Mama Mia! Stirs the Seismographs

The bicycles back in the truck box, we went to Amherst Shore to take advantage of the kind nature, generous hospitality and boon companionship offered by good friends Carole and Garth. For some long time I have been keen to show them off to my dear old Mum – and her to them – so we went off to Truro to realize the dream. No one was disappointed. Each charmed the other. I was lauded for my taste in friends – and my good fortune at having landed Doris as my mother.

We moved on to Black Rock to greet the elder Nelsons and fly kites with Teo and Luca, aged 7 and 4 respectively. Gifted with some considerable talent as an amateur prestidigitator – magician if you prefer – Garth put on a show for the boys. Using only rubber bands, paper clips and a five-dollar bill he delivered effects just about as jaw-dropping as delivering a rabbit out of a hat. Garth was not the first nor will he be the last to fall victim to the charisma of young Luca. He offered to take Luca home – a supplement to the nine grandchildren he already has. Not surprisingly, the offer was declined.

The waters of the Northumberland Strait are the warmest north of the Carolinas but our agenda was too crowded to accommodate languorous time on the beach. We took the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island, savoured a walkabout and ice cream at Victoria-by-the-Sea, stopped at old church cemeteries to see what historical prizes we might find.

Some of the country’s finest soldiers-in-bronze grace the war memorials of PEI. I was enthusiastically listing the virtues of George W. Hill’s three stalwart infantrymen on the Charlottetown cenotaph when a lovely little lady asked if she might eavesdrop. I said sure. It turned out that she is a native south Italian – ‘That’s why I’m short’ – who was intrigued to learn that I’m about to have a book published on the subject of war memorials. She wanted the details, intending to buy copies for her sons. Which suited the author perfectly well.

That evening we were just four of the great throng of theatre-goers having the time of their lives reveling in Mama Mia! at Confederation Centre. Everyone else seemed to know what I didn’t: that the show uses the songs of Abba to tell a happy story about love and connection, loss and reconciliation. By the end of the show, all of the people in the house were on their feet, singing their lungs out, grooving in the aisles. The building rocked, the seismographs at far-off Bedford in Nova Scotia recording the tremors. 

The next day it was off to the Island’s second city, initially to dine on a huge dollop of fish-and-chips at Sharkey’s on the Summerside waterfront, then to admire another bronze, the brilliant Emanuel Hahn evocation of an infantryman going into action that the lucky folks of Summerside get to admire any time they want.

En route to Malpeque on the Island’s north shore someone spotted a roadside sign pointing the way to a purveyor of iron products, at Annan. The items on display, a fanciful montage of weird birds and animals, are all transmogrified from cast-off bits of metal – old shovels, spent tools, bicycle frames, rebar, nuts, washers, you-name-it. Garth walked away with a bright red lobster, Jan with a multi-coloured creature inspired by a cartoon character, whether Heckle or Jekyll I cannot say.

At Malpeque there was another bronze soldier to admire, this one by Hamilton MacCarthy, and more seafood to savour at the Oyster Barn, next door to the lobster fleet tied up at the Malpeque wharf. As if all this were not reward enough there was one more gift to relish. 

At Indian River there is a marvelous old wooden church, St. Mary’s, that is now the venue for the Indian River Festival.

The evening’s attraction at St. Mary’s was The Door You Came In, a musical story delivered by David Macfarlane and Douglas Cameron based on The Danger Tree, Macfarlane’s brilliant memoir of family and war. The Door You Came In is excellent: evocative, moving, resonant. 

For years, whenever urged to write a book of my own, I have been wont to duck, saying the book I would want to write has already been written: The Danger Tree. Eventually I changed my mind and wrote a book about – what else? – war memorials. It is to be published by Heritage House in November, just before Remembrance Day. Now, someone has written a foreword for the book, a well-considered and generous one. That someone is David Macfarlane. 

It has been a good week.