World According to Bob

Friends and fans of Robert Carl Nagel will rejoice to hear that he thrives even as he rushes headlong toward his 85^th birthday.

The familiar endures: Robert carries on logging operations as if he were merely 40, rides his bike like there is no tomorrow, belts out show tunes at full volume.

He abjures water–‘fish pee in it’—drinks beer at lunch, cheap sherry in the afternoon, proletarian red wine at dinner time. He stands tall and straight as always.

Robert has a range of comely charms—a world-class overbite, a proboscis to cause Caesar envy, a Boston accent that would do the Kennedys proud—but of all the attributes that mark El Nagel this is Numero Uno: he manages to make just about everyone love him and want to do for him. Motivated by affection alone one friend repairs the busted water works of his old house, another mows his acre and a half of lawn, another installs a new water heater, yet another builds him a porch.

Who else is so cherished that even the local Member of Parliament makes time every July to cut Bob’s hayfield, bale the hay, then haul it away. Such universal affection cannot be explained, it just is.

I am just one among Nagel’s many victims. It isn’t that our tastes match or that we see eye to eye on every important political or social issue. Bob likes lamb and pork, I prefer haddock and cod. I am a pinko, Bob is most assuredly not. I revere the memory of Tommy Douglas, whereas Bob cherishes that of Barry Goldwater. It defies logic but none of that seems to matter a whit.

Summer is here so Nagel and MacLeod tend to share bits of every day in each other’s company. We laugh, we holler; I swill Alexander Keith’s, Bob savours Andres Rich Canadian Apera. Day follows day, the sun shines, laughter and frivolity fill his porch and mine. The world spins as it should . . .

Florence Patterson MacLeod, 1925-2014

This past week one of the good ones departed this mortal coil. I first savoured the kindness of Florence MacLeod 43 years ago, in April of 1971, when with no asset other than a strong young back I materialized at Big Bras d’Or to begin dismantling the derelict old house that had once been Florence’s own.

A good Christian lady, Florence took one look at me and decided I must be a harmless idiot who needed charity. There I was, rather like a Tibetan monk slowly building a mandala, pulling nail after nail out of her humble old house. Who but an idiot would think it a useful expenditure of time and energy to salvage whatever lumber might be serviceable from a derelict building whose roof leaked, a shelter only to deer mice and barn swallows. If a fellow wanted to construct a cabin down at the shore wouldn’t it be smarter just to head into town and buy the necessary sticks? Well, as mentioned, my assets excluded the ability to buy new lumber, hence my one-man salvage operation.

Florence was soon aware that I subsisted solely on Kraft Dinner; she took pity on me. She baked bread and tea biscuits and delivered them to me. In years to come, though I was no longer indigent, the bread and tea biscuits kept flowing.

Family and community were all to Florence. Many times I visited in her kitchen, took in the latest school pictures of grandchildren, heard stories about the old days and people who no longer walked among us. She loved to pick berries; many were the occasions, in August, I saw her gathering lush blackberries below the road in fields she had known and harvested for decades. 

Though I was never fortunate enough to see her in action, Florence clearly found reason to appreciate winter; she loved ‘coasting’, hurtling downhill on her GT Racer sled. She liked summer too: that was a time for gathering with friends, enjoying a chilled Alpine or three, reveling in all the laughter that seemed to avail itself on such occasions.

I have a picture of her on the cabin deck in the mid-1970s, stubbie in hand, reveling in a good time with my Mum and Florence’s late, lamented sister Sadie. The photo effuses fun and friendship.

Florence’s last years were not kind to her. Her mind failed sooner than her body; before long she could not remember who I was.  She died this past week in her 90^th year. I was asked by the family to accept a ritual role I’d never played before: pallbearer. We six stood at the front of the church, left side, as the choir led the congregation in soaring renditions of I Come to the Garden Alone, How Great Thou Art and Abide With Me. Even my unbelieving old heart stirred.

If in a fashion we live in the memories of others after we are gone, Florence will live for time to come: picking blackberries, walking down my road bearing a load of bread and tea biscuits, raising a stubbie to her friends’ good health, coasting hellbent down a snow-covered slope.

