Rolling Cameras, Rolling Wheels, Rolling Time

I spent an afternoon this week at St. James cemetery taking instructions from a film producer and following the orders of a cameraman. Months ago a documentary film company, Clerisy Entertainment, found my Boularderie Soldiers materials on the Internet. Intrigued that seven of my kinsmen were killed in the Great War, they invited me to take a turn in a project focused on Nova Scotia’s Fallen Soldiers. I leapt at the chance. The much anticipated event at last came to pass Thursday afternoon. Producer Dale and cameraman Bud wired me for sound, delivered my marching orders, then let me loose.

I spoke about all seven of the lost uncles and cousins including three Livingstone brothers killed at famous Canadian battlefields: Ypres and Courcelette in 1916, Cambrai in 1918. It was bad enough for the brothers’ father to have lost two sons, Hugh and Charles, in 1916, but when his favourite son, David, was killed just a month before the Armistice it was too much for the lads’ father. He died – of a broken heart the family had no doubt – within a few days of learning David’s fate. I’m told to expect a DVD of the finished product early in 2012. In the meantime I’ll keep fingers crossed, hoping not to wind up on the cutting room floor.

The week was not all work. Yesterday Cape Breton afforded a relative rarity in the summer of 2011, a brilliant sunny day. Rather than scrub floors or go to town to resupply the larder, we dusted off the bikes and enjoyed a good ride with Bob on a backroad route to Hank’s Farm via decommissioned Mill Pond Road. In his 82nd year Bob sets an intimidating standard: he rides as well as we do and provides a floor show while he’s at it, belting out show tunes all the while he’s turning the bicycle crank. It was mildly encouraging to discover that Bob may be mortal after all: the last couple of big hills took enough starch out of the old guy that he focused strictly on the pedaling and gave the show tunes a rest – but only for a while.

August is just around the corner but the swimless streak continues: I have yet to fall prey either to the freshwater charms of Dalem Lake or the saltwater allure of the swimming hole below the cabin. Ordinarily by this point of summer the thermometer on the sunny side of the cabin would have hit a hundred on several occasions, and dips would be a daily delight. This year even eighty is a rarity. Surely August will be better.

A Departure, An Arrival

The curtain fell this week on the life and times of my cousin Mike Livingston. Mike’s passage packed a bigger punch than many. Only a little older than myself, Mike played a key role in an important event: my first visit to Big Bras d’Or way back in the summer of 1958. We stayed in the old Livingstone homestead – now long gone – with his grandfather, my great-uncle Alex Livingstone. My memories are vivid. In my recollection the sun shone every day. Mike and I spent most of those days outdoors. Below the house, a field (now overwhelmed by fir and spruce) stretched all the way to the fish-house on the shore). One of the strongest memories is olfactory: my great-uncle’s peach-scented pipe tobacco. That week looks flawless in my rearview mirror – not a blemish – and it doubtless played a significant role in launching my lifelong attachment to Big Bras d’Or. I of course didn’t know it at the time but that summer week in ’58 would turn out to be the only time I would spend with Cousin Mike. He died in San Francisco, a great loss to those who loved him, particularly his siblings Bill, Terri, Alex and Sarah.

The week ended with an arrival. Benjamin Douglas Johnson, overdue a week, had to be given the boot from the comfortable station he’s enjoyed these past nine months or so. He belted out his first holler yesterday at 1230 hrs PDT. A new brother for Lexi, son for Doug and Allison, grandson for Jan. At the earliest opportunity I look forward to teaching the lad the rudiments of baseball.

A Wave Big But Not Hot

The days of July march relentlessly away. We busy ourselves with motley diversions: trail-improving, road-widening, roof-raising (on Jim Troke’s behalf) et al. Old age brings a measure of mellow: I no longer have to complete a long list of ‘projects’ before earning the right to read a book. In this my last pre-OAP year I read more greedily than ever. Lately I’m on a John Irving bender: A Widow for One Year, Until I Find You, The Fourth Hand, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Once I was a big fan but fell by the wayside years ago. Now I’m catching up, impressed as ever by Irving’s originality, quirkiness, humanity and humour.

