And God bless your soul, I have nothing but respect for them, yes—the most profound respect for them. Every one of them. There’s no more left like them and no more to come like them. All you need do sometimes, if you have a little imagination, is roam through the countryside and let your imagination run wild. And you’ll travel some of the old farms in this country and you’ll stop and look at some of the great rock pileshere and there—and how many, when they look at them, how many stop and think of all the sweat and toil and tears it took to put that rock pile there? How many think of it? Very, very few. But if you drive along by one of those old farms some time, and you see one of those old rock piles, just get out and walk over to it and see the thoughts that will go through your mind—and picture the old slaves that dragged those rocks and stones from all around, the land that’s cleared, and piled them there. We don’t have no more people to work like that today. Somebody’ll say we got wise. No, we got foolish. They were the wise people. They had to be.”
PART TWO
My Kind of People
I grew up a bluenose
,
as Nova Scotians are known
,
supposedly after the colour of
potatoes grown there
.
Robert MacNeil
Four
These Are My People
I T WAS FALL WHEN I MOVED BACK TO N OVA S COTIA . D AYLIGHT S AVINGS T IME , and the long evenings were over. When sundown came you felt the first shudder of winter out there somewhere on the horizon. I was joyfully overwrought, a newly released prisoner running down the street without even feeling the pavement under my feet. Every building, patch of grass, shadow flickered with meaning. Memories snapped by like pictures on a deck of cards. Strangers met my exultant eyes, seemed to smile then look away. These are my people! my heart cried.
I knew I was being foolish. I knew that since I recognized no one, no one must recognize me. But I simply could not rein myself in. My spirit soared as I stumbled down the sidewalk. Any minute a couple of white-jacketed attendants were going to slap a straight-jacket on me and drive siren screaming to the mental hospital across the harbour. I didn’t care. It was fall, my favourite time. I felt eighteen again, like I had just emerged from the shower on a Friday night after a basketball game and my friends were waiting at the Midtown Tavern.
There is no such thing as an identity crisis in Nova Scotia; that ismaybe the hardest thing for newcomers to understand. While the rest of the country may whinge about the nature of being Canadian, we know who we are, bad as that might be. Not only that, we celebrate ourselves; we revel in our distinctiveness even as the gulf of difference between us and the rest of the country, the continent, the world narrows. The demographic tidal bore into the province may bring cash, jobs and strange new people, but this place holds on to its essence. Its identity. Its character. Even people who live here tend to forget how different we really are. I certainly did, wistful as my memories of Nova Scotia were while I was one of the temporary displaced living away. Very least, I should have remembered our wedding night, a week before we left for Alberta, bound down the eastern shore to an inn called Camelot in a cab owned by a company that probably made as much bootlegging rum as getting people from A to B. Our pilot: a wiry little guy with a Junior B league haircut who begged us to stop for a suspicious-looking delivery inside the Halifax city limits. He tore ass once we hit the highway. Somewhere beside the moonlit ocean he asked would we mind stopping while he said hello to an old girlfriend. A bit much to ask a couple on their honeymoon, but we laughed and said what the hell.
“Jaysus, that’s great. Only be a sec,” he said breathlessly, slamming the door behind him. “Last time I saw her it didn’t end so good. But here goes.”
We sat down, our legs dangling off the end of the wharf. An idyllic scene with
PART TWO
My Kind of People
I grew up a bluenose
,
as Nova Scotians are known
,
supposedly after the colour of
potatoes grown there
.
Robert MacNeil
Four
These Are My People
I T WAS FALL WHEN I MOVED BACK TO N OVA S COTIA . D AYLIGHT S AVINGS T IME , and the long evenings were over. When sundown came you felt the first shudder of winter out there somewhere on the horizon. I was joyfully overwrought, a newly released prisoner running down the street without even feeling the pavement under my feet. Every building, patch of grass, shadow flickered with meaning. Memories snapped by like pictures on a deck of cards. Strangers met my exultant eyes, seemed to smile then look away. These are my people! my heart cried.
I knew I was being foolish. I knew that since I recognized no one, no one must recognize me. But I simply could not rein myself in. My spirit soared as I stumbled down the sidewalk. Any minute a couple of white-jacketed attendants were going to slap a straight-jacket on me and drive siren screaming to the mental hospital across the harbour. I didn’t care. It was fall, my favourite time. I felt eighteen again, like I had just emerged from the shower on a Friday night after a basketball game and my friends were waiting at the Midtown Tavern.
There is no such thing as an identity crisis in Nova Scotia; that ismaybe the hardest thing for newcomers to understand. While the rest of the country may whinge about the nature of being Canadian, we know who we are, bad as that might be. Not only that, we celebrate ourselves; we revel in our distinctiveness even as the gulf of difference between us and the rest of the country, the continent, the world narrows. The demographic tidal bore into the province may bring cash, jobs and strange new people, but this place holds on to its essence. Its identity. Its character. Even people who live here tend to forget how different we really are. I certainly did, wistful as my memories of Nova Scotia were while I was one of the temporary displaced living away. Very least, I should have remembered our wedding night, a week before we left for Alberta, bound down the eastern shore to an inn called Camelot in a cab owned by a company that probably made as much bootlegging rum as getting people from A to B. Our pilot: a wiry little guy with a Junior B league haircut who begged us to stop for a suspicious-looking delivery inside the Halifax city limits. He tore ass once we hit the highway. Somewhere beside the moonlit ocean he asked would we mind stopping while he said hello to an old girlfriend. A bit much to ask a couple on their honeymoon, but we laughed and said what the hell.
“Jaysus, that’s great. Only be a sec,” he said breathlessly, slamming the door behind him. “Last time I saw her it didn’t end so good. But here goes.”
We sat down, our legs dangling off the end of the wharf. An idyllic scene with
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