Dalem Delivers Something Special

The customary start to a day at Bigador is an early morning walk of about seven kilometres from the cabin to and around Dalem Lake. Though Jan has been away these past ten days, burnishing her musical skills at a UVic guitar academy, I am as faithful a Dalem devotee without her as I am when she is part of the alluring Dalem package. I admit to missing my better half but I am not lonesome: the neighbourhood affords abundant company to assure me I am not alone in the world.

It is still breeding season here on Boularderie Island: I know this because the songbirds declare it it daily: they will continue to do so for another fortnight or so then the migrational instructions encoded in their DNA will compel them to think about moving on to parts well south of our degree of latitude. Every day at Dalem I hear warblers: parula, black-throated green, black-and-white; thrushes: hermit, Swainson’s, robin; woodpeckers: hairy, flicker, pileated; nuthatches; chickadees; loons and spotted sandpipers. Wild things are accustomed to H. sapiens being a sometimes dangerous species. They cannot recognize that I am harmless: birds scatter at my approach. So do creatures that cannot fly: hares, garter snakes and frogs, both pickerel and wood, flee before me.

Mostly what I hear and see at Dalem is familiar but this morning I was treated to something completely special. A hollow, ghostly ku-ku-ku, ku-ku-ku, ku-ku-ku stopped me in my tracks. Owl? Dove? Jan claims, fairly, that I have become a lazy birder. Most of the time I bird by ear: I know what I hear, and don’t bother to look. But upon hearing a strange ku-ku-ku I revert to something like the hardcore birder I was four decades ago. I searched the birches along Dalem’s south shore for the source of the ku-ku-ku; I impersonated the call as best I could which had the desired effect: the bird flushed and showed itself – a black-billed cuckoo – a bird strange to see in Cape Breton at any time but especially now in breeding season.

I stayed in the cuckoo neighbourhood for forty minutes, had several more glimpses, even managed a photo or two but nothing worth showing at the county fair. What is a black-billed cuckoo doing at Dalem Lake in late July, singing as if asserting a territorial imperative? The species is not known to breed on Cape Breton Island so I am intrigued. I will revert to what I was long ago: for the next several days I will listen and look for the cuckoo and hope to encounter it again. It didn’t feel like cooperating today but, who knows, perhaps I’ll get lucky tomorrow and get a decent photo. If I do you will hear about it.

There is other news to report. Before departing us a year ago Bob Nagel set aside sufficient shekels to fund an event often affectionately called a pissup in these parts, an array of food and drink sufficient to sustain and inspire the assembly of bereaved adorers who gathered Saturday at his old place on MacKenzie Hill to share memories of their late, lamented friend.  No one regretted that the weatherman turned out to be wrong: instead of the clouds and intermittent showers mooted by Environment Canada conditions were mostly clear and sunny.

A diverse array of friends and cousins gathered in the sunshine to share Bob sagas. The congregation ranged in age from 5 to 85 or thereabouts; it featured an outlaw or two, a smattering of good faithful Presbyterians, and a wide spectrum in between, all united in the view that a Boularderie summer without Robert can never be as raucous as all the blithe seasons that preceded it. In honour of Bob’s musical tastes the boom-box laid out show tunes and arias, my personal favourite being the Jeff Beck rendition of Nessun Dorma that produced in me just the sort of emotional response that Mr. Beck likely intended.

I dare to imagine that Bob would have approved of what unfolded on Saturday. Old friends expressed regret that their friend is gone but they laughed too. Some even danced. Last summer the aged house had a forlorn look about it but on Saturday it came back to life. The view out to the Bird Islands was as splendid as ever; there is another bumper crop of blueberries on the bank below the old house. Perhaps for a moment it even felt as though these were the good old days.

All That and Nouveaux Amis Too

My friend Peter Goodale offered a feast of many parts: let’s meander our way to Lighthouse Point, he suggested, and partake of the menu on offer along the Cape Breton headlands from Lighthouse Cove to Gun Landing Cove, Hammer Head and Lorraine Head. The current lighthouse here is not the original; that, Canada’s first ever, was built in 1734 but the current edition, hardly a century old, is a beauty in its own right; it sits on the same site and commands the same view over Louisbourg Harbour to the west and Green Island to the south that General Wolfe beheld as he undertook closing arrangements for the final capture and demolition of Fortress Louisbourg in 1758.

