Across Canada by Story

by Douglas Gibson

  This was just as well, because I had to rush uphill from the waterfront, then, taking a last deep breath of Atlantic air, jump in my car, and drive west all the way out of the province — past Truro, then Amherst, then across the Tantramar Marsh that links Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (once famous as “the world’s largest hayfield,” in horse-drawn times when that resource outshone oilfields), and on into Sackville. I was to perform at Mount Allison University, at the Owens Art Gallery, that same night.

  Driving into little Sackville, a university town of a little more than 5,000 people, I was reminded of the scale of my old university, St. Andrews in Scotland. There, too, there was a huge difference when the university was in session (“The fleet’s in!”). In The Canadian Encyclopedia Dean Jobb has shrewdly described Sackville as “a town of fine old homes and tree-shaded streets, dominated by the red sandstone buildings of the university.” That afternoon I encountered town and gown separation at its worst. Two young teenage girls at the town’s main crossroads (perhaps the only stoplight in the little town) had no idea where the university’s Owens Gallery might be. It was perhaps four minutes’ walk along the very street where we talked.

  In the opposite direction lay the Marshlands Inn, the grand old Victorian hotel in town, where I had stayed on my previous visit. That was when, as my first book describes, on a side trip to Shediac during Festival du Homard time, I became an Acadian, under the influence of the lobster and the fiddle music. This time I was picked up at the inn by Christl Verduyn, an old friend from her Trent University days, now on the Mount A. English faculty. She and the student newspaper had done such a great job publicizing the Sunday evening event that we had sixty-four people in the audience, with some standing, and there was a welcome clatter as the pre-show nibbles and drinks and meet-the-author session was interrupted by puffing people bringing in extra chairs.

  The Owens Art Gallery is indeed the university art gallery, a separate neoclassical building with a fine sense of space. As you can imagine, it’s pleasing but intimidating to perform beside the screen showing the authors that I’m talking about (and sometimes I advance the PowerPoint slides more efficiently than other times) when I’m standing alongside major works of art.

  Thanks to Christl’s shepherding, all went well, and nobody (town or gown) fell noisily asleep or stalked out, snorting. And my time wandering through the compact Mount Allison campus showed me why the little university has generated such affection among its alumni across the land.

  Afterwards, I was taken for dinner to Joey’s in downtown Sackville by my friend Chris Paul, of Sybertooth Inc. This is a gallant Sackville-based publisher that has picked up The Bandy Papers series by Donald Jack that I was proud to publish originally. Just as there are young people who think that my greatest publishing contribution was to set Roy MacGregor writing about the Screech Owls, there are also many not-so-young readers who consider The Bandy Papers series my great legacy to the world.

  Bartholomew Wolfe Bandy is a (fictional) minister’s son from Beamington, Ontario, who gallantly signs up to fight for King and Country in the First World War. In Flanders Fields, after leading a daring assault that results in the capture of his own colonel, he is transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, and miraculously becomes a flying ace. His “memoirs” follow his career, which leads him up and down the ranks, and in and out of bedrooms, and into very surprising positions (his capture of a Bolshevik train in Russia in 1919 is notable, as is his eventual rise to a place in Mackenzie King’s Liberal Cabinet, while rum-running on the side). In due course he drifts into a role in the Second World War, with the details of the imminent D-Day landings plans of keen interest to his Gestapo interrogators, all highly inquisitive chaps. Then, in the final volume, while he is at Yalta he finds that Josef Stalin seems to bear him some sort of grudge …

  The roll-call of titles will bring thousands of admirers to giggling attention: Three Cheers for Me; That’s Me in the Middle; It’s Me Again; Me Bandy, You Cissie (stunt flying in Hollywood); Me Too; This One’s on Me (which brings Bandy in touch with the maharajah of the Indian state of Jhamjhar, who needs someone to head up his air force); Me So Far; Hitler vs. Me; and, finally, Stalin vs. Me. I can claim to have started the series, with the first two books, and to have also edited and published the last two books, but it is Chris Paul out of Sackville, New Brunswick, who now keeps the Bandy flag flying, reminding the world of P.G. Wodehouse’s quote about The Bandy Papers: “I enjoyed every word. Terrifically funny.”