Jan reads too but has talents needing exercise. Twice – during last year’s Celtic Colours, then again in June during PEI’s Festival of Small Halls – I was left spellbound by Tony McManus`s rendition of Satie`s Gnossiennes 1. I demanded that Jan add it to her guitar repertoire. She is coming along very nicely. One day I threaten to surreptitiously video her at it and load the proceeds on YouTube.

On Sunday we got off our butts and rode the bikes to Ross Ferry with Old Man Nagel. Though a tad windy the day was sunny and blithe. Pedaling along, while Bob belted out show tunes, I counted flowers, the wild ones and the ferals, growing at roadside. At the Ross Ferry wharf I studied a vivid tableau. A gang of teenagers in swim togs took turns jumping into the littoral. One of them, a well-contoured young thing in yellow bikini was set upon by the young males. The scene brought to mind pigeons in the park – you know what I mean, a poor hen pigeon harassed to distraction by a gang of cocks all with just one thing on their mind.

On the way back we stopped at Diane’s Den of Antiquity where a yard sale was underway. I ordinarily avoid yard sales as assiduously as I do Stephen Harper fundraisers but this time, for a lousy five bucks, we came away with a bagful of worthy books and bits of glassware Jan found charming and gay.

The bird feeders attract steady trade from finches, jays and hummingbirds. The usual contest of wills and wits goes on with squirrels. I concoct new and ingenious plans for confounding their ambition only to have my latest solution undone by sunset. One of the best among our latest bargain book acquisitions is the National Museums’ Mammals of Canada. We are learning more than we ever imagined about our fellow citizens at ‘Bigadore’. That the squirrels love mushrooms, relish the kinds that kill humans stone dead, and build underground storehouses loaded with their favourites. That the little deer mice inclined to move in with us come September breed four times a year and could theoretically produce ten thousand descendants in a single year. That our little brown bats can live to age 24, don’t eat mosquitoes after all, and don’t migrate to Latin America for the winter (no, they hibernate in local caves that stay above 40 degrees F even in the coldest January).

CBC tells us that much of Canada is roasting these days. Not so Cape Breton. Ordinarily we’d have a month of Dalem dips behind us by now but this year subpar weather has held us back. Until Friday. Jan took the plunge. I chickened out. Too cold. Too grey. Too unappetizing. Might August finally change things for the better?

This is Big Wave week in Big Bras d’Or. On Tuesday we joined an audience of a few dozen to watch the variety concert in the St. James basement – a few skits here, quite a bit of song there, all performed by local talent based right here in Big Bras d’Or, or very nearby. It got me contemplating notions of community and the way things used to be ‘out in the country’. On Wednesday we went to the United church, laid waste to whole plateloads of the nice ladies’ sandwiches before dispatching a large bowl of local strawberries and cream. Today brings the headline all-day event at the Big Bras d’Or wharf: food, poker runs, a musical jamboree. As usual Jan and I will take our turn selling beer tickets at the evening dance. We always seize the first shift, from ten to eleven, so that we can be tucked in bed by the time the jigging really gets going. Wild-and-crazy we are not.

Lobster Pigout with Side of Poe

Saturday delivered us to the annual Millville eggfest, in the company of the Great Nagel and pals Joshua and Danielle Shelley. We are odd couples, the Shelleys and ourselves: they are young and we are not; we are heathens, they are not; they are teetotallers, we are anything but. Strangely though, we feel great affinity with the youngsters: they like books, ideas, good conversation. I feel particular kinship with Joshua. Rather like myself, he has a wide misanthropic streak and though of tender years, is definitely already a curmudgeon. I like that about the lad.

At the eggfest I grabbed Josh’s sleeve and introduced him to local Member of Parliament Mark Eyking. Here is one of your constituents, I told Mark, but he didn’t vote for you. I was hoping to cause a squirm or two but no one batted an eye.

Bob was the star of the eggy occasion. He was warmly swarmed by any number of people, including the MP. You’d have thought Kate and Will had just wandered into the room. If only Bob could bottle that charm and retail it – think of what he could make at Wal-Mart.

