Baie Vert

Five Chinese Brothers book cover

Jul 9 2011

Baie Verte and the Five Chinese Brothers

What caught my eye, as we were driving about the Baie Verte area, was a single row of colourful cottages by the sea just across a lush field of grain. On a different day, in a different light, the colours of the cottages would have been vibrant, the scene like something out of a children’s storybook with a title like Nancy’s Day by the Sea. Maybe that’s what my obsession with the ocean is all about; maybe I’m trying to relive some storybook that was read to me when I was a kid.

Funny thing is, I don’t remember ever being read to. I mostly remember me doing the reading and what I remember most about a lot of books were the covers. If a book had good artwork on it’s cover then I’d stare at if for a long time, taking it in, not trying to figure out what the story was about, but just enjoying the artwork.

But there is only one book I remember from my childhood and I remember it so vividly that it’s like the story happened: The Five Chinese Brothers. Politically incorrect by today’s standards, to be sure, but I loved that book, and still do. It was written by Claire Huchet Bishop in 1938. Comically cringeworthy, the assumption is that since they’re Chinese you can’t tell them apart. The story doesn’t say they were quintuplets, just that they were brothers.

The brother who could swallow the sea

Five Chinese super beings

Each of the brothers has one unique and extraordinary ability, a superpower, really, and the one that got himself into trouble was the one who could swallow the sea. A little boy nags the brother to swallow the sea so he can run about and pick up the helpless fish off the ocean floor. The brother relents, swallows the sea, but the boy won’t  come back when signalled; the brother, unable to hold the sea any longer, lets go and the boy drowns and the brother is arrested and condemned to die. 

The townspeople try several ways of executing the brother but fail each time because each time they are unwittingly trying to execute a different brother with a different ability.

When my kids were growing up I made sure I found The Five Chinese Brothers to read to them. I read a significant proportion of the library’s children’s collection to my kids, so I doubt it had the same impact on them as it did on me. But for me, I couldn’t read it often enough and I measured other books by the magic I got from it.

Hoping for a story as good as the Five Chinese Brothers

I would leave the library with huge armloads of books that I would read over the next three weeks and then go back for another load. I spent a lot of time in libraries looking for children’s books, sitting in those little chairs, checking out the covers and the stories and being excited about getting home to read them to my kids, always hoping I would find other stories as great as The Five Chinese Brothers. Now I spend a lot of time with Elaine exploring the Acadian coast ― Acadie― and stopping when we see a great scene and hoping we’ll find a story as delightful and magical as the The Five Chinese Brothers.

marsh

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cows in a pen by the sea

Sep 20 2010

Baie Vert

I was hoping to be surprised by a trip around Baie Verte to where New Brunswick meets Nova Scotia at Tidnish. I was hoping it might be like rounding the Cape Horn where we might discover some bird found only there, or that the customs were strange and exotic.

The only strange thing we found was a woman sitting in what looked like a toll booth with a Do Not Disturb sign on her door. No doubt she was “eccentric” and “intriguing” but she just looked silly sitting in that re-sided toll booth. And she wasn’t even in New Brunswick.

marshWhat we saw was a lot of marsh. Baie Verte is a small, narrow bay which means the shores don’t take the kind of pounding needed for beach so there were only a handful of places where the water was accessible. We were determined to find something so we explored a couple of them.

Mason Beach was a cottage village hidden in the woods much like Treasure Island (Surrette Island) up the coast near Cocagne. What these wooded points of land have in common is that they seem like secret hideouts, like the forts my friends and I would build in the alders near our home when I was a kid. 

sign post on beach road

I can see the appeal of these hideaways, though living in such close proximity with your neighbors—the cottages in these places are always packed close toether—is not for us. But we all need something different to keep our lives balanced. Hidden away in the trees with a group of people is probably good for some people.

Hicks Beach up the road, on the other hand, was almost treeless, with dead end roads running every which way. We were pursued by a backhoe the whole time we were there. He was repairing potholes and everywhere we turned he was either in front coming at us or coming up behind. We might have gotten out and explored but I’m sure anywhere we parked would have been in his way. Each time he passed us he had a friendly smile and wave for us.