  Chris also reminds us of another side of Donald Jack’s assault, through Bandy, on the officers who ran the killing machine in Flanders, and elsewhere. “These books,” wrote military historian J.L. Granatstein, “are as powerful an indictment of the bloody waste of war as has ever been written by a Canadian.”

  That evening Chris and his writer wife, Krista, drew me useful maps of how to explore the magical Tantramar Marsh, in this part of Canada made famous by Sackville poet Sir Charles G.D. Roberts. The next morning, after wandering with my binoculars in Sackville (amazingly, the town is designed around birdwatching boardwalks), I drove to High Marsh Road, rambled across and through a covered bridge, then spotted a perched birdwatcher who confirmed that the dozens of little brown birds exploding into the air around us were indeed migrating Savannah sparrows.

  It was time for me to migrate east to Wolfville, on the Bay of Fundy.

  In Nova Scotia, all highways lead to Truro. Yet a Wolfville-bound traveller with time to spare and a love of the landscape can turn off the 104 fast highway system at Truro and drift west along the Fundy shore, winding through little towns like the magically named Maitland. Gifted with that middle name (my mother, you’ll recall, was Jenny Maitland), I was excited to find that it’s a little town graced with beautiful old traditional houses, many now being restored. It’s like one big heritage village, a showcase for Victorian architecture at its varied best.

  I stopped at the local store to grab a sandwich, and casually asked how the place got its name. “It’s a native name,” I was told. My comment that this would be news to thousands of Scottish Maitlands made little impression. Could this be part of the weird intermingling of Scottish and Native history in Nova Scotia, where some believe that Glooscap was really a Scottish explorer named Sinclair? An enquiry for another time.

  I drove happily on to Wolfville, pausing to notice that the incoming Fundy tide, off to the right, was racing in so fast that I could see sandbars disappearing every ten seconds. The traditional warning about incoming tides that could drown you was that they moved “as fast as a galloping horse.” It seemed appropriate.

  Wolfville is a university town. Just as the ebb and flow of the Fundy tides rules the landscape, so the Acadia University year rules the town. During the academic year, when the 3,500 students transform the area, the movement of young people down from the slopes of the campus into the town is almost tidal. Driving along the main street I foolishly wondered what was causing the stop-and-go traffic. Then I realized that we were obviously between classes, and scores, even hundreds, of students were casually exerting their right to drift across the street, halting cars like mine. Not a bad traffic planning principle, especially since there are no boringly conventional stoplights in town.

  It is time to celebrate the Acadia school song. It goes:

  Far above the dykes of Fundy

  And its basin blue

  Stands our glorious alma mater

  Glorious to view.

  Lift the chorus

  Speed it onward

  Sing it loud and clear

  Hail to thee,

  Acadia, hail to thee.

  Far above the busy highway

  And the sleepy town

  Raised against the arch of heaven

  Looks she proudly down.

  They don’t write them like that today. I’d love to hear it sung.

  I’m sorry to report that
nobody serenaded me when I drove up the hill to the K.C. Irving Environmental Science Centre to meet my gracious host, Andrea Schwenke Wyile. But before we went down to the basement theatre we paused to peer in at the main hall, which is arguably the most welcoming space in any Canadian university I have ever seen. Almost worth going back to the world of classes and papers just to get to sit, read, and lounge there, and to think great thoughts.

  Andrea (a specialist in books for children) was able to help me with the technical setup, but the absence of security meant that we had to babysit the computer once it was ready to go. Her gallant husband, Herb Wyile (author of the well-known book on Canadian historical fiction Speaking in the Past Tense, not to mention Anne of Tim Hortons) brought her food from home, and I was able to slip away to the Blomidon Inn to get into my “publisher’s costume.”

  As usual, before the start of the show I was happy to greet my audience at the door, mingling with them and welcoming them to what I hoped would be a good time for all of us. This evening before the show I was delighted to meet Terry Fallis’s in-laws, who live in Wolfville, and who were later pleased that I incorporated Terry with a tribute that has now been included in my expanded paperback version of Stories About Storytellers.

