Eye of the Beholder

Late August delivers no end of subjects guaranteed to get a fellow contemplating the wonders of nature.

We understand that frog populations are declining in North America but you wouldn’t know it from the spectacle on display in recent days at Dalem Lake. Along the grass road bordering the lake we have to step carefully to avoid trampling the dozens of young pickerel frogs making their first explorations of the world at large. At this stage in their life history they are small—not much bigger than my thumbnail from snout to butt—but they make up in quickness what they lack in size. Not one of them is inclined to accommodate somebody looking for close-up photo opportunity. In Canada this frog is a strictly eastern species. They like the habitat opportunities on offer in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the southern reaches of Quebec and Ontario, but western Canadians are deprived.

They are not the only frog we see on our Dalem excursions. Just as nimble as young pickerels, the wood frog is distinguished by its attractive tan colour and by a feature—a black face mask—that inclines some folks to call it the ‘robber frog’. Both frog species are cosmopolitan diners. The cabin’s copy of Amphibians and Reptiles of Nova Scotia lists 49 lifeforms pickerel frogs find comestible enough to include in their menu, everything from sowbugs, centipedes and spiders to stink bugs, spittlebugs and slugs.

A third kind of amphibian we see in our wanderings, Bufo americanus americanus, the eastern American toad, is not remarkable for its swiftness: closeup portraiture is much easier to accomplish. Some folks consider the toad an icon of ugliness, an opinion I do not share. I count myself lucky each time circumstance affords opportunity for communion with a fellow traveler I invariably find unhurried, congenial, relaxed—all traits it would do me well to emulate.

Ugliness is of course not a fixed notion. While I might be inclined to see Donald Trump as the acme of unattractiveness, others are inclined to see ugliness in bugs or snakes or centipedes.

Take caterpillars for example. Did you know that all caterpillars are the young of butterflies and moths? We don’t have to go all the way to Dalem to see caterpillars en route to becoming red admirals, swallowtails or fritillaries. We can just step out the cabin door and look down to find an array of creatures wearing multi-coloured coats, bedecked with horns, spines and bristles. Studying a caterpillar at close range I can’t help wondering, by what magic is a caterpillar transformed into a butterfly? Why all the spikes and spines? Well, in some cases the adornments are defensive: they are toxic or distasteful to a predator that might otherwise make a meal out of the caterpillar.

Get nose to nose with a katydid and you might be inclined to think its face is as ugly as ugly gets, perhaps as hideous as the out-of-this-world monster in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic Alien. For me, a katydid’s face is merely fascinating. What do all those strange-looking bits do? By what means did this become the ideal design for going about the business of being a katydid?

Late August is a fine time of year to appreciate the diversity of spiders nature provides for close inspection. Orb weavers in the genus Araneus are the arachnids of choice just now at Bigadore. Take a close look at the face of one, make believe the creature is as big as a human and, sure, it is easy to imagine oneself being scared spitless. Fortunately, orb weavers are not as big as Mike Tyson in his pugnacious prime: it is safe to take a close look and marvel at another aspect of nature’s complexity.

Whilst appreciating the wonders on display just outside the cabin door there other rewards, incontestably attractive ones. The blueberry crop by the spider’s web is at its peak. Pause from spider appreciation to savour the blueberry bounty free for the grabbing. Go up the road a short distance to harvest the chanterelle mushrooms currently crowding one of our trails. Carry on a bit further still and mine the blackberry crop just about to reach its best-before pinnacle.

Spiders, katydids, caterpillars . . . blueberries, blackberries, chanterelles . . . all this and I haven’t even begun to mention birds and the early days of fall migration . . .

Thrills of The Sporting Life

In an era fraught with anxiety about climate disaster, when the White House, No. 10 Downing and other capitals are occupied by ultranationalists and extreme right-wingers, is it any wonder that a fella is sometimes inclined to go in search of the lighthearted and the uplifting?

We traveled to New Brunswick not just to give a talk about hockey-playing soldiers of the Great War, not just to travel to long-gone ghost towns obliterated to make way for CFB Gagetown but also—perhaps primarily—to watch teenagers play basketball.

Good friends Garth and Carole are the proud grandparents of Malcolm, a star player with the New Brunswick team that competed last week in the 17-and-under national championships in Fredericton.

The most exciting sporting events I ever witnessed ‘in the flesh’ were basketball games back in the mid-late 1960s, when I attended Dalhousie University. A loyal Dalhousian, I watched many a game at the old war memorial gym. Much as I hated the Saint Mary’s Huskies and Saint Francis Xavier X-Men, I reserved my greatest detestation for the Acadia Axemen—because they were the most dangerous, most feared of the Tigers' opponents. The action in the old gymnasium was electrifying, unforgettable.

The teenagers gathered in Fredericton to compete in UNB’s fine Currie sports facility revived memories of those long-gone Dalhousie days. A tournament now, aptly, 17 years old, the 17U event had never delivered a medal for New Brunswick. On August 8 NB took on British Columbia on Currie Court 2. A victory would get Malcolm and mates into the medal round, the Final-Four grouping. BC took an early lead, its fans confident that their boys were a lock for a playoff berth. Among those rallying the NB troops was Malcolm’s granddad. During a stoppage in play he was dared to run up and down the sidelines waving a New Brunswick flag. Garth took the dare. Perhaps it made the difference: New Brunswick roared back in the second half and won 67-61. The medal round was theirs.

A night later NB tipped off against Ontario. The Ontario 17-year-olds looked formidable: big, athletic, fast—and almost entirely black. They dominated the NB lads from start to finish, leading by 11 at the half and winning by 18. Watching the Ontarians outleap, outrun, outthink and outscore the NB boys I thought, wow, how can there be such a thing as a white supremacist. NB backers took consolation: there was still a bronze medal game to anticipate.

