CHAPTER II.BARRELS.

HER DAILY PORTION

“HOW’S FISH?”

In sharp contrast to the fish-schooners is the brig, brigantine, or barque, painted white, with water-casks the last thing in paint and fancy designs on deck. She is discharging hogsheads of molasses brought from Barbadoes or other of the British West Indies. Molasses has played its part and commandeered the sailing vessel of the Bluenose fleet from the earliest times. For in the rationing of the sea-craft up and down the coast molasses was the “sweetening”; and old-timers to this day prefer it to sugar.

* * * *

In addition to her fishing industry and tale of ships, Nova Scotia enjoys a pastoral side no less rich ingenre. Farms are here. In following the highways and little by-paths rambling among apple orchards and gardens, potato fields and hay meadows—paths etched in Spring by the pink flush of apple-blossoms, or in autumn by boughs curving to earth under weight of rosy Baldwins or creamy Bellefleurs—one follows everywhere hard on the heels of romance. It is her hand that beckons into every little cottage snugly tucked away in valley and glen; where every grandmother sitting carding, spinning, hooking rugs, knitting or reading her daily portion of Scripture, can keep you entertained with tales and the recounting of interesting happenings and not go outside the range of the half-dozen houses which have been her little world for more than half a century.

Along these roads and about these inland homes, friendly old willows mingle atmospherically with tall and stately Lombardy poplars. It is on these uplands of Nova Scotia one follows the old Post-roads—roads that recall the dashing coach of other days and still cross rivers by old covered-bridges, and preserve the quaint, rambling old houses that served as Inns where passengers of old sought refreshment, or spent the night, while waiting to make connections with the coach to this or that objective.

Sitting down by the roadside to rest, some old-timer driving a span of oxen and urging them along with an apple-bough goad, is sure to come along and enter into conversation in that happy way which is half the charm of adventuring by Nova Scotia highways. This old farmer-carter well remembers Harry Killcup, the Robin Hood-Jehu of the Post-road from Annapolis Royal to Halifax. He relates how Harry was talking to a girl and didn’t pay attention to his horses, and drove them too near the edge of the bridge and they fell over, dragging the coach with them. “The river was in flood, too, but Harry managed to get the girl clearof the wreckage, and saved her, but the young man, with whom she travelled, was drowned.” It sounds like a movie stunt in the cold light of to-day, whereas, in fact, it was Victorian realism and a typical incident of the dashing times of the chaise in which Sam Slick engaged a permanent seat in that other “chaise of Canadian literature” by which Judge Haliburton eventually established his name in Canada’s Hall of Fame. The events live very graphically before you as recited by this old eye-witness; who, with many a “gee” and “whoa there”, again starts his oxen on the way.

To the period of the Post Road belongs that old landmark of time and the road, Grand Pré Church, outstanding figure of the countryside in which dwelt Evangeline and her people. In order to catch its romantic spirit, the time to see Grand Pré church is in the evening, when there is just a wee flare of daylight and a soft mist arises from the waters of Minas, shedding itself like a diaphanous veil over the land, as one strolls up the country-road that comes through the village from the North, under willows and poplars, to the door of the old church and then rambles off to the South between clover fields and stacks of hay; the hay resembling Hottentot villages outlined against the ashes-of-roses sky. It is at dusk, that the rather austere lines of window, tower and roof lose their sharp, almost Quaker-like severity. It is at that hour that the old stones of the graveyard become time-softened, ivory-tinted pages of history assembled under the stately poplars. Inside the church, in the strong, simple lines of its painted box-pews and high pulpit; in the old gallery; and in the square windows with little panes, there is the quaint atmosphere which clings especially to old churches of the early Colonial Period. Sitting in these old pews during service is to be carried away on the wings of history to a pivotal point, whence to behold a Cyclorama of all Canada. To the left, on this great canvas—Glooscap and Micmac; succeeded by crude Breton and Portuguese fishermen in their strangebateaux; followed by stirring panels of Annapolis Royal and Louisburg, contrasted against panels of tenacious pioneer Scotch and English settlers; in the next,the clashbetween France and England for supremacy, not alone in this sweet countryside of Grand Pré, but in every other contained in the word Canada. These are followed by a panel of United Empire Loyalists—very realistic this, because, in the village, you have just been looking at an old oil-painting of Colonel Crane and fingering his fine old sword, that never wavered in its allegiance.

The other half of the Cycle, begins the New Order. First, a symbolic figure of the stream of emigration flowing through the Maritime Gate to the great Canadian West, followed by prairie scenes and mountain peaks, mining scenes, cattle scenes, tawny grain, and Trans-Canada trains, sisters of “Glooscap”, and “The Flying Bluenose”. That, is Grand Pré Church—a link between the Past and the Present.

One often wonders....