For those inclined to believe in ghosts who are keen to commune with them the five- to six-kilometre hike to Lorraine Head offers séance possibilities I imagine must be second to none in Cape Breton. If perchance the opportunity to walk with ghosts is an insufficient draw there are many other attractions to lure the rambler to the headlands east of Louisbourg: history, inspiring landscape, fetching flora and fauna and possibly – if one is lucky – even a cross-cultural experience to prize.

I typically occupy the driver’s seat when I am in a horseless carriage but on the way to the Louisbourg light I was in the right-hand seat. Lucky me. Peter took me into unfamiliar territory, a right-by-the-water approach from Mira Gut, through Catalone Gut, Bateston, Main-à-Dieu and Little Lorraine. Photo opportunities abound along this part of the rugged Cape Breton coast. We made a few stops, savoured the vistas, felt fresh gratitude for the invention of the digital camera. Main-à-Dieu offers history and viewpoints galore. People have fished and lived there for four centuries, perhaps more. By the current look of lobstermen’s houses times are good at Main-à-Dieu.

By the side of the road at the snug harbour in Little Lorraine we made a new friend: Marius is from Gaspe by way of Quebec City. We struck up friendly, animated, wide-ranging conversation. I briefed Marius on my enduring admiration for the sculptural works of the great Emanuel Hahn and reported that I will be headed to Gaspe later this year to see the only Hahn masterwork that has to date eluded me: the granite soldier gracing the Gaspe war memorial. Marius promised to beat me to the punch: to send me a picture at his first opportunity. You know how it is to meet a person and to like him or her instantly and without qualification. Marius is just such a person. If an actor were called upon to play him in a movie it would have to be Gérard Depardieu.

We carried on to Lighthouse Point and set out for our ramble in that rarest of Louisbourg circumstances: a perfectly sunny, windless day. We saw no ghosts but it was easy to imagine the scene near 260 years ago as Wolfe’s artillerymen wrestled with their heavy firepower at Gun Landing Cove.

The last week of July turned out to be a fine time to see some of the more spectacular coastal wildflowers of summer; orchids – ragged fringed white, grass pink – pitcher plants; twinflower; blue-eyed grass; shinleaf et al. Among the things I am grateful for: the old knees are still bendable enough that I can I get nose to stamens with wildflowers and take worthy images of their smallest, most private parts.

I do not get bored these days with what is on view at ground level but if I did at this place there is much to see and appreciate at eye-level and higher. The rugged headlands are irresistible to a man with a camera even if he never feels his camera work measures up to what his eye sees. Birds offer themselves for inspection: a bulleting merlin here, marauding herring and black-backed gull there, even a close-to-shore northern gannet, a fisher every bit the equal of the men of Main-à-Dieu.

On a day such as yesterday we did not and could not have the world to ourselves but the numbers of fellow ramblers thinned out as we put the kilometres behind us. We met a cadre of friends from Glace Bay and learned who we might know in common. As I am wont to do, I explained what the Gaelic name MacLeod means in English – Son of Ugly – and thereby felt confident that they would never need be told again.

Best of all we crossed paths again with Marius, this time accompanied by his just-as-gregarious mate Celine. Chapter Two proved just as entertaining as the first installment – another round of lively conversation, laughter, gusto, shared enthusiasm. I regularly feel ashamed of my miserably eroded high school French but not enough on this occasion to deter me from trying out a little of what is left of it.

On a day filled with much to celebrate I put the encounter with Marius and Celine at the head of the list. I hope my instructions were clear enough that they will find their image in my Flickr photostream and I hope I might be lucky enough to cross their paths again when I am in their back yard admiring their Emanuel Hahn at Gaspe. Au revoir, mes amis.  Until we meet again.

Lure of the Great Bras d’Or

Yesterday evening Jan produced another four-star lobster chowder for a small gang of friends. A mere two decades ago she wouldn’t have been able to separate a ‘canner’ from a ‘market’ crustacean to save her bacon but she has come a long way – not just as chowder-maker but purveyor of homestyle salt cod fishcakes, green tomato chow and Astrakhan apple jelly worthy of the best Cape Breton kitchens. She is no longer quite the come-from-away she was back when.