  When the event started, in introducing me Andrea laid great stress on the role of Jennifer Knoch, a recent and fondly remembered Acadia graduate, and the editor of my book. I went on to repeat the tributes, so that many miles to the east Jen was blushing hotly for some reason unknown to her. The Acadia students were visibly pleased by all this, an inspiring example of good things happening to Acadia graduates just like them.

  The show went well, the Q&A session was fun (and included questions from some of Jen’s old teachers), and I signed a few books. Then I followed the line of least resistance down the hill and drove back through town, past the splendidly named bookstore, the Box of Delights, to the grand old Blomidon Inn. It is such a traditional Victorian mansion that when I asked for a drink they directed me to a deserted drawing room, the Rose Room. There I sat sipping my colour-coordinated cranberry juice, thinking that Wolfville is a very fine place to be.

  Waking up to a fine fall day at the Blomidon Inn in Wolfville is a perfect beginning. Roaming around the inn’s varied gardens is a very good way to ease into the day. But walking into the little town, then drifting down to the dykes that created the original Acadian settlement, is another level of happiness.

  In Stories About Storytellers I talk about my fascination with the dyking system introduced by the early Acadian settlers. So you can imagine my delight in being able to walk along the top of the historic dykes that run very close to downtown Wolfville. Down among the grasses, a class of lucky young students from Acadia was being introduced to the natural wonders of the dykes, but I walked east, away from town, noticing that the fields walled off from the sea are still so rich that some of them are devoted to growing fine, demanding crops of corn. And the Fundy sands were still red, the waters of the Bay were still blue, and the great wedge of Blomidon still stretched into the bay, like a backdrop to an Alex Colville painting. (My friend Alex was still alive then, and I’m deeply sorry that I didn’t take the chance to visit him, to renew our acquaintance and talk again about his father’s Fife hometown, Markinch, which I knew.)

  I had seen Cape Blomidon, the legendary home of Glooscap, in the distance in some Colville paintings, and in real life, but I had never been there. This was the day to fix that. I drove west, then turned right towards Blomidon and reached “the Look Off.” (I wonder if locals shout warnings of “Look off!” rather than “Look out!”) From that height you can see much of the Annapolis Valley laid out before you with the “sleepy town” of the Acadia school song in the middle distance, looking very fine.

  I drove on to the Blomidon Park (although I was tempted to drop in on Ami McKay, who lives nearby) and climbed down the steps to walk along the silent beach. I wasn’t exactly dancing on the shore, but it was a delight to get red Fundy sand on my shoes, and to dip a hand into the salt water. Then it was back to the idyllic town of Canning for a fine lunch, regretting the fact that its succulent former name, Apple Tree Landing, had been changed to honour a British prime minister with a name like an industrial process. Then it was ho, for Halifax, and my last event. Although at a roadside stand I did load up on local apples — Gravensteins (I can still taste the juicy crunch) — on my way back to the capital.

  Lean, fit, young Alexander MacLeod is a well-established teacher at St. Mary’s University (as well as being my friend, and a fine fiction writer with excellent bloodlines). In 2010, Dan Wells of Windsor’s own Biblioasis made the literary world sit up by publishing Alexander MacLeod’s first collection of short stories, Light Lifting. Before that, I had noticed some of Alexander’s stories appearing in literary magazines (traditionally the place where new fiction writers first swim to the surface), and had liked them. So I had taken Alexander aside at one point and suggested that I’d be interested in looking at all of his stories, with a view to publishing a collection.

  He was very polite in turning down that idea. He was pleased to be asked, he said, but I was “the wrong publisher.” I would be seen as his father’s publisher, now kindly taking on the son, so his stories would not be given the chance to stand on their own feet. He was right, of course, and I backed away. In due course, Dan (followed by impressed foreign publishers) published Light Lifting, and it was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Now the literary world is waiting and watching for the next book by Alexander MacLeod.

  And Alistair, a modest man who was very reluctant to talk about his own work (as I saw, yet again, when I took the French scholar Christine Evain to Windsor to interview him), would almost burst his buttons with smiling pride when asked to talk about his son’s work.

