The Last Best Place

by John Demont

  Actually, he’s going once I stop bothering him. First, though, I need to know something about Chester in the old days. It’s like throwing on a switch. “Oh, it was a well-founded place with a vibrant, vital local population when the summer people came,” he gushes. “The well-to-do Americans who discovered Chester wanted somewhere beautiful where they could escape the heat of the big cities. The trout and salmon fishing was wonderful. They came and built houses with shady verandahs. Nearly every family had a yacht to race and a tennis court. They hired unemployed Chester boys to look after their properties. But there was no ostentation. They were quiet and discreet.”

  He knows everything. How a boatload of New Englanders arrived in the mid-1700s to settle a tongue of land sheltered in Mahone Bay. How a century later John Wister, a wealthy stove manufacturer from Philadelphia, arrived on a summer vacation and bought a property he made into a summer home christened Wisteria. How other wealthy Americans followed: the Starrs and the Pews (heirs to the Sun Oil fortune) from Philadelphia; the Trimbles, the Carrolls, the Finneys, from Baltimore; the Groves of St. Louis; Gen. Rutherford Bingham, a veteran of the Spanish-American War and the former police commissioner of New York City, the presidents of Princeton and Rutgers, the U.S. ambassador to Russia.

  He tells me about the golf club, built by a Scottish lumber merchant just for the rich summer people. And how Colonel Something-or-other buried his wife and son along the third hole. He tells me about the war years and how the mix started to change here as more Upper Canadians and well-off Haligonians began to summer in Chester. He tells me how magazine writers are always coming around to do stories about the animosity between the summer folk and the year-rounders—and how they always leave empty-handed. “Oh, everyone gets along here quite nicely,” he says with a smile, his fingers laced contentedly behind his head. “It is really extraordinary.”

  Does he somehow know that when I leave here I’m heading back along the harbour and up the winding climb past the high hedges, the impenetrable gates and No Trespassing signs to the very end of the Peninsula? As I manoeuvre up the hill I can almost hear them behind the gates, harrumphing about liberals, capital gains taxes and how Helms-Burton has thrown the market for Cubanos out of whack. The gals, I imagine, with Kate Hepburn tough-girl nicknames like Babs and Slim, with Jackie O. hairstyles and memories of dancing with some long-ago beau to “String of Pearls” before he went off and bought it on the beaches of Normandy. The menfolk slumming it in their ascots and blazers, clutching a tall gin-and-tonic as they reminisce about how they could have bought IBM at three bucks a share.

  All of which gives a refreshingly arriviste quality to the man who greets me at the top. Tim Moore wears a T-shirt, khakis, topsiders and Lillehammer ’94 ball cap, the midmorning sun glinting off the gold in his watch, chunky wrist bracelet and thin neck chain. “There was a lot of talk in town, perhaps because of the size of the house,” he explains when we sit down. “Crazy talk about me being part of the Mafia, stuff like that. Then Venture did a piece. I was on Gzowski. Frank started writing about us. It got to the point where I didn’t know anyone but everyone knew me and what I did.”

  Moore is in the moving business; his company, A.M.J. Campbell Van Lines, does $65 million a year in sales; it is based in Toronto, but he keeps a fax, phone and computer humming on the third floor of his Chester home and once a week drives into Halifax and flies to head office. I’ve heard and read his name lots since moving back. The house was the main reason. More for what it symbolized to a certain slice of Chester gentry than anything else: the new, the slightly showy, the lack of respect for tradition. Sure, Moore had money, but what kind? When the Peninsula crowd think of real Chester wealth they think of old money, passed down like the fine houses themselves, from generation to generation. The remnants of the longest-established aristocratic summer families may be losing interest in making the long drive from Philadelphia or Baltimore. They may, in fact, start cranking martinis as soon as it gets dark under the front porch. But Moore—he is a trucker, for God’s sake!