West with the Night

Serendipity flourished again. En route to a hike in the Baleine headlands with Lynn and Louise, the twins pointed out a bronze tablet hearkening back to a day in September 1936 when a young woman named Beryl Markham accomplished what no woman had ever done before—fly an aircraft alone across the Atlantic from east to west.

I had heard of Beryl Markham but had never known—or had entirely forgotten—that her historic flight in a made-for-her Percival Gull monoplane ended in a crash landing near Cape Breton’s easternmost point. I studied the tablet, contemplated the terrain in which Markham had landed her plane, and had to know more.

I was struck at how inconceivably brave it was of this 33-year-old woman to climb into the cockpit of a single-engine plane and fly it alone across the vast Atlantic. The Cape Breton regional Library proved yet again it is my friend: the library extricated a copy of Markham’s book, West with the Night.

A literary hero of mine, Ernest Hemingway, raved about West with the Night: “I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [Markham] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves to be writers.” Wow.

In West with the Night I read Markham’s cool yet hair-raising account of her 21-and-a-half hour flight across the ocean and felt fresh awe for what she’d accomplished. One paragraph particularly grabbed me:

Being alone in an aeroplane for even so short a time as a night and day, irrevocably alone, with nothing to observe but your instruments and your own hands in semi-darkness, nothing to contemplate but the size of your small courage, nothing to wonder about but the beliefs, the faces, and the hopes rooted in your mind—such an experience can be as startling as the first awareness a stranger walking by your side at night. You are the stranger.

In a world that seems increasingly short of singular initiative, courage and fortitude, I count myself lucky to have chanced upon the commemorative tablet and thus come into far-removed contact with a remarkable adventurer.

Air Conditioning Like None Other

Early days in Big Bras d’Or deliver untoward volumes of heat, mosquitoes and carpenter ants. Keen for a taste of nature’s own air conditioning, we head for Cape Breton’s eastern shore with Lynn and Louise, one day to Big Lorraine and Wild Cove, another—Canada Day—to the Baleine headlands.

While town folk swelter in temperatures close to 30 C, Atlantic air cools us down to just 14 C. Were we the sort of folks inclined to gloat, witnesses would see plenty of crowing. Fortuitously, there are no witnesses to give testimony, at least not of the human variety.

Wildflowers run riot wherever we walk, some familiar, many not. We see legions of birds too, principally the sort that prefer to perpetuate their kind on windswept rocky islets. Though it is hard to imagine in early summer these headlands are not to be confused with grandma’s benign front room: they are dangerous places. As usual on our coastal rambles we find dessicated bird carcasses—a few dozen—gulls, murres, guillemots, storm-petrels, dovekies, most of them likely brought to ruin in the fierce winter storms of January and February.

Those lost in winter are replaced in early summer. On islets off the Baleine headland binoculars allow us to spy on nesting kittiwakes, cormorants, guillemots and eiders. Squadrons of gannets patrol inshore waters, seizing opportunity as it arises.  A handsome male harrier hunts for voles among the Baleine barrens. Then something quite out of place: a laughing gull flies purposefully over our heads. Why is it here? Where is headed?

A grey seal lolls in the surf, wondering what we’re about. Off Wild Cove a single pilot whale forages for who-knows-what in the labyrinth of lobster pots. How do any lobsters survive the seasonal onslaught?

Should wildflowers and birds grow wearisome—which they do not—other attractions offer themselves: butterflies and bugs, landforms and geology. Among the beach cobble we keep eyes peeled for the unusual, and always find it. At Baleine we find wave-washed grottoes at the waters’ edge and a natural bridge offering a dramatic photo op.

Landward of the grottoes lie the sprawling Baleine barrens. It was here in September 1936 that supremely brave Beryl Markham crash-landed her crippled Percival Bull monoplane after crossing the Atlantic solo. I contemplate the courage it took to undertake the 21-and-a-half-hour ocean crossing and cannot fathom by what means marvelous Ms Markham summoned it.

Cape Breton’s Atlantic headlands are a long way from the beloved Sooke Hills of south Vancouver Island, but they elicit similar emotion and euphoria: as in a day with Mike and Mary on Mount McDonald, or Braden or Thunderbird, a sunny day with the monozygotes leaves me feeling alive, connected, grateful to be mobile at my advanced age.

