Travelogue Maritimes

On to Beddeck

We broke camp in Cheticamp with our next destination a yurt in Beddeck.

Beth spoke to a business owner who told her about a coffee shop in Cheticamp that we needed to try. We stopped at that shop, Marguerite, before leaving town and were blown away because it had books, coffee and real local things as well as some imported Italian spices and pasta.

We would have been in there multiple times if we had noticed the understated, hip independent business. My favorite thing there was a sour cream glazed donut, a square, rich, greasy confection with perfect icing, the best I have had since Clarence Country Donuts.

I also made an important intellectual decision as we packed. I brought Hemingway’s “The son also rises” vacation reading but after 3 attempts, couldn’t get pulled in. I immediately seized on a book by Larry the Cable guy on the bookshelf in the kitchen and took it into the bathroom. Lewis Black wrote the intro and speculated he might be the only Jewish person Larry knows. Within 2 pages, Larry was suggesting it would take 27 minutes of toilet reading to complete his tome. I pondered that, wiped and decided Larry needed to come home. I left Hemingway on the shelf.

Yurt time as has come

The owner of the yurt advised us to text an arrival time and only carry what we needed from the parking lot because it was a 5 minute walk to the riverfront abode and he needed to orient us.

We parked and headed down the woodchip-and-stone path through the forest of spruce, birch and blooming crabapple framed by Buddhist statuary, a yin and yang hanging from a tree and a “don’t worry, be happy sign.”

More than 10-minutes later, we arrived at the yurt to find our host Clay sitting on the step by the river. He instructed us to remove our shoes upon entering the yurt. Beth banged her head when entering and immediately had to take a seat.

Clay, rather than expressing empathy or compassion, made a joke about there being a hospital in town if we needed it.

He showed me the drinking water, the washing water, where the composting toilet was and how to heat water for an outdoor shower. He also pointed out the flashlight, a huge array of candles and battery-powered lighting but nothing solar before slipping off to grab us a fresh lighter.

There were multiple copies of old “Surfer” magazines, chimes, a drum and Buddhist/hippie motif. I seized upon a collectors edition of Rolling Stone featuring Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.

Clay returned and entered with the new lighter, failing to remove his shoes. Hey, if you are going to give a phony chill vibe while making mean comments when a guest is potentially concussed maybe no one will notice.

Carnivorous rabbits

Clay departed and I headed into the weeds to pee and immediately saw a 3-foot-tall carnivorous jack rabbit staring me down from under a crabapple.

I thought it was only in Newfoundland but alas, I noticed in a week of traveling here, no children and no roadkill. I suspect ravenous, vicious rabbits.

I got up to pee in the night and found myself in Bobcaygeon. “I saw the constellations reveal themselves one star at a time” As Gord Downie would sing it but there was neither Willie Nelson nor wine.

Beth’s head eventually stopped hurting. We listened to the birds and the running river and the buzzing of the bees in the crabapples.

Into town

Beddeck is a hip, upscale community that seems to thrive on tourism. We explored the waterfront some and even took a drive to the Alexander Graham Bell museum. I knew of Bell from his wax cylinders and the telephone. I did not know about his other inventions and experiments like the hydrofoil and his roll in the first flight of an aircraft in Canada in partnership with Glenn Curtiss among others.

About that magazine

I dug into that Dead magazine for a couple hours, fully indulging in the drug culture fomented by Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Pigpen, Mickey Hart and the boys. I have never come close to taking an acid test. I made it to one show ever at Rich Stadium and still don’t get it. Maybe it’s because I don’t do drugs even if, in my teens and 20s I smoked pot. Today, I can’t touch the stuff because it makes me forget things.

I liked the Dead for the harmonies of the album “Uncle John’s Band” and the meaningful lyrics of “Ripple.”

“Reach out your hand, if your cup be empty

“If your cup is full, may it be again

“Let it be known, there is a fountain

“That was not made by the hands of men.”

I sat outside shortly after sunrise and listened to the birds. On the river, a spotted sandpiper stopped to check the shore. A common goldeneye flashed past. There were ovenbirds, multiple warblers and the omnipresent redstart.

If Clay had been kind or even a little chill toward Beth it would have been a better experience. We packed up and headed toward Victoria-by-the-Sea via the Ferry to Prince Edward Island

About the Ferry

Our plan was to take the Ferry to PEI, spend a couple days and then take the Confederation Bridge through New Brunswick to Nova Scotia, and Halifax via the Confederation Bridge.