  “Life in Toronto used to be full of stresses,” he reflects when I ask what brought him here. “When I wasn’t in the office or on the 401 I was on an airplane. That is the danger in being financially successful: once you achieve a certain level of net worth you feel you have to go out and get more and more and more.” But his wife is a Maritimer; they honeymooned in Chester eighteen years ago. So when it came time to try to shift lifestyle gears, a real estate agent told them about this property. Moore laid down half a mil, subdivided the land, kept the best chunk for himself and recouped the costs by selling the rest. The people on the Peninsula, he says, were a collective pain in the ass, particularly the group from Halifax: they wouldn’t let him subdivide; they complained about the trucks going up and down the road; because of them he had to pay an extra $40,000 to hook up the power.

  Now we’re sitting in the backyard of his eight-year-old home on his five-and-one-half-acre property. It is a mansion, really, with fifteen-foot ceilings, gold-glinting bathroom fixtures and an aqua swimming pool shimmering in the trees and groomed gardens. The view, much as I try, is what I cannot take my eyes off: 270 degrees of blue, sun-burst water; a handful of candy-spinnakered sailboats; a Cape Islander steaming out to the open ocean—like stepping into a Leroy Neiman. Dead ahead, the bulk of Quaker Island. Swivel your head to the right and sprawling Cape Cods, pillared Georgian mansions shaded by the pines and birches, their lawns unrolling like carpets to the ocean. To the left, the bay, leading to the emerald golf course, where a wicked slice could take out a German orthodontist in a powerboat.

  Everybody said the view from Moore’s back lawn is the best anywhere on the basin, better than financier, author and adventurer Chris Ondaatje’s or that of Mariellen Black, Monty’s ex-wife, or former federal Tory finance minister Barbara McDougall’s, or Don Johnston’s (the head of the OECD, not the ageing hunk-boy actor) or even from the huge property Brandon Stoddard, the Hollywood producer, is building on Rafuse Island. No one knew for certain if Moore’s house is at the moment the biggest or the most grandly furnished in house-proud Chester. It’s certainly the most talked about.

  It is curious to hear what else people are talking about in this incestuous, snobbish, gossipy little spot. I drive down to the yacht club, chat up a woman working the bar and pry a few words out of a reticent sort on the race committee. Ritchie’s death comes up. So does the romance between an ageing village matron and a young jazz musician, the battle over whether to change the name of Pig Loop Rd., the $4-million, 30,000-square-foot house lobster baron John Risley was building near the golf course and the usual rumours about mysterious Germans and Hollywood moguls buying islands in Mahone Bay.

  It is noon now and the yacht club crowd is already getting it on. Over at the bar some big guys with ruddy complexions are guzzling Coke with guvy—that’s Governor General’s rum for the uninitiated—with two hands. People who look like they have been ripped right from the pages of a J. Crew catalogue—khaki shorts, cableknit sweaters, yellow rubber boots—hug each other and shake hands with big grins and a whoop here and there. “By God, you old bastard! Good to see you. Damn good, and I mean it.” Young peacocks, sunglasses hanging from around their necks on little black strings, strut around sizing up the competition. Some good-looking women: groupies? local society belles? There are even serious sailors, eyeing the computer printouts on the wall that carry the day’s draw. Jimmy Buffett, the patron saint of all seagoing types, wafts from the sound system. Out back, the Johnny-on-the-Spots stand in a green, glistening row, a few yards from the big, inflatable beer dirigibles.

  Walking by a window, I check my disguise: I am wearing a blue-and-white-striped sweatshirt, which has a faintly nautical air. I have on bone-white mail-order shorts and Rockport deck shoes with no socks. A baseball hat sits atop my head. About then I notice my skipper heading down the wharf carrying a bunch of gear. “Deemoooo,” Leroy, whose real name is John Roy, chants when he sees me. As
well as making a good living peddling yachts to rich guys, he is one of the best racing captains around. So I’m trying not to think about how he’ll react once he realizes I can’t sail even a bit.