ONE often wonders what it is in handmade things that warms the heart and enkindles the imagination? It is evident that the charm is there regardless of the value of the object. Perhaps the attraction lies in the human story, the life, the thought and care, that collected the material, conceived the form and colour of the object to be made, and then put it together. How else could the barrels discovered everywhere at harvest time in Bluenoseland be considered romantic? Yet that romance sits on every barrel-head in the Gaspereau Valley, in Paradise, ’longshore from Lunenburg to Sydney, and on the wharves at Halifax, no one who has seen them, would ever doubt. Trade, itself, here waits on the barrel. How can apples go to market if there be no barrel? Lives there a man who has ever heard of shipping potatoes in a—box? How could mackerel swim in brine, out of Halifax, to the ports of the world, were it not for the barrel? “Why, business just leans on a barrel-stave down our way,” a witty merchant of these parts was once heard to exclaim.

Each trade calls for a different barrel. There is a barrel for apples, another for potatoes, and still a third for the fish. And, behind each barrel stands the—Cooper—a character in the Gaspereau Valley. And housing the Cooper and his quaint trade, every so often, voyaging along these sweet country roads, one happens on the “Cooperage”, always a landmark of its neighbourhood.

Stepping into the door of a cooperage, one is met by the smell of scorching wood and the smoke thereof. Through the smoke, and bending over the barrel, whence it comes, behold, the cooper! Plenty of finished barrels stand about in the large room. The cooper nods his head toward one of them and we step quietly to the proffered seat. For a moment, one fears that the cooper will stop work to talk, and the spell be broken. But no, he goes on. In the “tub” or “jack”, with a groove in the bottom, he places new staves in a large iron ring or hoop the size of the barrel to be made. About the staves, creaking as the tourniquet is twisted tighter and tighter, a stout piece of Manilla rope slowly draws each stave to its fellow and all into a perfect round. Tauter and tauter the rope is wound, long after you think the breaking point has been reached. Then one’s eyes are drawn from the barrel to the man.His eye is like an eagle’s for clarity. He has forgotten everything in the world but the barrel. The tension in the room is so great one could hear a pin fall. Then, the hand relaxes, the spell is broken, the barrel is “set up”. Afterward, the barrel, having no bottom or head in it as yet, is set over the drum-stove in which there is a fire. And while it scorches and dries and toasts a golden brown on the inside, the cooper talks a little, turning the barrel. He “cut the birch boughs that make the hoops, from the woods, in winter, in the slack season when time hangs heavy.” No, “he does not work-up the staves.” Buys them from a sawmill down the road (the direction of the mill being indicated by a sweep of the arm). Keeps them for a time, to season the wood. So with the bundles of split birches. Then following his eye glancing aloft, one sees the ceiling, hung with the straight, tobacco-brown withes afforded by the Nova Scotia woods, especially provided of Nature it would seem, to gird up the sticks of dumb wood over in the corner into—staves.

The smell of the scorching barrel by this time fills the cooperage with its own peculiar perfume anew, like puffs of incense, from a censor replenished. Now the cooper turns again to his work, visitors out of mind. He lifts the barrel over the head of the stove, selects an adze and a split birch-wand. In a twinkling, a curve is swept around the barrel and with the eye alone, expert measurement is taken of the long wood-ribbon. Slish! The adze has cut! Attention is now drawn to a handmade arrangement into which the cooper is slipping the ribbon. His foot comes automatically in contact with a treadle and the withe is turned out, curved permanently. In a twinkling, the adze cuts the little jib-slit—two of them, one in each end—into which the hoop, now wound around the barrel has its ends locked forever. Set like a garland about the barrel-head the hoop is driven into place, tapped round and round and round. The inner edges of the staves are now bevelled off; the groove cut and the head hammered into place. Then on goes the last hoop. And, presto! The barrel is done and thrown over to one side among two or three score of its fellows. The cooper puts some of the shavings into the stove and starts at once, all over again on another barrel. You can see that in his mind’s eye he carries a vision of score upon score of waiting orchards, waiting for his barrels, the barrel that he feels it a moral obligation to supply.

INTERIOR OF AN APPLE-BARREL COOPERAGEIN THE VALLEY OF THE GASPEREAU.

IN THE ORCHARD.

How much does he receive in payment for each barrel? Just five cents. The most expert of these “Old-timers” make as many as eighty barrels a day, or enough to keep one skilful apple-picker busy from sunrise to sunset, enough to ensure two full loads to the old cart that looks like some strange tortoise on the highway.

One could sit here forever and watch, fascinated, the cooper at his work, so clean, so redolent of the winter landscape in its hand-cut and split birch rods, the air filled with the peculiar, refreshing incense of the toasting staves, the barrel all completed in the mind of the cooper before it materializes in his skilful hand—the barrel, a new barrel, appearing as if by magic every six minutes. What visions one sees through the old door of the men who have come in the carts to its threshold; what tid-bits of news given and received in the half century since the old cooper picked up his trade by long association with the cooper ahead of him, and he in his turn from the cooper before him. What tales the old man could tell, and does, while the barrel toasts. One wonders why the story-teller has never wandered into this open door and sat him down on one of these barrel heads.

