Nova Scotia (52 page)

   
Beyond the greed and the exploitation, Nova Scotia’s history
is also a story of recovery, self-reliance and searching for
something better. Nova Scotia was a disappointment at first to many
of the Loyalist refugees like Jacob Bailey who found the appearance
of the coast inhospitable and the citizens on the Halifax wharves
uncivilized. To modern immigrants like myself, however, the
landscape is rugged but inviting, the society relatively kind,
gentle and civilized compared to the rest of North America.
Economically we are poorer than many, but in terms of the quality
of life, I am certain we are much richer than
most.

Ice Islands in the Sea

An important part of the story of
contemporary Nova Scotia takes us back to where we began. This is
ultimately a province shaped by the sea. Here is a chunk of land,
nearly an island, that is surrounded by water and influenced by the
great elemental forces of the North Atlantic.

   
In April of 1987, after a very cold winter, the pack ice
moved out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, pushed out past Cape Breton
and drifted down along the Nova Scotian shore as far as Halifax
Harbour. Only once before in the previous forty years had ice
closed down the harbour, halting ferry services and the movement of
huge container ships. At Lawrencetown Beach, the amazing blue-white
islands of ice, in an infinite assortment of fantastic shapes,
stretched out to sea as far as the eye could behold. I walked with
my young daughter along the shoreline, dazzled by the ice islands
beaching themselves like crystalline whales upon the shores here.
Later, alone, I foolishly danced myself from one ice island to
another far out to sea where I had never before stood on anything
solid. When the wind shifted so that it was now blowing off the
land, I had to make a hasty retreat as the pans began to shift and
buckle and to drift away from the coast. My heart was pounding by
the time I took my final step ashore onto solid land and lay down
on the sand to watch an immense armada of white boats of ice set
sail for southern waters and dissolution.

The Flood Tides of
Christmas

Just three days before Christmas of
1995, I watched as storm surge waves slammed up and over the
natural beach barrier of stones at Lawrencetown, flooding my
neighbours who live in houses built in low-lying grasslands near
the sea. There is no question that the sea is attempting to reclaim
big portions of coastal Nova Scotia. Records show that storms and
excessive high tides along the Atlantic coast have accounted for
flooding up to six metres above the usual high tide markers at
regular intervals. There are certain pieces of real estate around
here that the sea would like to consume.

   
The tropics may come ashore here as well every few years with
a blast of warm tropical wind strong enough to knock down power
lines or reduce a barn to a pile of kindling but it is only a rowdy
tourist with a temporary visa. For this sea, this Atlantic beyond
our shores, is a northerly thing. We live in a cold place, shaped
by the whims of the North Atlantic. Unaware visitors from America
or Ontario are still paralyzed by the cold as they jump into those
clear, enticing blue waters of Martinique Beach on a warm summer
day. Even in summer the ocean water stings, electrifies, even
burns, because it is so cold. The arctic ice remains there to the
north, forever venting its cold. The cold water slowly drifts south
on the Atlantic side of Nova Scotia and saves us from ever having
to worry about air-conditioning in the summer.

The Grey Rocks of Fishermen’s
Beach

“Farewell to Nova Scotia, you
seabound coast, Let your mountains dark and dreary be.” So goes the
vintage song that Helen Creighton saved for us as she travelled the
province to collect traditional music of these shores. “Dark and
dreary” are not usually two words found in any tourist brochure,
but along with the appreciation of stunning clear days and bright
sunshine, I’ve cultivated a love for the infinite shades of grey
that haunt the sea and the sky of this coast.