  The rest of the crew is already here: an engineer, a mutual fund salesman, the manager of a sail outfitter, a phone company lineman and an insurance dealer. They bullshit back and forth, cracking tasteless O.J. jokes, razzing each other about wives and girlfriends, recounting tired stories of long-ago drinking bouts that always end with somebody puking on a cop’s shoes. They enjoy the easy familiarity of having worked in close quarters hundreds of times, and raced Chester together probably every year since their voices broke. A motor launch putt-putt-putts alongside and the yacht owner, Clarence “Binky” Wurts, and his son, Charlie, climb aboard. Everyone is pulling on ropes, hauling sails and speaking in racing-boat code. “Whoa,” somebody yells in warning as the boom swings for my head. I turn around and see a couple of crewmen eyeing me suspiciously. The owner of a yacht supply store in Halifax sidles up beside me.

  “How much racing have you done, John?” he asks. I launch into my story. He listens as he coils rope, then places it neatly by a rail.

  “The boat has three sections,” he says matter-of-factly. “Frontier land, adventure land and fantasy land.” Adventure land—sort of this middle ground between the cockpit and the bow where, I assumed, it was felt I would be less of a headache—had become my domain.

  Regattas, according to the official race program, have been held in Chester since 1856, when thousands of people raced in everything from canoes to sailboats and the prizes were “flour, sugar, hats or money.” Now the winners of the Chester Race Week regatta get silver cups. But the whole thing still has an air of shabby gentility about it, from the ninety-five-year-old yacht club, once somebody’s boathouse, to the heavy brass cannon, which eighty-eight-year-old Ben Heisler is struggling to ignite aboard the race boat to begin the day’s racing. I’ve eyeballed Heisler, the legendary boat builder, close up. He looks like one of those apple dolls, all wrinkles and weathered skin. I also know that after thirty years of performing this task he has gone stone deaf and gets through the ritual only with hefty rations of rum and Coke. All of which makes me wonder, as Third Wave circles the race committee boat and I watch him struggle with the cannon: is this man actually being allowed to handle a loaded firearm?

  But he pulls it off without incident, God bless him. A crisp, northerly breeze as Third Wave, a C&C 37, shoots past the starting line a half-mile off the Chester waterfront. We tack a couple of times and I manage to do a few menial tasks without incident. Next thing, we’re bearing down on this narrow island.

  “It’s a crapshoot,” complains Leroy.

  He bets the best air lies to the right. Soon as we come around it our sails sag impotently as we watch the boats who tacked left spread the gap. An uncomfortable silence settles over the boat. Leroy glowers from beneath the Third Wave hat pulled low on his forehead. Binky, who owns a Philadelphia stock brokerage, just sits at the stern, his thin lips pinched together. His son, Charlie, a Wall Street stockbroker, pulls on ropes and mutters under his breath. The rest of the crew sit, crouch and lay at their stations. Just a boat full of dead eyes searching for a breath of wind. The mood is ugly; mutiny hovers in the air as we marvel at how the lead boat in our class has managed to get so far out ahead in such a short time. Then everybody kind of says what the hell and surrenders to the weather and the day’s high spirits. They try some fancy spinnaker work, coming around the last mark. Then amuse themselves on the run in by popping beers, dangling their legs over the side, and passing around the binoculars to ogle an all-women’s boat.

  Somebody decreed that no negative words could pass anyone’s lips for the rest of the race. The only real test came when I am ordered below to pull in sail as it is dropped. I haul like all get-out. But it just keeps coming and coming. It seems to be filling the cabin and I can’t keep up with it. Then I’m ensnared. I try to claw myself free, jabbering a great string of obscenities, stumble sideways and land on the floor in this writhing, sweaty mass. I’m gulping for air when my head finally emerges from the white shroud. In the hatch directly overhead I see a face—I don’t know whose—and hear the words: “Good sail work.”

  We finish eleventh out of fourteen boats in our class. But it’s just Monday and everything is full of promise as we tie up next to the yacht club wharf. An aria from Madame Butterfly floats from the cabin of another straggler motoring in. Binky Wurts, the seventh generation of his family to summer in Chester, cracks a can of Keith’s and sits down in the cockpit. He’s fifty-four, tanned, thin, athletic looking, with what can only be described as a country-club face—straight nose, aristocratically tiny ears that hug the head. “Do you know Danny Blaine?” he asks me. “Well, his grandfather, my grandfather and another were the first Wisters who came here. I came here for the first time as a child in 1947. We’d stay at the old Lovett House hotel. My grandmother ended up owning it during the recession. We’ve bought and sold various houses over the years. Now we’re in Chandler’s Cove, off the golf course. Charlie was five years old when he first came. He grew up here. I don’t think there is a prettier bay anywhere in the world. Every inlet or island has a sandy beach. The temperature is perfect. Coming back here is like being on a honeymoon: all our friends come down, we open our houses up, we go fishing, we play golf and tennis, we watch the sunset.”