Riding away from this door, in one of the ox-drawn carts, always atmospheric and redolent of a romance denied to speedier transportation, one sets out to follow the barrel into the world, as it were. The ribbon road curves and turns by streams dashing under spreading willows or straight as a line it etches its way between rows of stately Lombardy poplars. We overtake other carts passing Grand Pré Church or standing idly for the moment before a local smithy, one ox looking as if Nirvana had descended upon him, while his fellow steps inside and endures the agony attending the acquisition of a pair of new shoes, the world over. Past creaking carts we go with oxen straining under full loads on their way to the large shipping centres of the railroad. It is a countryside glowing with crimson and yellow, and placid as only autumn that still lingers in the lap of summer, can be. Presently we come to the orchard where we would be. And there the family is gathered, laughing and chatting, waiting for barrels, for orchards and many hands give the cooper and the carter all they can do to supply them with the sweet-smelling barrels.

It is a family party, even the baby is here holding an apple in hand. The family cat rubs its nose on every pair of legs before strolling to hunt a field mouse. A mother wagers with her lad,willowy as an apple branch, that she can beat him filling a barrel. Tall ladders, home-made, loll against the topmost branches of Bellefleur and Baldwin. The father of the family cuts out the full barrels for a trip to the Station or Packing house to which he sells. The general conversation may centre around apples or it may wander off, as it is likely to, into an epic of hunting, shooting and bringing home the moose John got yesterday. Or, it may take a turn and become a tale of adventure, telling how Jamie, coming into the orchard this morning, encountered two bears, berry-hunting, directly in the path.

In time we board the cart again and roll around to the Packing House. And one may pick and choose, for the line of the D. A. R. runs through the heart of the fruit region from Digby to Halifax. And at any of these stations one comes upon the potato barrels, sisters to the apple barrels, and also creations of the skilful old individual, the cooper. We enter, as upon a tide, to behold spreading before the eye a sea of apples, with cataracts of them pouring into the sorting troughs. And barrels! Barrels are everywhere. As one goes around these rooms, one witnesses a sort of transfiguration in the old barrel. No longer is it a mere barrel but an argosy, bearing Nova Scotia products—apples and potatoes—on the high tide of Trade into the ports of the world. Here is a group of barrels, tripping it to London. This is by far the largest group, Great Britain being the largest “Foreign?” market for the Nova Scotia apple. The barrel must be a strong one that carries the fruit across ocean and through fog, to the markets of England. There is a group marked “inland Canada” and these individual barrels must travel far. And still other groups with the impress of “South Africa” and “South America,” where not the barrels alone must suffer hard usage but in the latter case the apples themselves grilled by the change of language, lose their English name and become—Manzana.

It takes some three or four million barrels to supply the demand made on them by the potato and apple crops alone, of Nova Scotia; not to speak of the fish which demands a barrel, and hence a cooper, of its own. What wonder if the barrel be called “a character” in the land, and if business leans upon it, as upon a staff of life?

Standing firmly behind....

STANDING firmly behind the craft, whether large or small, that crown both Bluenose Fishing and Bluenose Foreign Trade with success, is an army of men and boys heterogeneously grouped together as ’Longshoremen. We find them in each and every village-by-the-sea, wherever there is a boat. Here is a caulker, there a tar-boiler and pitch-runner, an old knitter of fishnet, an old sailmaker—needle and “palm”, in hand—a woodcarver, an oakum-picker, an old boat-builder, “the weather prophet”, and all the old fellows who lend a hand when a heavy boat is to be hauled up the beach, or to be pushed into the sea again. In the evolution of coastal-life these men are amphibious. In their youth they went to sea, but in old-age they retired, not to idleness, but to uphold what is known in the trade, as the “Shore-end” of fishing.

As one follows the long coastal road macadamized by the Maritime, the ‘Longshore men and the ‘Longshore women afford some of the most picturesquegenreencountered anywhere in all Canada. They are unique, in that in every individual case, the product is “the Sea-coast’s Own”. And no two of them are exactly alike. They not only mend and reinforce, tar and paint, but they are the Historians, the Spinners-and-Weavers of Traditions, the story-tellers, that keep alive in the hearts of their listeners the sea-spirit—without which, ships are useless. And so, some morning, when you come along over the cliffs, and see a smoke, black as the traditional pine-cone over Vesuvius before the burial of Pompeii, you know that some old fisherman and his pals are tarring the old boat.

The old boat that calls for tar is certainly a personality. Coming nearer, and taking care to keep to windward, you stalk this group and watch. First there is the fiery cauldron, that is the Tar-pot, above its blaze of driftwood, with its own special attendant, looking like a Prince of Darkness, wielding the long-handled dipper; and at a little distance by the boat two other figures with long brushes, calling for ladles of tar. Good and thick they lay it into the old seams and over the old plank, the smoke pouring upward like smoke of incense, offered on the altar of the great out-of-doors.

