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Authors: John Demont
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the boats bobbing and the ropes creaking with the strain. Then, the slam of a screen door and a dog barking. We turnedour heads and saw the great lover himself puffing down the trail being pursued by the longest, foulest string of curses I’ve ever heard lashed together in a single sentence.
We never did find out what happened in there. But I like what the whole scene said. I like that kind of brazen, foolhardy optimism, that willingness to trust in pure wit to keep your head above water, even when there’s not a hope in hell you can pull it off. Hard places like Nova Scotia bring out that side of people. To live here you need a sense of lasting tradition, loyalty and common purpose to go with a reckless imagination and rebellious spirit. You also need a healthy dose of self-reliance and a mile-wide streak of pride, the hallmarks of the true survivor. I have a friend who was president of a consulting business in Toronto until he bought a chunk of gorgeous Nova Scotia oceanfront in a place called Musquodoboit to build his dream house. A few months after he moved in he saw a half-ton pull into the next-door driveway. Since the owners were away Ross walked over to investigate. My friend is well over two hundred pounds, has a face like Sean Connery and the bearing of someone who holds a third-degree black belt in karate, which he does. He politely asked the man in the oilskins walking up from the beach if he knew the owners. “I’m a lobster fisherman,” was the reply. “We go where we fucking well want.”
My friend was puzzled by the encounter. But I take the fisherman’s point: life can be hard in Nova Scotia. Who can endure if defeat or demoralization creep in? Nova Scotians fully realize that luck is for other people and that they have to make their ownbreaks. Sometimes they even do. Otherwise they shake their fists at the gods and at the rest of the world. They yell and curse, brood, dance, fornicate and fight. Because what else is life for?
Nova Scotia is a place where the full scope of humanity seems to fit onto one small stage. And if there is such a thing as the Nova Scotian identity, its soul lies in the sum total of values that exist distinctly in its multitude of people and places. Cape Bretoners, my people, might as well be from another planet as the mainland. Yet even within that small island there’s a mind-boggling diversity, the gentle-spirited folk on the gorgeous west coast being as different from the hard-bitten stoics of the industrialized southeast as is humanly possible. Back on the mainland, one minute you’re listening to an Acadian shopkeeper ramble on animatedly in French, few miles down the road it’s the skirl of the bagpipes and an unblinking stare from some craggy Hebredian face. Hour later you’re in some old Loyalist homestead staring at one of those wall hangings embroidered with
There’ll always be an England/England shall be free/If England means as much to you/as England means to me
. Or you’re down on the moody eastern shore, one of the more depressed spots in the province, with its undercurrent of violence that manifests in anything from race riots to random shootings. Then, before your head has a chance to stop spinning, you’re in Lunenburg County, still populated by the descendants of the original Protestant farmers from France, Switzerland and southwestern Germany.
There’s room for everyone. Reminds me of what Mark Twainsaid at the beginning of
Huckleberry Finn:
“In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.” We are all different and we are all connected. I didn’t always understand that. But now as I plunged back into my old life I finally did. Identity is landscape, history and mythology. It is roots and genes. It is a lot of different things, like a Cajun gumbo. The recipe is essentially the same; what changes are a few of the ingredients, the proportions, the spices. It may
We never did find out what happened in there. But I like what the whole scene said. I like that kind of brazen, foolhardy optimism, that willingness to trust in pure wit to keep your head above water, even when there’s not a hope in hell you can pull it off. Hard places like Nova Scotia bring out that side of people. To live here you need a sense of lasting tradition, loyalty and common purpose to go with a reckless imagination and rebellious spirit. You also need a healthy dose of self-reliance and a mile-wide streak of pride, the hallmarks of the true survivor. I have a friend who was president of a consulting business in Toronto until he bought a chunk of gorgeous Nova Scotia oceanfront in a place called Musquodoboit to build his dream house. A few months after he moved in he saw a half-ton pull into the next-door driveway. Since the owners were away Ross walked over to investigate. My friend is well over two hundred pounds, has a face like Sean Connery and the bearing of someone who holds a third-degree black belt in karate, which he does. He politely asked the man in the oilskins walking up from the beach if he knew the owners. “I’m a lobster fisherman,” was the reply. “We go where we fucking well want.”
My friend was puzzled by the encounter. But I take the fisherman’s point: life can be hard in Nova Scotia. Who can endure if defeat or demoralization creep in? Nova Scotians fully realize that luck is for other people and that they have to make their ownbreaks. Sometimes they even do. Otherwise they shake their fists at the gods and at the rest of the world. They yell and curse, brood, dance, fornicate and fight. Because what else is life for?
Nova Scotia is a place where the full scope of humanity seems to fit onto one small stage. And if there is such a thing as the Nova Scotian identity, its soul lies in the sum total of values that exist distinctly in its multitude of people and places. Cape Bretoners, my people, might as well be from another planet as the mainland. Yet even within that small island there’s a mind-boggling diversity, the gentle-spirited folk on the gorgeous west coast being as different from the hard-bitten stoics of the industrialized southeast as is humanly possible. Back on the mainland, one minute you’re listening to an Acadian shopkeeper ramble on animatedly in French, few miles down the road it’s the skirl of the bagpipes and an unblinking stare from some craggy Hebredian face. Hour later you’re in some old Loyalist homestead staring at one of those wall hangings embroidered with
There’ll always be an England/England shall be free/If England means as much to you/as England means to me
. Or you’re down on the moody eastern shore, one of the more depressed spots in the province, with its undercurrent of violence that manifests in anything from race riots to random shootings. Then, before your head has a chance to stop spinning, you’re in Lunenburg County, still populated by the descendants of the original Protestant farmers from France, Switzerland and southwestern Germany.
There’s room for everyone. Reminds me of what Mark Twainsaid at the beginning of
Huckleberry Finn:
“In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.” We are all different and we are all connected. I didn’t always understand that. But now as I plunged back into my old life I finally did. Identity is landscape, history and mythology. It is roots and genes. It is a lot of different things, like a Cajun gumbo. The recipe is essentially the same; what changes are a few of the ingredients, the proportions, the spices. It may
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