Bereft of Netflix and wide-screen TV to divert our friends, we gathered afterwards in the front porch for conversation and to watch the world pass ever so slowly beyond the mosquito-barring screens. On a blithe, calm evening when warbler and sparrow song is the only ambient noise we have to contend with, no one complains about the amenities or what is on view.

Folks who know the Bras d’Or Lake only by passing acquaintance are often unaware that the lake – or lakes as Cape Bretoners often prefer – isn’t a lake at all. Lakes, even the great ones familiar to Ontarians and Americans resident in New York, Ohio and Michigan, are composed of fresh water. The Bras d’Or is salt. If the Bras d’Or were part of the Norwegian landscape, natives would likely call it a fjord. I am not a Norwegian but fjord is exactly the label I pin to the water we behold from the cabin porch when occasion necessitates a description of its features.

Because it is saltwater no one should be surprised that one of the commonplace sights from the cabin porch these days is that of gannets diving headlong into the water for a feed of the freshest seafood. Before the gannets appeared in numbers this season the principal fishers were bald eagles, more than just a few of them. American visitors to the cabin have their breath taken away by the sight of ten, twenty, even thirty eagles going about their business on an early summer day. Sometimes one or two alight in a spruce right in front of us: you don’t need a long lens to get a decent shot to show the folks back home. Belted kingfishers and spotted sandpipers nest in the bank below us. Cormorants, herons, gulls and terns all take their turn in the passing parade.

Once in a while – not all that often -- a noisy sea-doo comes by spewing noise and fumes but mostly it is quiet out there: sailboats and kayaks cause little disturbance. I do admit to missing the ore-carriers that used to pass by once or twice a week on their way to Little Narrows for a cargo of gypsum. Gypsum quarrying has stopped these past couple of years so the low-pitched thrum of the big engines is a thing of the past.

A century and a half ago, right next door in Old’s Cove, ships of a different sort – ones made of wood and powered by sail – were built in George Old’s yard, one of the busiest in all Cape Breton. If I were the sort of person who owned a metal detector and was fond of fishing for ferrous material I have no doubt I would find relics of the shipbuilder’s industry hidden below the surface sand and mud of the cove that still bears old George’s surname.  My own great-great-grandfather Sandy Livingstone was a shipbuilder too but his yard was a bit further on, a couple of kilometres down the way.

The water off the cabin is not especially deep, no more than 18 metres but St. Andrew's Channel on the opposite side of Boularderie Island is another: there the fisherman's sinker descends up to 280 m. before touching bottom.

Last night the waters of the Great Bras d’Or were calm as could be. It isn’t always so.  Frequently there is wind, sometimes a lot of it, often out of the west. Sometimes we have to batten down the hatches and if wind is accompanied by rain the porch is, I admit, a less convivial place to carry on a conversation.  But on an evening like yesterday’s I argue there is no better place in all Christendom to commune with friends and to share observations about the things that really matter in this wicked old world.

Rain No Issue at Amherst Shore

Friendship needn’t be of long duration to be deeply rooted and blithe. In just a few years Amherst Shore, just inside the New Brunswick border on Nova Scotia’s balmy Northumberland Shore, has become a favourite destination. It is at Amherst Shore we are accorded a gold-standard welcome by Garth and Carole. Just as if we are people cherished and well regarded.

The first morning is an inclement one but that is not a problem: everyone is compelled to offer at least one proposal for a rainy day activity. Mine I consider worthy: an historical ramble among the headstones at Amherst’s old cemetery, perhaps with umbrellas in hand. The suggestion gets no support whatsoever. Another idea, Jan’s, carries the day unanimously: let’s go bowling. Garth actually does bowl, regularly, but for the rest of us an errant gutter ball is but a distant memory. The sympathetic custodian of the Amherst alley suggests we might appreciate the lane to the far right – the one meant principally for children, with bumper-deflectors in the gutters, kind-hearted devices ensuring that no ball is wasted, no tender ego trashed before its time. 