Such scenes are imminently in danger of passing out of Canadian life. For the old boat that calls for tar, and “the old-timer” that believes in it, are everywhere giving way before the modern gasoline-driven launch—“Gasolener” the Newfoundlanders call it—with “speed” written all over it, and in its tanks “Power” to laugh in the face of gales and head winds. But whereas the “gasolener” may boast of these things, she can never boast of the atmosphere and spirit of romance emanating from such a scene as—“The tarring of the Old Boat.”

The men who tar the boat to-day may have turned their hands to something else by to-morrow. On fine days the old sails are spread out on the beach to dry or stood to flap-in-the-breeze from the mast-hole of some old boat on the beach, long ago condemned as unseaworthy and gradually being disintegrated by the elements. Oh what lovely seats these old gunwales make for the audience of men and boys, eyes aflame with imagination, as some old grandfather of the beach, in the role ofraconteur, makes the details of a noted gale live anew in the vision of his listeners. To-morrow these listeners of to-day may themselves be tossing in the arms of a gale and half-drowned in the volume of green water encompassed by the “crest” and the “trough”.

Inanimate individualities of every beach are the spreading fish “stages” generally of green or auburn-tinted spruce-boughs. These stage the women of the ‘Longshore. It is a most interesting item of the Court of King Cod that the entire family is here, even to the baby.

Catching the Cod seems to be the least part of the work when one beholds the amount of labour expended on the Shore-End. Early and late, during the season, the women stand to their task of drying the fish. When the weather is fine two weeks often slip away before a batch of cod is properly hardened and “dry”. Fish, destined for the long voyage to the West Indies and where Tropic heat is likely to cause a sweat in the “hold”, the Canadian and Newfoundland fishwives “cure” until it is hard as the proverbial brickbat. The amount of fish-lore contained in the heads of these women with ballooning skirts, is amazing. As judges of weather, they often put the “Weather-man” to shame. Sometimes the coming cloud is entirely unseen by the mere stroller when these women begin pell-mell to take in the fish. And when a fine evening says it is safe to leave the fish out all night, these careful souls may be seen turning over each fish, “oil-skins” up, in case

TARRING THE BOAT.

A NONOGENARIAN GRANDFATHER PLACIDLYCATCHING UP THE MESHES OF AN OLD NET.

of a shower. These women turn easily to housekeeping duties, and often the out-of-door tasks accomplished, continue the web of romance with knitting, spinning and hooking rugs.

The sailmaker is a romantic figure in the doorway of some old “gear” house, as he sits surrounded by billows of canvas, dark and mildewed, patching, roping and otherwise overhauling the old mainsail. His, too, is a figure in imminent danger of passing. The dashing motor boat, blowing the spume from her bow, says, “The day of sails is over.”

One summer, visiting with the Lighthouse-keeper’s family in their characterful little binnacle-home on the edge of the rocks at Peggy’s Cove, our last day for adventuring having arrived, and even as we waited for the coming of the mail-carrier’s cart by which we had engaged “outward passage”, we strolled down to the waterfront to say a last farewell to our “old-timers”. It was at that last moment, in what turned out to be the eleventh hour of his life, that we chanced upon a ninety-year-old grandfather in high boots and straw hat placidly catching up with his nonogenarian fingers the broken meshes of an old net. Mailcart or not, we must have this picture! Click! As it happened, mending this bit of net was his last task. For before the picture which we promised to send back to him could come into his hand, the Great Reaper had brought him to his last illness and he was soon awa’!

The open-door....

THE open-door to an understanding of the sea coast life, its enthusiasms, its joys, its sorrows and its toil, is by way of the little sea-coast homes edging the ‘long-shore road in out-of-the-way coves and harbours, remote from towns, cities and the big sea-ports. These little houses are as a voice in the land; as soon as one heaves in sight by a turn of the road or a dip of the land we instantly feel their personality. Their dimensions may be small, roofs low, windows few, doors narrow—all these things are overlooked because they all fit in with the whole, to make a sweet, lovable little place, where we might easily fancy ourselves living happily—the big world far away, the horizon of our wants satisfied by the vision and tang of the gray sea, and the fishboat putting out in the early morning, to come again with the sinews of the evening meal. There are many ways of approaching these sea-coast homes, but the preferable way is—afoot. The man or woman who takes to the open road and puts up where he can when dusk comes down over land and sea, is the voyager likely to have the best adventures and to make the most discoveries. He discovers, primarily, that many tongues are heard in these little sea-coast homes—English, Gaelic, Breton and Acadian-French, and should he go far north enough, some “Huskie”. He will even find little colonies of Jersey Islanders in the midst of the English-Gaelic-French stretches. Even so, the traveller coming to any of these sea-side doors in the evening light will never have to beg a place to lay his head. Hospitality is part of the unwritten code of these parts. An additional mouth to feed brings about absolutely no confusion. It matters not which language the housewife speaks. You may not be able to employ her Gaelic or she your English, but her heart is kind and friendly and the sea has taught her to be cosmopolitan. Her door is ajar to visitors; a small matter like languages will never close it. There are many common grounds on which to meet and always “sign” language and a little latent ability on both sides to “act out” any situation going beyond the combined vocabularies adds spice. Indeed I think the “acting out” one of the chief charms particularly in the little French homes.