In that match, Saturday afternoon, New Brunswick, again the underdog, faced Saskatchewan. The start looked a lot like the BC game, only worse. The New Brunswick shooting was cold; by and by the lads were down by 16 points. Sixteen points is a huge deficit to overcome but in the second half the Maritimers did as they had done against BC: they stormed back. Malcolm and mates shot brilliantly defended fiercely and won going away. Bronze medal to NB. Hallelujah!

Quebec defeated Ontario for the gold medal but that didn’t count for much in the NB contingent: nothing could diminish the glow of the New Brunswick bronze. To ice the cake, Malcolm was named to the tournament all-star team.

The basketball tournament is not the only sporting event worthy of mention. Monday night saw the first annual Bigadore Invitational Table Hockey Showdown (BITHS for short). As in the good old days of the NHL this highly anticipated event featured six participants. Loyal readers of Peregrinations will be aware that identical-twin cousins Lynn and Louise are formidable players. Jan’s game has grown by proverbial leaps and bounds. Peter Goodale and Brian Wilson (no, not the Brian Wilson of Beach Boy fame) are long-time friends who spent countless hours playing table hockey way back when. They were dead keen to knock off the rust and show my hundred-pound cousins a thing or two.

In the round-robin part of the Invitational, four players wound up with identical 3-2 records. These four—Louise, Peter, myself, Lynn—would compete for the gold medal. In the result, Lynn imposed her will on Peter to take bronze. The gold medal game—Louise vs. yours-truly—went on and on. And on. Tied 1-1, then 2-2, the game seemed endless. Then Louise netted a shot from the left wing. Game over. Gold medal to Louise. The joy was universal: everyone happy to see Louise win, just as happy to see me lose.

Granted, the Bigadore table-hockey invitational is not of the same order as the 17U basketball nationals but Peter spoke for all when he observed, in the thick of the action, Nothing else matters. Nothing at all.

Ghosts of New Jerusalem

A guy who is a sucker for ghost towns is especially taken by a community that has entirely disappeared but for the war memorial commemorating those of its sons who went off to do their duty to ‘King and Empire’ in the Great War of 1914-18. Sons who never returned home.  New Jerusalem, New Brunswick, is certifiably a ghost town. Not a single person lives there anymore. Once upon a time New Jerusalem featured two churches, a schoolhouse, community hall and several dozen houses.  They are all gone. All that remains of New Jerusalem are the cemeteries harbouring the remains of those who lived and died there—and the community cenotaph.

One does not get to visit New Jerusalem without some effort. The village is one of sixteen communities scattered on either side of the Sunbury-Queens county line that were expropriated in the early-mid 1950s to establish Canadian Forces Base Gagetown, one of the biggest military bases in the Commonwealth. I contacted the base commander’s office, offered an account of my interest in war memorials and asked whether Gagetown might let me see the ghost town cenotaph. The army said Yes. Yes not only to myself and Jan but to friends Garth and Carole too.

At 0900 hours Wednesday our quartet arrived at Gagetown Building K69, Range Control, signed the necessary waivers and listened carefully to a short briefing on all the items—shells, rockets, ammunition, smoke bombs et al—that we might conceivably come across and must absolutely, positively not touch. None of us needed to be told twice. Despite the nuisance the military people couldn’t have been more accommodating in allowing us to visit New Jerusalem. We were even provided a soldier escort—congenial Warrant Officer Jamie Beaver, a fellow Cape Bretoner—to lead us where we needed to go.

The Gagetown base is huge—roughly 60 km north to south, 40 east to west—and it required a forty-minute drive from Building K69 to reach New Jerusalem. Driving through the rolling landscape toward the old community, roots of the Appalachian Mountains impressively conspicuous on the near horizon, it was easy to imagine that losing their homes and communities would have been very hard on those who loved the place they called home.

The New Jerusalem monument sits on a height of land commanding a long view in every direction. The stone cairn lists the names of seven men—two from the close-by community of Armstrongs Corner, three from Clones, two from Olinville—fated never to return to their Lower Saint John River Valley community when they went off to war in 1915-16.

The Olinville soldiers were brothers: McCutcheons. Charles Ransford McCutcheon was a 27-year-old fireman/mechanic when he enlisted at Calgary in October 1915. His younger brother by four years, Ernest Ludlow McCutcheon, a lumberman, was 23 when he enlisted at Saint John in early January 1916.

The older brother, Charles, was the first to bereave his mother and father back in Olinville, Isabella and William. On the night of June 22, 1916, he was struck by a shrapnel burst from an enemy shell and died in the wee small hours of the following morning. Some 551 Canadians—including Charles McCutcheon of Olinville—are among more than two thousand soldiers who lie for evermore in Railway Dugouts Burial Ground, just two kilometres southeast of Ypres, Belgium.

An authentic war hero, younger brother Ernest fought in most or all the iconic Canadian battle of later 1916 and 1917—Ypres, the Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele—and was awarded a Military Medal for gallantry, an award he did not live long enough to receive. A casualty of enemy poison gas in late May 1918, he was hospitalized in England. Ernest died October 11, 1918, a month before the Armistice. His ‘final resting place’ is a soldier’s grave in Brookwood Military Cemetery, Surrey. Among the more than 5,700 soldiers buried at Brookwood, Charles is one of 2,729 Canadians.

New Jerusalem is redolent of ghosts: the ghosts of those who lie in the cemetery just a stone’s throw from the cenotaph, those whose hearts must have been broken to lose their beloved communities in the 1950s, and those like the McCutcheon brothers who lie under a battlefield stone marker an ocean away from Olinville, Armstrongs  Corner and New Jerusalem.