Hues of August

A nearly-50-km bike ride from Mabou to Inverness evoked the glories of Scotland in 2007. Back then, riding with pals Mary and Mike, Scottish skies delivered rain on 24 of 28 riding days. On Saturday we had the Coastal Shores Trail from Mabou to Inverness pretty much to ourselves, perhaps because the weatherman knew what he was talking about in calling for showers. 

Precipitation prevailed for much of the outbound ride, encrusting both bike and rider in layers of gritty mud. Still, in contrast to Old Scotland, it didn’t rain all the time on Saturday. Between showers, eyeglasses wiped clear, we savoured views of the Mabou Hills, got up close and personal with late-summer wildflowers, wondered whether the abundant blueberry scat we encountered along the way indicated fox, coyote or bear.

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On Sunday we paid a visit to Cousin Dan Livingstone at Marble Mountain. It was there, five decades ago, that Dan’s father, Harrison, seeded my enduring fascination with what was once called the Great War. Whenever I return to Marble Mountain I see and hear Harrison. Vividly. In 1964 my great-uncle acquired 500 acres of land and five miles of shoreline at the southwestern corner of the Bras d’Or Lakes. His new holdings included an ancient, derelict house.

The following summer I joined Harrison in the initial effort to salvage the 140-year-old dwelling. The stink in the front room signalled the presence of a large wooden barrel containing pickled herring of unknown vintage. The attic was knee-deep in myriad detritus. Some folks might have decided that a jerry-can of gasoline and an Eddy match might have offered the best tools for dealing with the tumbledown old shanty. Not Harrison. By day I helped to deal with the herring and detritus, broke trails with machete and bow-saw, stockpiled red alder firewood for the old Franklin.

Evenings were another story: deprived of any other sort of distraction we only had each other. How fortunate for me. I was 18 at the time, Harrison’s age when he first experienced the horrors of the Western Front. His accounts – the cold and mud, rats and lice, the terror of night raids, the daily toll of comrades erased by enemy shellfire – mesmerised me and remain unforgettable to this day.

The herring barrel is long gone from the Marble Mountain front room but on the wall a portrait of Harrison’s brothers still hangs, 55 years after I first laid eyes on it. One brother is Daniel Archibald, Dan’s namesake, killed in action near Arras in the spring of 1918. The other is William Angus, still ‘Wild Bill’ to present-day followers of Nova Scotia’s 25^th Battalion. Bill was wounded six times but arranged matters not just to survive the war but to be awarded, twice, the Military Cross for gallantry.

As the years have passed Dan’s resemblance to his father has increased strikingly. Jan managed to take a worthy picture of Dan and me holding the soldier-uncles’ portrait; it evokes unforgettable days and evenings spent with Harrison a half century ago.

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Long-suffering friends Stephen and Sheila honoured us with a visit to the Big Bras d’Or cabin. We relished a day not to every taste, traveling from one old cemetery to another in search of 1880s-era relics – zinc grave markers and renderings of Scottish thistles on sandstone and marble tombstones.

At Glace Bay we succeeded in navigating our way to an important heritage site. Back in 1946 – I’m not inventing this – General Motors manufactured a small number, about twenty, of a specialty vehicle, the chip wagon. One of these initially went about its business in Montreal but has served the people of Glace Bay faithfully and tastefully for the past 64 summers. We ordered up a passel of the chip wagon’s finest then treated ourselves to four of the 32 varieties on offer at the nearby ice cream parlour. Some folks are aces at knowing how to have fun.

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Earlier this summer we were favoured with visits from four of the six great-nieces and great-nephews. The remaining two will complete the circle over the Labour Day weekend. I have every expectation that the 11- and 8-year-old perspectives brought by Hannah and Sara will be just as edifying as those delivered earlier by their Nelson and Toronto cousins. Roasting marshmallows down at the shore, looking for salamanders under logs, hauling in the last of the season’s bumper crop of blueberries – what could be better than that?

Lessons from Boys

This week a pair of youngsters delivered fresh perspective on the attractions of summer at Bigadore. Theo and Luca, not yet 6 and 3 respectively, came for a two-day stay with Mum and Dad.

Once upon a time—long, long ago—I too was 6 but that was when Louis St. Laurent was Canada’s prime minister and you could get a new car for $700. I hardly remember. To watch young boys figure out, instantly, what are the major charms hereabouts is to have cataracts removed and memories defogged.

Young girls periodically also do us the honour of paying a visit and they have their own lessons to offer as to what is valuable and what not.  But in my experience young girls do not spend much of a day rolling and rassling about like grizzly cubs nor, when they find themselves at the mouth of Bob’s brook, commence instantly to constructing dams and bridges.

Among the amenities we lack at Big Bras d’Or is a trampoline. But we do have a skookum Lee Valley hammock that the laddies quickly and comprehensively determined would serve every bit as well. Snakes, spiders, centipedes and sowbugs seem endlessly fascinating to a boy—as they still are to a few 67-year-olds—and we have a bountiful supply of them all just outside the door. They boys reminded me that a mason jar furnished with litter of greenery makes an excellent place to study the habits of an inch-worm.