The interiors of these sea-coast cottages in which we have frequently found ourselves guests, not one but many summers, are in every way as individual and winning as their exteriors are attractive. All the furniture is hand made, with odd “bits” here and there salvaged from wrecks, or which have otherwise “washed in with the tide”. It is fitting that as the house is home-made—it shelters homemade things. On the floors are round, plaited rag rugs—pretty spots of colour but not so brilliant or so highly prized as the rough, hooked rug showing large patterns designed from nearby objects or some treasured association—the family cat, the dog, the flowers from the wee garden. In some of the French shore homes both the plaited and hooked rug give way to theCatalon. Having duly examined and admired those on the floor, Madame takes the visitor up into the garret to see the ponderous loom that holds another in the making. Scattered about are her wools, spun and dyed and perhaps previously sheared by herself. Catalons furnish material enough for hours of conversation and if the visitor is fortunate enough to be a guest under Madame’s roof the chest of floor rugs and homespuncouvertsmay be opened to view. Some of thesecouvertsmay be old, the work of Madame’s or M’sieu’s mother. Oh, many are the stories woven into thecouvertsof the Magdalen Islands and the Gulf of St. Lawrence shores from Quebec to Cheticamp—stories in detail more than one summer long.

In the Gaelic homes conversation is made easy if the visitor is interested in old-time China-figures. The Gaelic woman warms to you at once if you notice her “Highland Laddie” in kilties or the wee “lambie”, or the faithful sheep-dog that stands upon the shelf. These all have a story too. Some of these China-pieces are very rich and handsome both in the quality of China and in colour, to say nothing of design—“Mary and her little Lamb”, “The Sailor Boy”, “The Lovers”, “A Victorian Lady”, in hooped skirt, poked bonnet and blue shawl, etc. A few of these figures are heirlooms. Others were bought by their present owner from some travelling salesman chancing into the glen half a century ago, when she was young. Sometimes the figure came from a wreck and was salvaged by the skipper in his little fishboat—fragile figures that survived the fury of the storm which smashed the great ship, which carried them, to kindling.

This tale of wrecks brings into the story of the little sea-coast homes the men whose handiwork the houses are. The vikings of the Maritime Provinces are home-builders! In their turn wrecks and brave men introduce another type

WITHIN SIGHT OF HOME.SAMBRO, NOVA SCOTIA.

DOOR-WAY OF THE LIGHTHOUSE-KEEPER’SHOME AT CAPE SHARP, NOVA SCOTIA.

of home common enough to these parts, a necessity in fact, but unknown to inland Canada—the lighthouse keeper’s little nest with which goes the white tower with its lamp connected with the house on isolated headlands and far away on the point, by itself, in others. A chart of the eastern coastline reveals hundreds of such lighthouses; and for every lighthouse, followers of the piper know, there is a little cottage tucked away somewhere. Great camaraderie exists between the unpainted, weathered, shingled cottage of the fisherman and the home of the man whose light and bell guide home through the fog the little dory to its place. The one is more fixed up than the other having the government behind it in the matter of paint, but both know what it is to crouch for shelter among the boulders. In time of storm “the holdings is what counts”, as Big John puts it. There is just one thing that the sea-coast folk fear above the storms of winter, and that is—fire. There being no fire-department in these parts, every householder takes precaution by putting a ladder across the roof from eave to ridgepole alongside the chimney. This fire “prophylactic” is a fixture built-in with the house and looks like some “idea” in the architecture so universal is it.

In the long miles it is noticeable that groups of these sea-coast one or two-roomed homes usually cluster together around some little harbour. These are companionably drawn together by the little sheet of water affording an anchorage or safe dry-dock in shelving shores for the little fish boats—breadwinners of the family. Peggy’s Cove, on St. Margaret’s Bay between French Village and Sambro on the south-western shore of Nova Scotia, is such a little rocky haven—looking like a miniature Newfoundland. The road fringes the shore for eighteen miles after one leaves the railroad at French Village and one may make it afoot and getting tired beg a lift in a passing ox-cart, or may engage passage with the mail-driver. The mail-driver is an institution in all these out-of-the-way regions, and one may cover most of the distance as a passenger in his cart.