The ensuing action offered further evidence – as if additional proof were necessary – that a 70-year-old body is no facsimile of its teenaged antecedent. We played two strings. Even with the deflectors I managed only a 62 in the first string but improved all the way to 71 in the second. The best score was Jan’s 95. Always uxorious, pride in my mate’s prowess swelled all the more. Garth and I established an exclusive new secret society, the Club of One. In the same frame, despite the gutter deflectors, we felled just a single pin. How is that possible? Three balls, no gutters, one pin. My submission: if we tried to repeat the feat it couldn’t be done.

Bowling evidently uses muscles untested by other activities. The following day and for two more thereafter I couldn’t walk painlessly. Thigh muscles grumbled loudly especially on downward steps. Who knew that two strings of bowling could be as taxing as an assault on Everest.

We celebrated Canada Day at Pugwash, where salt is still mined and the street signs are bilingual – English and Gaelic – a place Cyrus Eaton made world-famous in the 1950s and 60s. We patronized the community market then joined the madding crowd of patriots sporting maple leaf tattoos and waving paper flags.

Cyrus Eaton was a native Pugwashian – is that a valid word? – who made his fortune as an industrialist in Cleveland, Ohio, a place now best known as the playground of the incomparable LeBron James. Cyrus earned the undying enmity of the American right wing by dedicating himself to disarmament and reducing the threat of nuclear obliteration. He organized regular conferences of scientists and thinkers from both sides of the Iron Curtain, seeking to replace trust and cooperation for suspicion and animosity. He was reviled as a commie dupe for his efforts. We went to Eaton’s Thinkers’ Lodge, studied the interpretive panels, quietly paid homage to the great peace-seeker.

Chez Christie is a magnet for crowds of friends and relatives. Our pals have three children each having three of their own: nine grandchildren if you’ve been paying attention. The steady flow of young ‘uns persuades even a lazy observer that G & C must be pretty good grandparents.

Friends drop by too. I was particularly enchanted by two, brothers. One is a big fan of Donald Trump, the other quite the opposite. Gentle reader, you will be able to deduce which I preferred.

Jan has a hard-and-fast rule: like fish, visits have a natural three-day limit. Our hosts tried mightily to persuade us that no such rule applies in our case but we departed anyway, consoling ourselves that the next time we moot an appearance at Amherst Shore the welcome mat might still be out.

Four Games to One, Skunked Twice

We went to the mainland to see Doris Irene, currently enjoying her ninety-fourth year in this imperfect vale of tears. The dear old thing, my beloved mother and friend, had been through a bad patch, a fall having resulted in broken bones, ankle and foot, both starboard and port. For a while during her two and a half months in hospital I wondered from far-off Victoria whether I’d laid eyes on my dear old Mum for the last time. Such premonitions were confounded by what I saw last week at Truro. Back in her own digs at Edinburgh Hall, Doris is further shrunken, now down to 89 pounds, but she gets about handily – if a little too fast – with the aid of a walker.

We spent parts of three days with mi madre. For many years my mother has been an assassin at the cribbage board. I thought it a good idea to employ crib as a check for any erosion of skill and cognitive ability that might have occurred in recent months. Over the course of our visits we played five games. Me Mum won four; she skunked me twice. I detected no erosion.

My late, long-time friend Bob Nagel was wont to say that there are wooden ships and steel ships but there are no ships like friendship. The great truth in Bob’s chestnut was on full display during our visit. Mum has a much younger friend at Edinburgh Hall – Florence is just 91 – who demonstrates in spades that life proceeds much more happily when it is garnished by gold-star friendship. I’m pretty partial to Florence myself, and admit that in contemplating the two of them – their attitude, their commitment to positive thinking – it is hard to avoid the conclusion that I am a wimp, shot through with doubt that I’d be man enough in my tenth decade to live life as bravely and brightly as Doris and Florence do.

Our B & B for the Truro visit was the Nelson Arms at the end of the Clifton Road. Don’t bother looking for the Arms in a listing of Nova Scotia hostelries. It is a private B & B run by sister Nancy and bro-in-law Don. It delivers the most perfect of arrangements: though the appointments are lavish and the hospitality grand the room rate is zero. I am partial to the million-dollar vista on the Great Bras d’Or and Kelly’s Mountain from my own front porch on Boularderie Island but I admit that the view of Cobequid Bay and the mouth of the Shubenacadie from Nancy-and-Don’s front room is second to none.

