. I like to imagine he’d be okay with his forsaken homestead being used for the raising of another young family before the old place finally melts back into Mother Earth. But the truth is, I doubt he’d be amused at all.

A pair of northern parulas -– one of the more attractive of our breeding wood warblers -– has set up housekeeping very near the camper, just up the hill from the cabin. The male seems to spend half the day singing his brains out, announcing to the world at large and especially to males of his own kind that he is king of the hill, cock of the walk, master of all he surveys. But all is not rosy in Parulaland. The handsome young fellow and his devoted mate are driven to distraction by a pair of rivals identically determined to establish themselves in the same territory. A sort of trench warfare is underway: the established pair keep launching attacks on the adversaries. The enemy gives as good as he gets -- exactly and precisely.

The rivals invariably appear in the same place: in the camper window opposite their nest. The window relates the history of the war in rich detail: bits of feather, various smears and stains. No matter how relentless the foes or futile their attacks, the parulas persevere. No light bulb turns on. No epiphany flashes. The warblers do not get -– nor will they ever -– that their enemy is their own reflection. It gets me wondering what sort of analogies apply to our own species: what sort of endless futility is pursued by H. sapiens that intellects of a higher order watch, scratch their heads about, perhaps even find laughably crazy.

Other birds entertain. Bigadore is a nursery not just for parulas but several other warblers -- black-and-white, magnolia, myrtle, Blackburnian, black-throated green, ovenbird –- not to mention the cast of thrushes, sparrows, finches and others. Their deeds to the place may be not registered at the county office in Baddeck but I recognize them as being at least as compelling as the one that is. Bigadore is a wildlife sanctuary without the formal designation. The first owl of the season -– a monosyllabic barred –- hollered from a nearby perch in the wee small hours a couple of nights ago. Squirrels rattle their challenges to one another. Snowshare hares -– their snowshoes still showing traces of winter white -– don’t say anything at all. They munch on the grass and imagine that standing stock still makes them invisible. Are they nervous when the nearby coyotes yip in the night? Footprints reveal the presence of bobcat in the neighbourhood, unseen to date. We shall keep our eyes peeled. There is one wildlife species I could do without: hordes of blackflies threaten to carry us off whenever we stand still. John Muir would argue that what is good for black flies is even better for warblers. I shall try to bear that in mind.

What Would Wally Say?

Up on MacKenzie Drive Wally-and-Edith’s old place, vacant for several years, now has new residents. This morning, as we emerged from the woods for the last kilometre or so of our pre-breakfast constitutional, we spotted an adult red fox at the corner of the old house, then two more faces -- pups hiding behind the rusting oil tank. We hid too, behind the spruce at the end of Bob Nagel’s driveway, to watch the show. A third young face made an appearance at the den entrance -- an opening in Wally’s basement wall. Then a fourth face, then -- just as we imagined that must be it -- a fifth. The youngsters played, competed for best position at feeding-station mom, conducted themselves in the nature of youngsters having not a care in the world. How charming that Wally-and-Edith’s is a home again. To a family of six, just as in the old days.

When we’re away on the opposite coast friend Gord Haggett, master gate-builder and rabbit stew fancier, harvests a few of the varying hares that flourish at Bigadore. I don’t mind at all: doubtless the stew his missus makes is a most worthy dish, and Gord’s depredations have no noticeable consequence -- the hare population appears to be as robust as ever. I wonder though whether our conduct around the rabbits gives the hunter an unfair advantage. Jan and I are harmless drudges: we ignore them and the bunnies soon grow complacent and fearless -- easy pickings for the merciless hunter. Perhaps it would even the odds a tad were I to impersonate Elmer Fudd, make threatening noises, shake a stick, holler ‘Say your pwayers, Wabbit!’

Strange sights on the Great Bras d’Or. Some loyal readers will know that northern gannets are a seagoing species. Until last year I don’t recall seeing one foraging the waters opposite the cabin. Last year we saw the occasional one or two. Lately the trickle has become a flood: six or seven dozen at a time on the water or diving headlong for fish. What gives? Why would gannets be moving to inland water? Do the birds know something mere humans don’t? Or is it simply that the 2011 smelt run is one for the ages?

On Sunday we hiked the North River Trail. Moose droppings littered the pathway much of the way. Folks who believe in ghosts might be drawn there. A century and a half ago these hills were a thriving community of Scots settlers – people named MacLean, MacKenzie, MacLeod and MacAskill. The old homesteads are gone now but their signs are left behind: old foundations, walls, cellar depressions.

Nowadays the forests along the way are dominated by hardwoods – beeches, sugar maples, yellow birch. It wasn’t always thus. A century ago North River provided a mother lode of softwood. As many as 900 men working with double-bitted axe and crosscut saw yielded a third of a million cords of spruce and fir over a thirteen year period. An old photograph shows a platoon of moustachioed young men sitting on a mountain of pulpwood. How many of them wound up in a different sort of platoon a decade later?

Ten days into the 2011 sojourn, things are greening up. Kelly’s Mountain, grey when we arrived, is verdant again. The Solomon’s-seal by the bathhouse, just four inches high May 20, is now two feet tall, the flowers about to bloom. But no, Jan will not plant her tomato and basil seedlings just yet. It was minus-one yesterday in the Margaree; frost is still a risk.

Late lamented Wally – who knew what he was talking about – insisted that Jan not do her planting till the new moon in June. She will heed Wally’s advice and bide her time by the warming Drolet while the threat of frost persists.