Many a little home we look into away “Down North” from Inverness to Grand Etang on the one side of Cape Breton, and from English Town to Dingwall on the other, whose open door we have been able to make with the mail-driver’s, or the little coastal steamer’s assistance, or by driving ourselves in a hired team part way, and walking part way, regular pilgrims, staves in hand. But there are thousands of little homes along shores where no roadsgo except that over the sea. One is rewarded for “making” any of these, over the cliffs, carving out a road for oneself, if it be possible, if not, taking to the boat. In fact, one soon likes these most isolated homes best. Their originality and their strength appeal to the pioneer latent in us all. And here dwell the men and their families who have held “the line”, keeping alive the great fishing industry of Canada. Here dwell in truth our much to be admired codfish aristocracy. In fact, in all these little homes reside men upon whose personality “United Empire Loyalist” is indelibly stamped. These are people who accept the hardships of life with composure, relying less on outside supports than we of the cities. No stores are here to run to for supplies. The doctor comes not at all or only in summer. In the Magdalen Islands there is no communication except by telegraph from Christmas time till the following spring. Here, one winter, it became desirable to get “a mail” to the mainland. The men interested prepared a large cask, made it watertight, put the letters inside and headed it up. They gave it ballast and a little sail and consigned it to a strip of open sea, first painting on it a request to the finder to forward the “mail” to the nearest postoffice. Those letters reached their destination.

The Magdaleners are fisher-folk in the main, though of course in Havre Aubert and Grindstone there are a number of business, and a sprinkling of professional men. The homes here in these remote islands, being French, have the French touch of thrift well developed. Paint is here in most instances, and though the islands are bare of trees a little garden is generally managed with the aid of a fence made of bits of wood culled from sea-drift.

These real little homes may be a mile or a half mile inland among the smoothly rounded Damoiselles—a little unhandy to the boats—so the Frenchmen of Havre Aubert have built themselves a little row of summer cottages right on the shingle, so close to the waters of the Gulf on each side that they could almost step out of the boat into the front door, did it not happen to be on the second floor for safety from the waves in time of storm. Such a cottage has the double advantage of allowing greater despatch of the fishing and of saving the wear and tear on the “all the year round” home. We wonder it has never occurred to the coastal fishermen of other parts to have a summer home as well as a winter one.

Doubtless the new era will bring many changes and improvements into all this region of Canada. The new roads, the autos, the modern builder, the agriculturist, the large number of summer tourists, the shipbuilding, the improved methods of fishing, improved drinking water systems, direct and indirect foreign trade, library and lecture centres, expansion in railroads all radiating from and meeting again in Halifax—Queen of the Maritime cities holding in her hand the fate, among other things, of these little homes—will all come soon. But we hope the day will never come when these little gray cottages will disappear from the Canadian landscape. We hope sincerely that in their case it will not be necessary to destroy in order to build; that if their location is the one thing needed to conduct the fishing quickly they may be saved to form the fishing-season homes of our fishermen, an extension of the plan now followed out by the Magdalen Islanders, while a snugger situation may be chosen for the up-to-date winter home so well merited by those harvesting Canada’s fish and those other deep-sea voyagers carrying her ships and trade into foreign ports.

Of all the forces....

OF all the forces of Nature governing human endeavour, none it would seem, are at once more intimate and exacting than Time and Tide.

But, while Time is everywhere, Tide is local. And though by a system of daylight-saving we have sought to get the best of Time, Tide, as wiseacres of old put it, “waits for no man.”

Such a play of thought and words as can scarcely be conceived, surge and race with “tide”. “A full tide,” “a brimming tide”, “high tide”, are synonyms for success in life, for progress, for the acquisition of wealth, for “Bon Chance”, as “good luck” is phrased in Quebec. Whereas “Low Tide”, “Ebbing Tide”, and kindred terms, we all know only too well what they mean—dull business and empty pockets. But over-riding all these is the cheerful swing of encouragement in “There’s a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to Fortune.”

Nowhere does the daily life of a people hang so intimately on tide as down Bay of Fundy way. Tide there plays a titanic scale. It lengthens out the scant octave spanned of other shores to fifty, and in some places it is said, to sixty feet. The people of these parts live “on the landwash” as it were, with “high tide” and “low”, a daily portion. The Bay of Fundy apportions to its people the biggest slice of tide afforded to any people anywhere in the world. And, as it disregards the ordinary laws of all ordinary tides in the matter of ebb and flow, so, strangely enough, its physical “low tide” is more often than not, the “high tide” of business and affairs. It is when the edge of the Fundy Basin is a line of mud from St. John to Parrsboro, around the Minas Basin and back to Digby, that life awakens and things begin to happen. It is as if the old Bay said “Any old place can have a high tide but who can have a ‘low’ like mine?”

The Low Tide of Fundy is indeed its most prominent feature, playing an important part in the despatch of passenger and mail steamers from both Saint John and Digby. Indeed, the Bay-steamers actually play a game with the tide. If the steamer is “in” and the tide “out”, the steamer must wait for the tide to come “in” before she can go “out”, on its brimming fullness through Digby Cut. So, the schooners and square-riggers all come “in” andgo “out” when the tide is full. But they load the deal in West Bay whichever way the tide “sets” ’round Cape Split. So, too, the stateliest Square-rigger or most sail-crowded schooner going up the bay for a load of plaster has the water out from under her keel when the Mower scythes the waves and sweeps them away to the ocean, leaving all keels, whether great or small, hard and fast in Fundy Sound.