First, we had to get our Hyundai tuna can on the ferry. We queued as instructed. Off to the side, the truck lined up as well with the drivers outside their vehicles in a parking-lot coffee klatsch. The only thing that seemed different was none of them smoking or even vaping. Also, they were actually engaged in conversation, not their phones.

The Ferry from PEI arrived exactly on time and unloaded in time for reloading for the return trip. We pulled in and proceeded as directed to the second level down below. The process was exceedingly orderly as directed by orange-vested NFL employees (I think it stands for Nova Scotia Ferry Line.)

We made our way upstairs to the customer lounge and struck up a conversation with the a couple women behind us who had just met in the parking lot, a woman from Texas and one from New Brunswick.

The Texas person said she lived near Dallas but immediately offered that she could not stand President Trump.

The Canadian said she no longer talks about politics and then zipped her lip until opening it again. That’s happened with a lot of people who support President Trump. They claim to be “conservative” but can’t defend his actions or our Constitution because their adoration eclipses their ability for reason.

“After July 4, something very good is going to happen,” she said. “Everyone will be very happy. My sister told me about it a year ago and I researched it with videos online and I know it is true. My husband is excited too.”

We tried to press her a bit, politely, to ascertain what this great news might be but she would not come forth with any detail.

She would have agreed with the crazy woman who told me my family member with Stage 4 ovarian cancer should stop chemo and other treatment and take Ivermectin.

Two nights later, laying in bed, it came to me. What change would make a Canadian happy? It had to be only one thing. Becoming the 51st State.

I immediately regretted not making a crack about “Governor Carney” the nickname our President has given to the Canadian premier because I think she might have spilled the beans.

Generally speaking, most Canadians know much more about United States affairs than we do about Canada.

In PEI and Nova Scotia, we spoke to numerous people who had relocated from Ontario. It was a consistent theme, like visiting California or Florida and finding no one living there is from there. Many Canadians see greener grass in the Maritime provinces.

An idyllic place with an ‘old’ problem

Just like our friend in Hall’s Harbour explained, “if you are looking for things made in China, you won’t find it here.”

“Victoria-by-the-Sea” is a quaint, harbour community with soul. We parked on a pier with two restaurants and went walking.

The first shop we came to was “Ewe and Dye” a weavery where Christine Stanley was standing behind the counter, working and owning.

Her goods were expensive, $70 for a wool hat, more for a blanket, no apologies, but value and honor and respect for craft. She spins her own year, weaves on a foot-powered loom and turns out beautiful product.

VBS is a restrictive community, in a word. Stanley explained to us the reason it is different is the people and governance. In the core, shop owners must call the place home. That way they are home in the winter and so is everyone else, to weave, to paint, to make pottery. In other words, the shop owners live on premise.

She proudly showed us a picture of her four sheep. She also explained that VBC has a rule against short term rentals like AirBnb because that property use drives up rents and chases out artists and people who work for them.

I thought about that. Of our lodgings on this trip, our studio in Halifax certainly drove up neighborhood rents and was the sort of business people object to. Our bunker in Wolfville, as well as the Yurt and Cabin were the sorts of lodging that are purpose-built for the industry, not stealing housing from working poor but supporting people as a business.

Common sense and soap

Across the street Pieter and Geraldine Ijsselstein. Pieter makes potato juice soap and pottery. Geraldine paints. Like many people in their community, they retired from other things to move and be artists.

They never really retired, a common theme, instead, doubling down on being artists. Pieter is, however, an inveterate capitalist. Sales of Island Potato Soap were going so well he opened a production facility in Charlottetown to keep up with demand.

We saw his soap for sale everywhere on the Island and took a bar with us as well as purchasing a small pottery bowl that Geraldine carefully wrapped with bubble wrap for safe transport in our luggage.

Around the corner we met Henry Dunsmore, standing on a ladder putting a fresh white paint coat on trim outside his studio. He came here upon leaving a different job, about 30 years ago. He is 79 and still painting, for studio improvement and landscapes he sells in his studio.

That’s the thing, with the exception of one potter we met, everyone running a studio in this wonderful enclave seems to be at the end, not the beginning.

After today’s travelogue, there are likely two more from this trip, including ourn stay in a PEI cabin, the Festival of Small Halls and some walks on red sand beaches.