Back at Bigadore we had a fire on the beach at the new swimming hole, cooked wieners and marshmallows and refrained from singing Kumbaya.

Sunday availed another opportunity for lively social intercourse. We procured ten lobsters from Kevin at the wharf and proceeded immediately to a pigout at the cabin. I am tenderly gratified by the prevalent opinion (in some local parts) that I am sine qua non when it comes to cooking and preparing lobsters. After dark, to offset all the frivolity, I read aloud all of Poe’s ‘Premature Burial’. Some might think that an odd way to entertain kith and kin; well, you just had to be there, even Jan stayed awake for most of it.

We enhanced the heritage flowers about the place. Now, in addition to John F`s Solomon-seal, day lilies and Wally`s bleeding-heart we have a scion or two another historical flower. The bloom at issue is Dianthus barbatus. Some say – the facts are in dispute – that its English name, Sweet William, honours William, Duke of Cumberland who led the British army to its smashing victory at Culloden 265 years ago. One of my ancestors, a Livingstone, is claimed as one of Bonnie Prince Charlie`s Highlanders slaughtered that grim day. Cumberland enjoys a halcyon reputation in England, a rather different one in Scotland and Scots-settled places around the world: it is long-standing fact among my Cape Breton kin that the right and proper name for D. barbatus is Stinking Billy.

July’s weather has soured a tad after a fine start, but I don’t dare complain about that – Mary will have the jewels for bookends. Besides, friend Peter—Costa Rica Peter that is – asserts I was once virulently antagonistic toward people who complain about the weather. Is this just false memory on his part or am I already well embarked on the good ship Dementia, entirely vacant of the person I once was.

Big Jim’s Erection

I gave big Jim Troke a hand with his erection this week. Jim goes a long way back in my history. Once upon a time we were boys in the same circle at Coxheath: pond hockey in winter, pasture baseball in summer, various boyish shenanigans in between. Briefly we shared a life of crime. The alpha male in the circle was John Phillips. One day John decided it would be a good idea to perpetrate a B&E in the neighbour’s house and borrow the man’s rifle for awhile. It was only a few days later when I came home from school to find an RCMP squad car in front of the house. For a very long moment I pondered whether flight was a better option than facing the music. It was my father’s reaction I feared more than the Mounties’. But HJ read the look on my face and let the constable do his work: sure enough, it was my first and last dalliance with being ‘known to the police.’

In those days I spend dozens, no, hundreds of hours with Jim and the others. But here’s the rub, he doesn’t remember me. Not in the faintest. Sure, I was a dweeblet back then – only five-two and 110 lbs as late as Grade 11 – but come on, we did a lot of stuff together, even became an ink stain on an RCMP blotter. But Jim has no memory whatsoever of the small nerd Alan. Jim was quite a bit younger at the time but already much bigger than his invisible four-eyed friend. Eventually he got bigger still: 535 lbs worth of big at one point (now a trim 300). We crossed paths again about ten years ago, which is how I – and Jan and Bob too – gave Jim a hand with his erection this week. A big 24’x20’ storage shed is Jim’s current project. On Wednesday we helped put up the walls.

Yesterday a small high school reunion took place in the Bigadore porch. I am a member of the 1964 class of Riverview Rural High School at Coxheath. Peter Goodale and Jim are both ’68. Like myself Peter emigrated to Victoria a long time ago – and sold me a lot of camera stuff over the years – but now he has returned to Nova Scotia. We drank beer on the porch while the womenfolk – Jan and Jim’s Cindy – indulged the recollections of classmates from long ago and listened as we debated whether Bernadette Francis was a role-model teacher or hard-hearted harridan.

Adventures with wildlife continue. The fox pups spend little time in their den under Wally’s house but we still see them, just about full-grown now, going about the business of learning the ropes. At Dalem Lake the calling loons evoke The Great Green North, a mama spotted sandpiper attends to her demanding young, a kingfisher rattles his objection to our passage.