The Bay of Fundy is the greatest natural drydock in the world. And in its day, which began the evening the stately ship of Sieur de Monts first floated in on its flood tide to found a settlement at Annapolis Royal, it has docked thousands of craft of all rigs and sizes. As drydock, as well as sheltering harbour, while it belongs in particular to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in a wider sense it belongs to all Canada. So that in the great future in trade now before Canada, it requires no great foreknowledge to venture that the volume of vessels frequenting the Bay in the palmiest days of the past, will soon be eclipsed both in number of ships and in increased displacement. As yet, the Bay of Fundy is like a masterpiece hanging in a gallery, which we have not sat down to look at carefully and appraisingly.

No other country apart from the thought of it as a drydock enjoys such a haven for ships as Canada possesses in the Bay of Fundy. The Bay of Fundy whose “power” is the tremendous ebb and flow of its tides, has hitherto seemed something “out of us”, and beyond our power to turn to account.

Bliss Carman, it will be remembered, penned a beautiful lament in “The Ships of Saint John”. But we may take it that the condition lamented was but temporary, merely “the ebb tide” in affairs and that when the tide comes again, roaring round Blomidon, the tide of Canadian shipping, it will be such a brimming tide of prosperity as old-timers of these parts never even dreamed of. The ships of the world will surely dock again in numbers where “The fog still hangs on the long tide-rips.” One saw during the years of the war a re-birth of old-time trade around the shore in the large number of square-riggers calling at Bay-ports for deal. You could count them three and four deep in West Bay by Partridge Island out of Parrsboro. And how all the forests and sawmills around were touched at once into new life by a mere sight of these stately old craft, many, an hundred years or thereabouts in age, in their turn awakened from graveyards in out-of-the-way havens of the Old World by the clash of arms.

IN THE RAQUETTE.DIGBY, NOVA SCOTIA.

THE BAY OF FUNDY IS THE GREATESTNATURAL DRYDOCK IN THE WORLD.

To all the people living on the Bay of Fundy shores these old vessels, newly painted, with their “yards” abeam and “figureheads” on the bow refurbished, were happy sights indeed. It was like their own youth come back, in case of the old. To the young they brought “vision”. Old ports thought dead awoke to new life. In “trade” around the Bay it was no longer “ebb tide”.

One never ceases to marvel at the number of other trades that spring to life in the wake of shipping. Ships and big “waterfronts”, such as Canada’s are the things to make dreams come true. Ships resemble railroad trains in the matter of faithfulness to prescribed routes, having ports for stations. And there’s not an ocean wanderer of them all, or a skipper of importance, but knows the Bay of Fundy and its “tides”. Nevertheless, however important from the commercial point of view, hard and fast trade is not the only phase of Fundy life. It also has its romantic side.

“Low tide” fills the shoreline with the rich, wet colours which artists love to paint. It builds, too, new kinds of wharves, two-deckers with an upstairs and down, and greeny bronze seaweeds clinging to water-soaked piles; and “craft” of some kind, schooners, or tropic-bleached-and-warped old vessels with rakish yards, looking like pirate craft by reason of many trips in the white-light of Equatorial suns, leaning against them.

It is a signal, when the mud-line begins, to all the clam-diggers of the countryside to come out with shovels, forks, rake-hoes, or any old garden tools that can be used to dig clams. Sometimes one sees here some old woman alone, using a rake-hoe as a staff, her skirts blowing in the wind and a genuine joy in her heart every time an oozy squish is emitted by her old boots. The tide of life has come and gone for her to the accompaniment of the ebb and flow of the waters of Fundy. In them she has found comfort and by them, perhaps, a living. They have been the outlook of a lifetime, companionable whatever their mood.

In the matter of clam-digging the Bay of Fundy has a decided rival in the long-stretching sandspits or barachois of the Madeleine Islands in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. There, one sees a score or more of habitant women, their skirts tucked about the middle, wading in the shallow water with their horses and carts and even dog-carts, themselves working for hours digging tubful after tubful of clams for as long as they can beat the tide to it. But, on the white sand of the Madeleines one sees no vessel careening in friendly fashion as on the soft mud of Fundy.It is on the Bay of Fundy one sees ordinary ladders of the farm, home-made affairs, no relation whatever to the usual ship’s ladder, let down over a schooner’s side with men going up into the ship or down to walk ashore over the mud, avoiding runnels and pools, while the anchor lies a little way off, in plain sight, on the cushion of mud. This is an unique picture peculiar to the Fundy region.

At another spot the kelp-gatherer is at work. Edible kelp can be bought in many Wolfville and other Bay of Fundy-town grocery shops. And in season the kelp-gatherer, with his sack, is an interesting figure of the Digby and Parrsboro tide-flats and algae-covered rocks.