  When I arrived in Halifax, Alexander had kindly arranged for me to stay at the Waverley Hotel, east on Barrington Street downtown. It was a revelation! A traditionally furnished old Victorian hotel, where Oscar Wilde once stayed (with no comments about his room’s wallpaper ever recorded). I warmly recommend it to all literary visitors. As I learned on a later visit, it is possible to book the Oscar Wilde Room, where he stayed in 1887, although you risk being disturbed by his ghost (who played dead the night we slept there).

  As for St. Mary’s, Alexander drove me to the fine old campus and established me in the room where I performed my show to about forty kindly people, including my old friend Harry Thurston, the notable writer about the natural world and now the Writers’ Union chair. Harry, I’m glad to say, later wrote that he found my show “entertaining and moving,” which was a pleasing combination. And, as you’d expect, it was a pleasure to play “Niel Gow’s Lament” and talk about my affection for his father in front of Alexander.

  The next day, after a pre-breakfast stroll down the hill to where early-bird anglers were hauling dozens (“I’ve got about forty in the bucket here, so far”) of mackerel out of the Atlantic-facing harbour, it was time to leave that particular shore, and fly back to Toronto. But I was soon to be back in welcoming Halifax, to deliver the annual Flemming Lecture at King’s College. It was a great honour, and naturally around our house it became known as “The King’s Speech.”

  I enjoyed my time at the podium (but why do young people cluster at the farthest corners of a lecture hall, destroying any sense of community among the audience?) and enjoyed it best when I could get out beyond the podium to handle the lively Q&A session with the fifty or so bibliophiles in the audience attracted by my title, “With a Pinch of Genius: A Recipe to Produce Great Authors.” Afterwards, thanks to the fine people at the King’s Bookstore (working in the tradition of James Rivington, who opened Canada’s first English bookstore, in Halifax in 1761), I was able to sign copies of my book, before going off to dinner with some lively friends. They included Brian Flemming himself — local lawyer, former Trudeau advisor, and for many years the proud owner of Charles Ritchie’s boyhoo
d home, The Bower, where he encouraged me to come and snoop.

  I spent the night at the Lord Nelson Hotel, just along from where Hugh MacLennan’s boyhood house used to stand. The hotel is celebrated in my book as the place where an alert house detective saw something fishy in Don Harron, dressed to do book promotion for me as “Valerie Rosedale,” and told him sternly to move along from the lobby, where he was politely waiting for his publicist, teetering a little on his high heels.

  In the summer of 2013 Jane and I flew in to Halifax then headed all the way down the South Shore beyond Bridgewater to the famous little literary festival at Port Medway. We had heard about the pleasures of the festival from previous visiting authors like Margaret Atwood and Bill Weintraub, so we were keenly excited.

  The festival is the loving creation of a number of local literary types, and keen summer visitors like Philip Slayton and Cynthia Wine, whom we know as friends in Toronto. Philip Slayton is an alert-looking dark-haired man of medium height and build, but with a very level gaze through his glasses that catches your attention. The law professor-turned-Bay-Street bigwig saw law and politics and business at the highest levels, and let us all in on the secrets he had learned. His 2007 tell-all book, Lawyers Gone Bad, outraged the legal profession, but enthralled the rest of us. I am certain that, after his revelations of outbreaks of greed and malpractice in the profession, every bad apple has been removed from the barrel, and no further problems will ever return to vex us.

  For some reason, after years of cutlass fights with legal pirates, Philip found himself drawn to Nova Scotia’s South Shore, where piracy (from the LaHave River, with New England merchant ships a regular target) has a long history. In fact, in the 1980s (as Peter Rehak’s book Undercover Agent, published by me, happily reveals), little Lockeport down the shore was the site of what was then the largest drug-smuggling bust in Canadian history. When Philip and the accomplished Cynthia Wine (now there’s a name for a fine food writer!) found the place sixteen years ago, they promptly bought a summer home there, right beside the ocean. Then, eager to spread the news about the hidden treasure tucked away here in Nova Scotia, they founded the Port Medway Readers’ Festival in 2002, and the rest you know. It continues to attract locals, as well as come-from-aways based in Canada or in “the Boston states.”