In between these two beaches is Port Elgin. This village is like so many villages these days. Prosperity, centralization and improved roads have meant anything that holds a community together has been sucked away to places like Moncton. Standing in a parking lot by the bridge we looked around and saw nothing to draw us to explore. If we asked around I’m sure someone would have told us, “That’s where the mayor used to live and that’s where the bank was. That was the pub.” There was a beautiful bed and breakfast, the Veranda, but why would we stay? What would we do? Port Elgin, like so many small communities has been reduced to being a suburb.large old house across a small body of water




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found art sculputre of two manequins in a kayak

Aug 9 2009

Two bishops in a kayak

The bishops in the kayak piece is what caught our attention. It was on the lawn of a home in Bas Cap-Pelé along with maybe 20 other pieces with a sign in front that said, “Goguen’s Museé de l’Art Brut. Now, they may not have been bishops but we always try to make sense of what we see and these two mannequins had what look to be coconut miters on their heads.

They had other things on, like rain coats and there was a lobster trap perched on the bow, but it was the miters and the black Beatle wigs which made me think of bishops. It was probably a joke and I should have asked the punch line but art should stand on its own and when the artist puts a work on display he must abandon it to the viewer’s interpretation.

Desire Goguen on his front porch snapping beans.

An inscrutable art

Most of Désiré Goguen’s art brut is “inscrutable” that way. You sort of get the joke, but it doesn’t quite come through, unless there are puns in French that I can’t catch. That’s possible.

So, what is the punch line here. Are these the mounted police we all respect?

Andy McDonald of Andy’s Dummy Farm, which is not far away between Aulac and Cape Tormentine, solved the problem by nailing signs near his dummies telling you what he meant. I don’t remember reading any of them because they mostly seemed to be mean-spirited political jokes, the kind bitter old men make, and I can’t imagine Désiré Goguen being bitter. I can only imagine Désiré being generous and exuberant and if he doesn’t put up signs explaining his art it’s probably because he wouldn’t think of spoiling it for you. Think what you want, would be his wish.

artwork boat on a limb with shells on it

3,759 stuffed monkeys and counting

Proof of Désiré’s exuberance and good nature are the 3,759 (at the time of writing) toy monkeys in his house. I mean, the inside of the house is literally covered with his collection and his only explanation doesn’t really explain anything at all. “When my wife was living, I had 19 and she said that was too many.”

He seems to treat each one like a small child, touching its hand gently, turning the mechanical ones on and watching with delight as they dance, sing, or worse, both. “My brother sent me that one from Florida.” It was a gorilla sitting on the floor.

Elaine, who not only had a broken toe but was so hungry she was getting a headache because of our not being able to find a decent place to eat, waited in the car and missed out. Driving away after she said, “You’re smiling.” I was. I couldn’t help it.

older man with stuffed monkeys pinned to walls and ceiling.

It had been such a delightful encounter when I had expected an experience like Andy’s Dummies, especially when Désiré said to me after I had taken his picture, while he sat on the porch stemming yellow beans, “Look around and when you’re done I have something in the house to show you. You will like it.”

I dread encounters with people who impose their assumptions on strangers and, once I was done, I was going to slip back to the car but he caught me and I went in and was delighted. It took a moment, though, for me to realize that all those stuffed toys pinned to the walls and ceiling and posed on chairs and tables were all monkeys.

Perhaps that was the best part of the surprise for me, that they were monkeys. Salt and pepper shakers would have been impressive as would a beer stein collection that was that big. But they were monkeys.

The trip

Years ago when I was in the army I had made an over-hasty decision to embark on a motorcycle trip to Montreal on my first day of leave. It was a Monday and I had just completed my punishment of being confined to barracks for a week for falling asleep on duty. It had been a long, long week of marching on the parade square in the full heat of summer with 60 pounds of kit on my back. On top of that, there was the tedious reporting to the duty sergeant every hour on the hour in a different uniform. Man, it had been a long week and just when I thought I had made it through my five day punishment, I got nailed for a speck of rust on a magazine and got the weekend tacked on to the week as well as a $50 fine.

When I was finally free to go I impatiently packed my pack and headed out. My plan, such as it was, was to ride until I got half way, find a place off the road to sleep for a few hours and be in Montreal by morning. However, by the middle of the night I was exhausted and depressed and could find no suitable place to hide and sleep.

My enthusiasm for the trip evaporated, I decided to rely on stamina and just keep going but the chill of the night made me lonely. I wished I had some company so at a truck stop I bought a stuffed monkey and fastened it to my bedroll behind me so I could see him in my rear view mirrors, sitting like a passenger, smiling incessantly.

When dawn broke and people I passed on the highway could see my companion, they were delighted, especially the children. I never took a motorcycle trip without him after that. When I discovered that all Désiré’s toys were monkeys, that same delight returned after all those years.

Exactly how many monkeys typing away will eventually write a play as good as Shakespeare’s? I doubt Désiré would care, unless there were a chance of adding those monkey’s to his collection once they were done.

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