Romantic treasures are uncovered by the low tides, in the amethyst geodes to be picked up along shore. Amethyst outcroppings provide a romantic objective for taking geologist hammer in hand in a jaunt to the cliffs of Blomidon and the jagged, beetling wall presented by Partridge Island on its southern side to the sweep of the Bay. Nor is amethyst alone, here. Other semi-precious crystals abound, making the gamut run by Romance one of great range. For, when the tide is low, over against the fire of the Glooscap jewels, are set the figures of carts going out over the wet mud, scintillating with the colours that artists love, to the amphibious little Bay coasting-schooners, stranded, for the time being, like so many jellyfish.

Then come out the caulkers, caulking-irons in hand. Then are old seams filled, old leaks and new made tight—the caulking mallet in a race against the fast-coming tide. For the caulker knows that with the return of that great force, gathering in strength with every inch of rise, the old plaster-carrier will slowly right herself, lifting, lifting herself out of the mud, “locked” to the higher level, by that greatest of natural forces—the flooding tide of Fundy, till, presently sitting like a swan on the water, she declares herself afloat and ready for the race to Boston with her cargo of “Plaster-of-Paris”, out of Acadie.

Not until the waters....

NOT until the waters of the Gut of Canso sweep into the line of one’s vision, does the fact that Cape Breton is an island have any special meaning for the traveller by train from Halifax to North Sydney. But when you feel your car actually quitting the land for the deck of a steamer, then the insularity of Cape Breton becomes something personal.

The “Gut of Canso” is—“The Grand Canal of the Maritime Provinces”, one of the clearest, bluest, most beautiful strips of water in the world.

It is, as anyone can see, the short cut from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. But it is not until you cast off upon its waters yourself that you realize how constant is the stream of vessels using this ocean highway! That material galore for picture and story hourly runs to waste here, is not the fault of the Grand Canal.

Cross this water-street when you will, schooners, “two”, “three-masters”, with big mildewed mainsails still hoisted, wait at anchor off Port Hawkesbury for a fair wind to carry them through, the while fleet-winged schooners from the Gulf, like the “Birds of Passage” that they are, take it, literally, “on the run”. One wonders, watching them on-coming “wing and wing”, if ever migratory birds strung out in a fairer perspective?

Your sea-adventuring train deigns after awhile to come ashore on the “Island”, and after that it keeps to the straight and narrow path etched by the land, wherein trains may run, but it never seems just an ordinary train to you after its sea-going fling. And so you are quite prepared for the way it skims across the Bras D’Or at “The Narrows” and sets you down there to a “fish supper” in a little restaurant, and waits while you eat.

At Iona, it stops again, and sets down the passengers for Baddeck. And after that it hugs the lakeshore, till North Sydney reminds one that “business is business” and that one has arrived in the heart of it.

To speak of North Sydney is to think of coal. Yet, unless you undertake “the mines”, look them up, because you have a fancy to from the viewpoint of Romance, they are not only not intrusive but they actually lend a hand in adding to the “figures” in the harbour. There the picturesque, black-hulled, red-bottomed steamers at anchor, are “colliers” awaiting their turn to load. These steamers make just the contrast needed to set off the fish-schooners riding at anchor, amid dancing reflections, when the setting sun of a calm evening mirrors every spar, rope and sail in the silvery waters of the harbour.

At Sydney the outlook is easterly. New elements creep into the atmosphere. “Over there,” is Newfoundland. These waters that lap at your feet bring Europe within hail. That little, weather-worn steamer lying there by the wharf-side will to-morrow morning hitch to the Quai in Saint Pierre et Miquelon.

The “colliers” that came in yesterday, in a day or two may be nosing up the Saint Lawrence in the wake of palatial ocean liners to Quebec. Sydney stands for the extended hand of Canada; extended to Newfoundland as a link in transportation; extended in invitation to the British Isles and to Old Europe to send more settlers of the hardy type of Hieland folk and Breton sailor, who, in the early dawn of her history, stepped into Canada through these portals.

The interesting fact about Cape Breton is that it has preserved all the characteristics, the language, the customs of its Gallic and Gaelic settlers. Geographically, as well as ethnologically, there is a Gaelic Cape Breton in the North and a Breton Cape Breton in the south. They divide the land between them, and live in the same friendly fashion as did Scotland and France in the days of the Stuarts. Stepping into the northern part of Cape Breton is like adventuring in the Highlands of Auld Scotia. Stepping to the South is an adventure in Brittany.

There are three main ways of entering the “Highlands”. Finding one’s self in Sydney, take that “character” among coastal traders, the little S.S. “Aspey”. The “Aspey” makes all the harbours between North Sydney and Cape North. Make her acquaintance and she will introduce you to “Who’s Who”, for she knows all the folk who are worth knowing, from Englishtown to Ingonish and from Ingonish to Nail’s Harbour and Dingwall.

The second way to reach “the land of the Macs” is to take a train of the Inverness Railroad at Port Hawkesbury. By this road, which follows the shore-line of the Gulf side of the Island, you come immediately into the Scotch atmosphere. Scotch place-names stand out bravely from the name-boards of the railroad stations. The very scenery is Highland—mountains and mists

Back to Index Next