  By the clubhouse a pleasant post-coital mood has settled over the sailors and hangers-on sipping beer in plastic cups as they relive the race. “You bastard, we had ya. Lord Christ, we did. Helluvaday, though, helluvaday! Here, what’re ya having, beer? Chrissakes, let me get you a real drink.” From the sound system Peter Tosh exhorts the world to lively up yourself. I get a drink and wander out on the deck. My face feels sunburned and I’ve got that little weave going that always afflicts landlubbers who’ve just spent an unaccustomed amount of time aboard a boat. Leroy, who is talking to some people on the grass, raises his glass at me in some sort of salute. Meaning unknown.

  I spend a few minutes hovering around. Finally I see someone I’ve met before, an American who once told me he “did well during the Reagan years.” He winters in Florida and spends summers in Chester in a home that has been in the family for more than a century. His face wears that ruddy flushed look you so often see in photos on the walls of golf and yacht clubs. I blather on for a bit about the day’s conditions, and other subjects that seem to interest sailors. He skitters away, leaving me with the owner of a local marina. A nice guy. He stands there in the sun, this thick globe of zinc oxide on his nose, and informs me that every boat in the Chester fleet has a nickname and then runs through them. To my mind, the best one is Turd Wave, but I could be biased.

  My bed-and-breakfast is a pleasant walk away. I change my clothes, then stroll back to the water and follow the harbour to a bar and restaurant called the Rope Loft. Rope stanchions, cork buoys, pocked driftwood, other nautica. I make for the deck and a table all to myself, then watch a boatful of latecomers stumble down the gangplank. By the looks of it they’ve had a day. Takes them a good thirty seconds to stagger the few yards from the gangplank. A man and a woman cling to each other to avoid falling down—bank execs, no doubt, here at the invitation of their regional manager, who follows with a flat frozen grin as he watches an elaborate attempt to suck up to superiors disappear amidst the hangovers and recriminations to come.

  Almost eight when I pay the cheque. Up the hill to the Fo’c’sle Tavern, which is the real thing, not some nautical theme bar. The first time I was here a husky little trawlerman clutching handfuls of money growled at me like a wolverine. Tonight the big amiable bouncer says I’m early for the real excitement. So I wander back to the yacht club just as the day’s racing prizes are being handed out. Lots of warm, good-spirited laughter. Two of the recipients have to be pushed up to receive their hardware. One is so blasted he can’t even string a sentence together and just waves his little trophy ove
r his head.

  A four-piece cover band sets up at the back of the clubhouse. Then starts banging out tunes by Janis Joplin, the Beatles and the other icons of sixties rock and roll. The room fills up. A woman, mistaking me for my doctor cousin, grabs me by the arm. I try to make chitchat with a wealthy heiress, who spends the whole time searching for eye contact over my shoulder with a Johnny Depp lookalike half her age.

  By now the social strata has settled. Most of the real money is at home, inside the elegant old homes I pass walking back up the hill. Inside the Fo’c’sle the stockbrokers, management consultants, lawyers, doctors and trust fund babies swarm the bar, pounding back endless glasses of draught and guvy-and-Coke. They strike me as a smug, almost boring lot. But I’m an outsider looking in. I get the impression this is their sacred place: that when they come here to crank a few during Race Week it is always when things were good, when anything seemed possible. Before divorce, corporate downsizings, male pattern baldness, twelve-step programs and easy-fit jeans. Before the wife’s high-school sweetheart started getting mentioned in the RoB and Gretzky headed stateside. Before light beer, Robert Bly and nice, sensible mini-vans.