Read Online The Last Best Place by John Demont - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Demont
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taste a little different every time, but it’s still unmistakably gumbo. It could be nothing else.
Universal truths are, of course, hard to come by. Nevertheless, there are things you should know right from the start about Nova Scotians. Not all of them, of course. The newcomers are adding new flavours to the mix, changing it as the province changes them. But I cannot speak for those people. For now I want to talk about the ones who have been here longer.
My people
, about whom a few broad statements are possible.
Despite the inordinately large number of scholars, scientists and big thinkers risen from their midst, Nova Scotians retain a loud contempt for anything that smells intellectual. Because of circumstances, they tend to defer to authority by bowing and scraping to politicians in Ottawa, to the rich, the church, the big corporations headquartered elsewhere. A habit that has gotten them nowhere and is broken only, it seems, by intemperate action, whether long, unwinnable labour strikes or massive protest votes that only alienate the government in Ottawa.
They look at the world through flinty eyes. Which is fortunate, perhaps, since it prevents them from falling too often prey to shysters, con artists, religious saviours, economic miracle workers and other cheats who gravitate to desperate places. (They leave that to the bureaucrats, so willing to shovel taxpayers’ money at sad, doomed heavy water plants that make no heavy water, gold mines that find no gold, oil fields that yield not one barrel of crude.)
They have a penchant for intrigue and scheming—which explains why they rule the world of business, the media, the armed forces and the church once unchained from this small pond. No wonder partisan politics is such a sport, religion and pastime, and Nova Scotians make the wiliest politicians in the land. The world is just different down here, a place where until recently a payoff to the governing party ensured not only that you would get a liquor licence to open a bar but also that any competitor who wanted to open a watering hole nearby would not. There are brand-new roads that go nowhere and gleaming wharfs in villages where no one fishes. If a visitor from some far-away place asks about the incongruity of such a thing the answer usually comes back, “That’s just Nova Scotia politics,” and somehow they understand.
They are violent and clannish, which makes for good soldiers but bad enemies. Nova Scotians have always been a rowdy, rough lot, a band of hockey-rink brawlers, after-the-dance scrappers, sucker punchers, rock throwers. It is no exaggeration to say that more great boxers have come out of industrial Cape Breton and the North End of Halifax than the rest of the country combined. It is also no exaggerationto say that while there is probably more life on a Saturday night within a square block of New Waterford than in ten miles of Toronto there are probably more dislocated knuckles and flattened septums too. They make them tough here. As an example I offer up a guy I used to see at the Y who owed some money to some bikers from Montreal. They took him to the Angus L. MacDonald bridge, held him over the side and threatened to drop him off unless he paid up. Normally this ploy worked. But our man said something to the effect of “drop away.” The bikers looked at each other in puzzlement, stood him up. Then shot him in the knee.
That is not an untypical story. Nova Scotians are no more crime-prone per capita than other Canadians, making them in a global sense next to saints. But who can match the strange, lurid nature, the pulp fiction quality to stories glimpsed on the local evening news and heard in everyday conversation? Opening up a newspaper around here is like cracking a Jim Thompson novel: page one might include a story about the former premier charged with a raft of sexual assaults. The court briefs on page 5 might include the details of a case involving a former crown prosecutor—who was
Universal truths are, of course, hard to come by. Nevertheless, there are things you should know right from the start about Nova Scotians. Not all of them, of course. The newcomers are adding new flavours to the mix, changing it as the province changes them. But I cannot speak for those people. For now I want to talk about the ones who have been here longer.
My people
, about whom a few broad statements are possible.
Despite the inordinately large number of scholars, scientists and big thinkers risen from their midst, Nova Scotians retain a loud contempt for anything that smells intellectual. Because of circumstances, they tend to defer to authority by bowing and scraping to politicians in Ottawa, to the rich, the church, the big corporations headquartered elsewhere. A habit that has gotten them nowhere and is broken only, it seems, by intemperate action, whether long, unwinnable labour strikes or massive protest votes that only alienate the government in Ottawa.
They look at the world through flinty eyes. Which is fortunate, perhaps, since it prevents them from falling too often prey to shysters, con artists, religious saviours, economic miracle workers and other cheats who gravitate to desperate places. (They leave that to the bureaucrats, so willing to shovel taxpayers’ money at sad, doomed heavy water plants that make no heavy water, gold mines that find no gold, oil fields that yield not one barrel of crude.)
They have a penchant for intrigue and scheming—which explains why they rule the world of business, the media, the armed forces and the church once unchained from this small pond. No wonder partisan politics is such a sport, religion and pastime, and Nova Scotians make the wiliest politicians in the land. The world is just different down here, a place where until recently a payoff to the governing party ensured not only that you would get a liquor licence to open a bar but also that any competitor who wanted to open a watering hole nearby would not. There are brand-new roads that go nowhere and gleaming wharfs in villages where no one fishes. If a visitor from some far-away place asks about the incongruity of such a thing the answer usually comes back, “That’s just Nova Scotia politics,” and somehow they understand.
They are violent and clannish, which makes for good soldiers but bad enemies. Nova Scotians have always been a rowdy, rough lot, a band of hockey-rink brawlers, after-the-dance scrappers, sucker punchers, rock throwers. It is no exaggeration to say that more great boxers have come out of industrial Cape Breton and the North End of Halifax than the rest of the country combined. It is also no exaggerationto say that while there is probably more life on a Saturday night within a square block of New Waterford than in ten miles of Toronto there are probably more dislocated knuckles and flattened septums too. They make them tough here. As an example I offer up a guy I used to see at the Y who owed some money to some bikers from Montreal. They took him to the Angus L. MacDonald bridge, held him over the side and threatened to drop him off unless he paid up. Normally this ploy worked. But our man said something to the effect of “drop away.” The bikers looked at each other in puzzlement, stood him up. Then shot him in the knee.
That is not an untypical story. Nova Scotians are no more crime-prone per capita than other Canadians, making them in a global sense next to saints. But who can match the strange, lurid nature, the pulp fiction quality to stories glimpsed on the local evening news and heard in everyday conversation? Opening up a newspaper around here is like cracking a Jim Thompson novel: page one might include a story about the former premier charged with a raft of sexual assaults. The court briefs on page 5 might include the details of a case involving a former crown prosecutor—who was
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