An invitation to dinner at Bob’s had to be postponed after a strange smell resulted from turning on the stove: over the winter a family of deer mice – perhaps the entire neighbourhood – had built a colossal nest in the oven. We went to the Cedar House instead and took our chances with the ovens there.

For the second time this season a bat followed us into the cabin and had to be evicted. We’d turned off the headlamps, ready for sleep, when Jan noticed the little fellow flying amongst our earlobes. Several Little Brown Bats share the domicile with us every summer. Ordinarily they content themselves to remain outside, roosting by day under the porch shutters. We are completely happy to have them there. They feed happily on the mosquitoes and black flies drawn to the screens by the meaty humans snoring inside. But we’re not so fussy about them hanging out with us in the porch; true, they weigh only nine grams but the tiny teeth are sharp. I leapt out of bed and grabbed a T-shirt to capture the bat. The little flier was not nearly as unnerving as Jan’s laughter: it seems she found the bobbing-and-weaving of her floppy old man – draped in nothing but a headlamp – a richly comedic sight.

Meanwhile, weather complaints are long forgotten. July has been relentlessly generous with sunshine and warmth. We are preparing a new, friendlier-access swimming hole down at the shore and are looking forward to our first saltwater dips. The weekend approaches, the end of lobster season draws nigh. Methinks it is time to organize a boil and try one more time to persuade The Monozygotes to go for a skinny dip.

Break Out the Sherry: The Robert Has Landed

Simultaneous events brightened Bigadore days. The first: at long last summer arrived, instantly and fully, on Canada Day. The second: Malcolm Murdoch ‘Moose’ MaKenzie aka The Great Nagel appeared the very next day, just in from Boston. At this, sunshine and warmth became relentless. Shorts emerged from mothballs, the beer fridge went back into action, sunburn made its first appearance of the season.

Like David Crosby, Bob still declines to cut his hair. It’s more than a year since a barber had his way with Robert’s curls. He now strongly resembles Timothy Leary thus it is perhaps no surprise that border crossings are suddenly an adventure. With short hair Bob sailed right through. Now he is detained. Border guards refuse to believe he is a Yankee octogenarian bent on sitting in the shade at his Cape Breton summer hideaway. Now, with hair halfway to his ass, our stalwart and vigilant border people imagine Bob is a threat to national security – a superannuated druglord perhaps, or maybe a long-in-the-tooth Al Qaeda sympathizer. The poor old thing was stiffly cross-examined at St. Stephen NB the other day before being allowed into our home and native land. Clearly it was traumatic for Bob in this his 51st summer season at Big Bras d’Or, but the old guy refuses to say whether or not the indignities included a cavity search.

So of course the partying began at once and in earnest. Yesterday afternoon the monozygotes – Lynn and Louise – guided us on a tour of the Battleman-Aconi fossil fields at Boularderie’s north end. The sandy southern bit of this remarkable stretch of shoreline had attracted a large gathering of sunbathers, sunbather-oglers et al. We headed in the opposite direction and soon had the world to ourselves.

Someone said Battleman-Aconi should be a UNESCO site because Devonian-Carboniferous fossils are legion here. Right on the beach in their thousands where the hoi polloi are free to pick them up and carry them off willy-nilly. Apart from an occasional dragonfly the fossils are all flora. Don’t make a point of coming if it’s dinosaurs you’re after, but the floral varieties are myriad, many of them wonderfully detailed.

Back at the cabin we cooked a big salmon on the smoker and introduced Jan to the recorded charms of Hughie and Allan, a long-gone duet of down-home country comics. I soon recalled what it is we like about Cape Breton when the sun shines and the bugs aren’t bad.

Meanwhile, out in nature, the Clintonias and false lilies-of-the-valley are just about gone but other wildflowers – bunchberry, high-bush cranberry, alternate-leafed dogwood – are at their glorious peak. The foxes have moved on from Wally’s basement and the morning chorus of birdsong has eased noticeably but the feeders at our windows attract a steady trade of rubythroats, goldfinches, purple finches. I’m near to thinking Bigadore is swell enough to hang my hat for awhile.