Day’s end brings not disappointment, but further delight. Port Morien or Louisbourg offer good eateries: fish chowder, braised scallops or lobster rolls eased to their destination with chilled chablis or a pint of Alexander Keith’s.

Lucky is the man who recognizes his good fortune.

Sm’orchisbord

There is a secret place out beyond Leitch’s Creek, not as far as Ball’s Creek, that is a treasury of wild orchids.

Years ago, after discovering a field guide to native Nova Scotia orchids, I was instantly ardent to find Cypripedium reginae, Showy lady’s-slipper, ‘the queen of Nova Scotia’s native orchids’. Evidently there are only a few places in all of Cape Breton where this jewel can be found. I managed to uncover the whereabouts of one of these.

Over the years, usually around Canada Day, always with Jan at my side, sometimes accompanied by others I have returned to the secret place to see C. reginae,  but a few years had passed since I last paid homage—too long I decided this day. Off we went to renew acquaintance.

What is special about the place is that it has an underlay of gypsum—much to the orchids’ taste—but the mineral’s presence is not obvious. I do not suggest the site would appeal to every taste. It is pretty much a mosquito-infested bog, choked with low bushes, steamy hot on an early July morning. Gum boots are essential, bug spray too if you’re not fond of the attentions of biting insects.

Whenever I return it is always with a slight worry that something dreadful might have happened, that the orchids might have been liquidated in favour of a 4,000 square foot show home, or a hot dog stand, gravel pit, paintball park, casino or 9-hole golf course but no, on this day the site was as we’d last seen it and C. reginae flourished as grandly as ever. May it ever be thus.

I didn’t give a damn about the black flies and mosquitoes. With two cameras, including my little brand-new Nikon Coolpix P340, I went hog wild. (How did we possibly cope before digital cameras were delivered unto us? I have no idea.)

C. reginae is aptly named: for showiness, grandeur and sheer pizzazz it steals the show, no other orchid can compete. But that is okay, after we’ve had our fill there are other orchids to find and admire. Yellow lady’s slipper’s blooming period is over; we saw only dried husks of blooms that would have been spectacular a fortnight or so ago. But two Platanthera gems were at their peak: P. dilatata—Tall leafy white orchid—and P. hyperborea—Tall leafy green orchid.

Neither is perhaps as glorious at first glance as the ladyslipper but a close inspection is richly rewarded. I put the cameras through their paces and offer a few shots here to provide a hint as to why I am so strongly drawn to my secret place. You can probably guess that we had this little world entirely to ourselves: no one interrupted the reverie. I admit to having no idea why so many folks seem to prefer the shopping mall to a little patch of nature’s glory, but I am always highly grateful that they do.

Three-Day Blur in Montreal

Montreal brought Barcelona to mind. Nine months ago we arrived in the Catalunyan capital just in time for the annual St Jorge day extravaganza: Barcelona’s wide streets were Amazons of human traffic, principally the young and the full-of-beans. In Montreal it was another patron saint—Jean Baptiste—that brought young people into the streets in their thousands.

We had three full days in the great city, the first devoted to all an-day walkabout in gloriously warm, sunny weather. We climbed Mount Royal, managing all 256 steps of the escarpment staircase. We were impressed by the masses of people who were out there with us bright and early.

War memorials were a principal draw—whew, there’s a surprise—in our Montreal stopover. Nowhere else in Canada offered me the prospect of so many new-to-me monuments in one area, a good number of them by sculptors I consider to be the best of those doing war memorial work in the decade after the Great War: Coeur de Lion MacCarthy, George Hill, and the inestimable Emanuel Hahn. I had marked a city map with several I considered reachable in a day of walking. In the result we probably rambled close to 20 km and on this holiday Sunday and found ourselves rubbing elbows with masses of other saunterers.

The acme came on the lower eastern slopes of Mount Royal Park where Hill’s colossal George-Etienne Cartier monument was the focal point of what we subsequently learned is a regular summer event in Montreal, the every-Sunday tam-tam drumming festival. Scores of drummers hammered a steady, relentless beat as thousands of young people danced, lolled, smoked weed, sold crafts from blankets arrayed around the edges of the square. The thought occurred that we might be the oldest people in a crowd of several thousand.