   
It was on such a grey day in November 1995 that I was hiking
a remote headland  – or what was left of a headland – at the
mouth of Chezzetcook Inlet, with a photographer friend, Len
Clifford. We drove the twisting, turning road of the east side past
Deep Cove, Gaetz Island, Roasts Hay Island, Red Island and across
the bridge of Little River. I parked the car at the end of the road
and we had about one and a half kilometres or so to walk out along
a long, grim, stony spit known as Misener’s Island (although it
wasn’t really an island, not yet, anyway). We had a northeast wind
howling at our backs as we stayed on the landward side of Story
Head, headed toward a place labelled on the topographic map as
“Fishermen’s Beach.” The grey rocks bloomed with orange lichen,
choppy waves rattled the stones of the shoreline and the inlet of
Chezzetcook looked dark (yes, even dreary), deep asnd
ominous.

   
We hiked out to the remains of what had once been a thriving
fishing village thirty years ago. In three short decades so much
had changed. The fish had diminished, the fishermen and -women had
retreated inland to tether their lives more securely to mainland
life. But something else was gone as well. The land. There wasn’t
much left here but sea, stone and stubbles of drifted
wood.

   
Once there had been a road out here. Once there had been
solid soil, grass, dunes and stunted spruce trees, but the sea was
moving landward, drowning the coast, shipping the soil away,
leaving only this. If the tide was higher, we’d have to take a boat
to get here. As it was, we could stay almost dry on our hike here
to the haunting but beautiful remains of the fishing village where
old houses, boat sheds and wharves still remained.
u

   
The sea continues to carve away at Nova Scotia. In the most
basic way, we remain shaped by the sea. The sculpting is not at
some beginning or anywhere near some end point. But we are in the
midst of it. It was going on elong before we arrived and will
continue on long after we are gone. We are still just barely
beginning to learn how to live with it, to use this momentum, to
understand that the immense power of tide and wave and storm and
erosion is both a curse and a blessing.

   
With a photographer’s eye, Len pointed out a great piece of
sea-ravaged wood sculpted into something that looked like caribou
antlers. Other driftwood, the remains of the roots of a tree,
looked like bizarre alien creatures, yet others presented
themselves like sculptured figurines. When we arrived at the fish
shacks, our ears stinging with the cold, we noticed that several of
the buildings were jammed into each other at odd angles. Higher
tides had floated them off foundations and bumped them together as
if they were cars with clumsy drivers. As the tide withdrew, they
remained like this. Property lines once recorded in legal documents
in Halifax would have little meaning now that the sea had called
the mortgage on the soil.

   
Inside a boat shed, wavy lines of salt along the rough plank
walls marked the intrusive tides of spring and fall. All the
furniture inside one small saltbox house had been moved into the
cramped quarters of the upstairs as if to imply that as the sea
took over the real estate, all you had to do was move one flight
up. Other buildings had given up all hope already and collapsed
into the rubble of rock. One remaining house, with curled asphalt
shingles of bright blue crowded over with brilliant yellow orange
lichen, look oddly out of place, like some gaudy oriental
pagoda.

   
Broken lobster traps littered the community of ghosts. Shards
of yellow rope were everywhere. No other human soul walked the
stones, but the inlet was alive with the cacophony of Canada geese
and the sea oats hung with small grey and brown migrating birds.
Len spotted one lone weasel who followed us from pillar to post as
we surveyed this amazing ghost town. He watched our every move from
beneath a dozen fish sheds, always wary but intensely curious. Did
he remember raucous, happy summer parties here where bottles of
beer were emptied and the air was alive with human noise, a time
when scraps of food and living mice were plentiful? Or was he just
a tourist like us, passing through?

   
As the wind increased from the north and began to blow an
impertinent snow in our eyes, we retraced our steps back to shore
as the tide began to spank against the higher stones. And I kept
asking myself why this place, today so stark, so sea-weary and so
“dark and dreary,” was also so amazingly beautiful. But it was,
without a doubt, beautiful.

The Spiritual Link to the
Sea

We cannot hold back the sea on this
drowned coast, although we’ve tried. We’ve experimented with
tapping the energies of tidal forces and wind power, but not since
the days of sailing ships have we been truly comfortable with
harmonizing our needs with what the sea could provide. The sea has
at once diminished our land and enhanced it in a multitude of ways.
It has given life and taken life. It will take little notice of the
politics of Quebec or a Maritime Union or who has won the latest
provincial or federal elections.