In the coals of a little bonfire we roasted wieners and marshmallows—Luca insisting of course on being his own cook. What could possibly be better fun? I’d forgotten that one of the cabin’s holdings is a boys’ Meccano set. Once spotted, and before you could say ‘Here’s some fun’, the Meccano contents were on the floor and assembly of a construction crane well underway.

Eying Bob Nagel’s new walking stick, the urchins thought it desirable to have shillelaghs of their own. They soon did, debarked by none but themselves.

Now into my fifth decade as a summertime denizen of these parts, I love the place as well as I ever did, but here’s an admission: sometimes I am distracted by the goings-on in Ukraine or Gaza or Nigeria—listening to World Report I allow the mind to wander—and I forget what counts most around these parts. You know, the rusting hulk of the old pickup up the way, the taste of fresh-picked blueberries, the fascination of dead jellyfish down at the old swimmin’ hole.

Mainland Medley

We forsook Cape Breton for a five-day stint among the Nova Scotia mainlanders.

Truro beckoned first. There we reconnected with She-But-for-Whom-I-Wouldn’t-Be-Here. Cruising smoothly toward her 91^st birthday, Doris remains a continuing joy. Having watched every CBC broadcast of the World Cup, she supplied me with well-considered views about the best and worst moments of the big event and informed commentary on my view that the great Lionel Messi deserved the Golden Boot he was awarded for being judged the World Cup’s best performer.

We went to Halifax to exploit the hospitality of Sheila and Stephen, my cultivated and long-serving Haligonian friends. I sought and received the benefit of Stephen’s expertise in monumental white bronze. A euphemism of choice among folks who thought there was a new way to make a buck from grief and loss, ‘white bronze’ is actually humble zinc. Back in the 1880s an American firm began manufacturing grave-markers from zinc, claiming they would outlast any other headstone medium, whether sandstone, marble or granite. The claim was not empty: close on a century and a half after they were first installed, white bronzes are as vivid, crisp and clear as the day they were installed—impervious to just about anything save and except vandalism. Walk into an 1880s-era cemetery having a white bronze or three and you will find they leap off the page.

At hoary Camp Hill Cemetery in Halifax Stephen led me to some of the best and most elaborate white bronzes I have laid eyes on. Granted, yes, white bronze is a niche interest not likely to grab everyone’s eyeballs but I felt as gratified as a four-year-old on Christmas morning.

We moved on to Amherst Shore where, as usual, we were accorded a greeting as exultant as any we ever receive. There Garth and Carole preside much as Joe and Rose Kennedy once did over a compound rich with children and grandchildren. We hung out with most of their dozen descendants and a sprawling cast of siblings, nieces, nephews and who-knows-whom. I delighted in a pedagogical role: helping Garth convey the rudiments of the card game Hearts to grandsons Ty and Malcolm, aged 12 and 11. The lads were gratified beyond all reckoning with the tutelage: you might have imagined we’d handed them the keys to the Ottawa Mint.

Garth indulged my wish to take a look at the Amherst Cemetery on the off chance it might feature a white bronze or two. Holy cow! There were fully eight to study, photograph and ponder.

We crossed the New Brunswick line to take in the peep show at Dorchester Cape. No, not that sort of peep show. Birders know peeps as a genus of small sandpipers, including semi-palmated sandpiper. Every year in July masses of these sparrow-sized shorebirds gather to feed along the margins of the Bay of Fundy. The draw is the abundant refueling opportunities Fundy affords as the birds migrate to their faraway winter grounds. At Dorchester Cape the Nature Conservancy provides a viewing platform enabling birdoes to ogle the spectacle. We watched clouds of peeps, some I estimated at seven-thousand-strong wheeling to and fro along the shore of Shepody Bay. Such hordes attract birds with different feeding interests: peregrine falcon, American kestrel, northern harrier.

At Great Village a sad event generated an otherwise gratifying outcome. A crowd of relatives and friends gathered at the United Church to bid farewell to my sister Nancy’s mother-in-law, Donalda. I am among the legions who not only liked Donalda MacLachlan Nelson but also held her in high regard. Sadness was mitigated by other emotions. In her 99^th year Donalda was ‘ready to go’ and did not depart this mortal coil kicking and screaming. After the upstairs formalities we gathered in the church basement among many familiar faces, sharing fond memories of the dearly departed.

We headed back to Cape Breton but not before making a detour. A hundred years ago this week the guns of August began barking along what would be called the Western Front of the Great War. The timing seemed right to take a short side trip to Westville, to see what I still consider the finest community war memorial in all of Canada: Emanuel Hahn’s grieving soldier, in bronze, beside the town post office. Do yourself a favour: the next time you’re headed to Cape Breton on Highway 104 take Exit 23 to Westville and behold Hahn’s masterwork. I promise you’ll be glad you did.