Given the heat we thought it might be good to take an afternoon break at an open-air cafe offering chilled Molson’s and high-quality patates-frites. At Dorchester Square we found not one but two George Hill works, including his dynamic, flamboyant Boer War monument. The square featured other bronzes, of Robert Burns and Wilfred Laurier that were improved in a way I do not cherish but likely dear to the heart of dedicated nationalistes: their cheeks adorned with bleu-blanc-et-rouge flags.

We navigated our way to the corner of Ontario and Clark streets, where Doris Irene Bowles lived her early life, but saw very little that would have been familiar to little Dodie when she was just ten. In the place of the tenement where she spent her tender years there is now a park that serves as home to the Francofolies music festival. On Sunday night we elbowed our way into the margins of a crowd of thousands and listened to an orchestra of 30 or 40 backing chanteurs singing nationalist songs—en francais of course.

On the Monday we decided to give the feet a rest, bought day passes for the subway system and traveled underground to more distant monuments, a MacCarthy in Verdun, a Hill in Westmount, a Hahn in St Lambert. We also learned the ropes of the elaborate bus system operating on the opposite side of the St Lawrence and managed to get ourselves to Longueueil and Brossard.

When I was 11 and 12 I spent the summers with my grandmother—Doris’s mum—at Domville Street in Notre-Dame-du-Sacre-Coeur. Both municipality and street names are vanished but I negotiated a path through the mists of time to the site of her little house, which of course is also long gone, replaced in 1983 by something flashier, more durable. We chatted up the owner-occupiers of the new domicile and heard a précis of what’s happened these past 55 years.

Back in Montreal we enjoyed a thali of good north Indian vegetarian fare at a hole in the wall on Milton Street then wandered on foot to Old Montreal, mingled in the madding crowd, listened to street musicians, ate ice cream, watched night fall, reveled in the ambiance. As Jan observed, it was hard to imagine we were in North America.

My gentle reader will agree that after two days of indulging my quest to see, study and photograph bronze soldiers, it was only fair that Jan should determine the agenda for the third day. And so she did. She thought it a good idea to start the day off at the Museum of Fine Art and, in particular, its special exhibition of Faberge objects. I admit to being an ignorant oaf, not even understanding that the great jeweler was not a French national, but a Russian. The lavish exhibit was headlined by four of the fifty famous Faberge Easter eggs fashioned for the Russian tsar and his family late in the 1800s and in the years culminating in 1918 when the tsar and his whole family were liquidated by people possessed of different values.

Lest anyone think Jan’s third-day program was a tedious bore to your loyal correspondent, have another thought. Like everyone else wandering about the exhibit I was taken captive by the precious objects and fascinated by the story of Faberge and the Romanov royals.

There were additional rewards: the museum has many treasures in its permanent collection. We checked as many galleries as we could in the time allotted and even found a few pieces by ‘my guys’, the aforementioned memorial sculptors: a George Hill bust here, a quartet of Henri Hebert figures there. In the end we stayed until nearly closing time. On the way out I bought Jan a bauble, an egg-shaped pendant featuring Swarovski crystal, traces of gold and silver, all of it fashioned not in a Chinese sweatshop I’ll have you know but in Virginia by Russian émigré jewelers. (I am not entirely a turd.)

All the while we were inside it had been raining chats-et-chiens out-of-doors. The rain relented a little as afternoon morphed into evening. The Boss decided that for the last supper a greasy spoon or sidewalk cafe would not do. She demanded and got a venue with tablecloth and good silverware, a French restaurant whose offerings of food and wine were entirely worthy of the tablecloth and cutlery.

Our just-around-the-corner digs were on the third floor of a little old hotel on Sherbrooke Street whose charms included no elevator and hot water that was insistent on taking six minutes to appear when summoned. The hotel’s other charms, including its friendly and helpful hostess, were compensatory: we departed after four nights feeling nothing but good will and good cheer toward the domicile and the entire city. Merci, Montreal. C’est si bon.