   
The wood of the shacks of the East Chezzetcook village would
eventually rot or float away. What’s left of that bit of land will
be a rocky shoal, a good shallow place for undersea plant life and,
if we’re lucky, fish. Lawrencetown Lake, where I first learned to
sail my little Laser, will have successfully been reunited with its
parent, the sea. The waves will have swept away the living-room
furniture of my neighbours who built their homdes in the lowlands,
entrusted to the care of the barrier rocks above the beach that try
their best, but fail, to hold back the sea.

   
If the current trends of rising sea levels from global
climate change continue to enhance the natural advance of the
ocean, all of the above may happen much sooner than expected. We
aren’t talking about a thousand years here, not necessarily even
centuries. A generation, perhaps, and the sea will lap at the foot
of my driveway. Water Street in Halifax at that time will be
exactly that. The sea will prove to be the most successful
privateer ever to make port at that historic
city.

   
I’m hoping that we learn well the lessons of the past. We
cannot undo the mistakes we’ve made but we may yet learn to avoid
repeating them. The sea, even as it has intruded into our lives,
may be gracious enough to bring back the fish, the forest may be
benevolent enough, given time, to undo the pillage of
clear-cutting. May we gently tap the tides and the winds and leave
the coal in the ground to compress further into diamonds and spare
the lives of miners.

   
Today, Nova Scotia remains a unique and singular place. As
the sea has shaped the land and its history, so too has it shaped a
spirit that is intrinsic to our individuality and our culture. This
spirit, so obvious in our literature, our art, our music and the
tales that are told in the kitchens and backyards around the
province, is our greatest strength and certainly worth preserving.
Let the wharves wash off to sea. We can always build new ones. But
we cannot afford to let drift the spiritual link to the sea that
sustains who we are.

Chapter 46

Chapter 46

Air Tragedy at Sea

On September 2, 1998, Swiss Air
Flight 111 was on a routine flight from New York to Geneva when
something went terribly wrong in the skies over Nova Scotia. The
flight crew noticed smoke in the cockpit and at about 10 p.m. they
began a descent to make an emergency landing at Halifax
International Airport. But first they had to dump the considerable
amount of fuel on hand for the long trip across the Atlantic. As
they headed out over St. Margaret’s Bay, instruments and controls
began to fail as the fire spread and the plane crashed in the bay
about halfway between Peggy’s Cove and Bayswater. As the aircraft
broke apart on impact, all 229 people on board were killed and,
most likely, all on board died instantly.

   
That night, rescue vessels and aircraft, aided by local
fishermen in their boats, mounted a rescue operation of heroic
proportions but it soon evolved into an attempt to recover the
debris floating in the sea. The world’s attention was directed to
small villages around St. Margaret’s Bay, where Nova Scotians
hosted families of the victims and offered food, shelter and
support. The Canadian Coast Guard, Navy and RCMP worked tirelessly
for months as the recovery operation continued. Navy divers
searched in dark and deadly conditions undersea among the
razor-sharp metal wreckage of the aircraft to retrieve the cockpit
voice and data recorders and human remains for identification. The
overall operation continued until December of 1999 when
ninety-eight percent of the aircraft had been retrieved and all who
had been on board were identified by forensic
efforts.

   
An investigation determined that the cause of the accident
was faulty wiring in the entertainment system and the flammable
coating of the wires themselves. In the days that followed the
crash, debris washed up on the shores of the bay and westerly winds
pushed a considerable amount of it along the coasts of the
province. My own morning walk along Lawrencetown Beach several days
after the crash led me to dozens of pieces of what was once the
inside cabin wall of Swissair 111. It reminded me of the marine
disasters of ships down through the centuries along this coast and
how unforgiving the sea can be when our technology fails us at sea
or in the air.