Human neighbours are scarce at the end of the Clifton Road but there are neighbours nonetheless: deer, porcupine, raccoon, even a groundhog or two. It is just my sort of community. The Nelson Arms even boasts a namesake bird beyond the front yard: pairs of Nelson’s sharp-tailed sparrows raise their young in the salt marsh beyond the well-mowed lawn, declaring their territorial imperative by bursts of song quite unlike any other. How can you beat that?

It won’t be long before Jan and I will have another opportunity to return to Colchester County. In anticipation of the next visit to Edinburgh Hall and another hangout session with Doris and her friend I am playing a lot of cribbage with Jan. She beats me too, but with stepped-up concentration on my part, focusing on boosting my killer instinct, I hope the next time I square off with Doris Irene I can manage to lose without being skunked half the time we play.

A Padded Adirondack and a Pretty Good View

My cousin Sarah Mae Livingstone MacPherson proved to be one the great rewards of my immersion in family history as it was altered by the events of the Great War. Sarah Mae is gone now but Jan and I were lucky enough to meet her a dozen years ago in the aftermath of  our first trip to the Western Front when I was ardent to find relics of Livingstone men lost in the mud and mire of Flanders and France. We relished her company for several years.

On her first visit to the cabin at Big Bras d`Or Sarah Mae plunked herself down in one of the padded Adironacks on the front porch and announced that if this were her place she`d be content to spend most of her hours sitting in that chair watching the world go by. Slowly. Nowadays, well past the three-score-and-ten milestone myself, I understand even better why Sarah Mae felt that way.

The porch commands a fine view of the Great Bras d`Or and Kelly`s Mountain: it is a place to watch eagles sail past, listen to territorial warblers, enjoy the sight of gannets plunging headlong into the saltchuck, intent on a meal of the freshest seafood. It is also a fine place for reading a good book and enjoying a cup of King Cole tea.

We returned to `Bigador` the first day of summer, June 21, and apart from some peeling paint here, a bit of rot there, we found the old place – close to half a century at this point – pretty much as we left it last October. Familiar sights and sounds remain reliable. The varying hares grow accustomed to our return, rubythroats battle for position at the hummingbird feeders. The legions of Clintonia lilies are past now, replaced now by equally populous battalions of bold, bright orange hawkweed. We relish our daily 7-km walks to Dalem Lake, busy ourselves with projects then enjoy the passing scene just as Sarah Mae recommended we should.

Occasionally there is novelty too. Never before had we seen a poplar adorned with fresh black-bear incisions. We keep eyes peeled for a sighting of the bear itself. Unexpected serendipity occurs. On a sunny afternoon an astoundingly beautiful bug – in all its cobalt blue and bright orange iridescence – drops by for a visit and lingers long enough to permit a photo shoot. At Dalem`s edge we find an adult spotted sandpiper and trailing just behind, a youngster dipping its tail just as mama does.

Some old-reliables remain faithful whether we like it or not. Mosquitoes, black flies and no-see-ems are as prolific as in any other year. We try not to wish them away, for fear of the consequences their absence would cost the cherished Blackburnians, Parulas and Magnolias.

There are other dependables. Cousins Lynn and Louise are reliably congenial, good-natured  and full of fun. Alas, Lynn is also reliably murderous: instead of playing the slots at the casino we gather at the cabin to play a version of Bananagrams all our own: no two-letter words permitted, at least one eleven-letter word required of each 36-letter set. She typically gets the job done in seventy seconds. Her three competitors have long since abandoned the hope of beating her in a match; now we battle just to prevent her from outscoring the field. We ordinarily fail.

So far the weather has been sublime: the days mostly sunny, the rains concentrated at night when a deluge is least inconvenient. The rain barrels are full. Blueberries ripen up the way on MacKenzie Hill. If the Blue Jays lose I am spared aggravation: here there is no television to watch Bautista strike out with the bases loaded. I don`t get up at 4 a.m. to read The Guardian or the Washington Post and lament the state of the world: there is no Internet here among the spruces and firs. Strangely, I feel none the worse for the lack of it.