Valley Memories

I worked the provincial election yesterday, crossing out voters from the voters' list like a good little democrat. The result was unprecedented, an NDP majority. Most people are already proclaiming the destruction of Nova Scotia and I too am concerned about the result. Having experienced this election, I must say that Nova Scotia may have three major parties and the Green Party but the major parties are all clones of one another. Each party occupies the middle ground and don't have any major policy differences, only different "leaders". So maybe people just found Darrell Dexter more palatable than Dalton McGuinty clone Stephen MacNeil and our very own Rodney MacDonald. So don't expect anything revolutionary from these NDP. They just watered down Liberal red a bit.

But more important than the election was the nice lady that I worked with at the poll. We had so few voters that we had lots of time to get to know one another. Her story was amazing, as are the stories of many older people in Cape Breton, people who were born during the Depression and lived dramatically different childhoods than you and I.

She grew up down the road from our current house. She described a childhood with food produced completely at home, from a healthy vegetable garden and animals. One might purchase certain items from a shop (flour, sugar, tea) but this would be rare. Carrots, beets, turnips and potatoes were common.

She went to the local school which was a one room schoolhouse. She played with her brothers and sisters because while meeting other kids was possible, it wasn't common with the distances involved. She had a large family, which meant lots of little hands to help with chores, essential without an invisible pack of energy slaves.

The horse and buggy might take to the dirt roads on occasion but this would only be to church, dances and to visit with neighbours. That's it. And visits were so important, sharing food and tea together, cementing bonds. She almost never went to Mabou and other towns and the only way to go was catching a ride with the mail car.

Anyway the point of all this is that in my colleague's experience I see my future and the future of our children. A geographically constrained life but a life of intimate connections with the land, one's family and one's closest neighbours. It's coming and thankfully we can still learn from those who carry the not so distant past in their minds.

Have you met anyone who remembers these bygone/coming days?

Cajun Cleansing

Ever heard of the Acadians? From previous visits to the Maritimes, I was aware of them but for me they were just the random small French Canadian communities. I didn't know much about their complex history and relationship with the British officials that used to run Canada. But they have quite a tragic and violent history.

Back when the British and French (and the Dutch too I suppose but to a lesser extent) were starting to occupy and colonize North America, the first settlers in the Maritimes (Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) were French. This area was called Acadia and these people were the Acadians.

Then in 1713, as part of the Treaty of Utrecht between Britain and France, Acadia was handed over to the British and all European colonists came under their jurisdiction. No one really considered the Mikmaq but then what else is new? I wonder what kind of relationship the Acadians had with the Mikmaq. I'm sure they were told to despise the savages and probably just accepted that they should hate them. Though the Mikmaq did help the Acadians when they needed them most.

The British regarded the Acadians suspiciously as a potential sixth column should they come into conflict with France again; they were probably already making plans. And the Acadians didn't fit into those plans. So they expelled them from Acadia in 1755. Families were separated, farms burned, livestock slaughtered. People were rounded up by soldiers and forced onto waiting ships to be carried to the 13 colonies and then-Spanish Louisiana.

In fact, the term cajun from Louisiana comes from Acadian (say it really fast). The cajun people were Acadians from the Maritimes. Apparently the Spanish were happy to have the deportees since they were Catholics. Quite a change from the Maritimes to Louisiana. Can you imagine growing up knowing one climate and one way of life and then having to start over in a completely different climate? I guess we might experience chances like this in our lifetime with our own human-made climate change.

Many Acadians ran away and hid in the forests of the Maritimes. They were helped by the Mikmaq. These Acadians eventually returned and started the Acadian communities that continue to this day.

But despite their efforts to have this ethnic cleansing recognized for what it is, the British and subsequent Canadian governments have never admitted their crimes. Each time we go to Sydney we see a sign which states: Celebrating Democracy, 1758-2008. Apparently the government of Nova Scotia is proud of its representative democracy despite the treatment of both the Acadians and the Mikmaq. I guess technically the 250-year period started just after the deportations and the powerful write the history.