New Brunswick

Jan 20 2010

Acadian expulsion ends in complete failure

Why here?

Of all the places returning Acadians could have chosen to begin again, why Memramcook? Like most contemporary travellers, I stood on a historically significant spot and wondered why this community, built on either side of the Memramcook River, became significant. It certainly wasn’t obvious to someone driving in from Moncton on the new Trans-Canada Highway.

What I should have done — and who knows, maybe I’ll try it someday — was pack up my family, Elaine’s family and several others too and starting at, say, Louisiana, make my way up the American Atlantic coast until I got near the original Acadie and head inland far enough not to be noticed and start looking for terrain I know how to work, like marshes that could be turned into farms using digues. Looked at from this perspective, Memramcook looks like an obvious choice to begin to recreate Acadie. In fact, it’s so obvious, one wonders how they got away with it and why the British weren’t waiting for them.

Returnees weren’t crows and they weren’t flying

A quick look at the map reminds one of how close to the ocean Memramcook is, a mere 15 km as the crow flies. But the returnees weren’t crows and they weren’t flying. They may have been sailing or rowing up, or trudging alongside the Memramcook River, a meandering, tidal river that eventually empties into Chignecto Bay, the bay that borders the original Acadie.

They did get away with it, though. The first post-deportation Acadian village, Village des LePlatte, dates from 1766, 11 years after the deportation began. I say began, because it was a huge undertaking and took several years, starting in 1755 and ending roughly around 1763. Given that the first new village dates from 1766, one can see that if the goal was to completely expel the Acadians, then it had failed almost before it was even completed.

A vibrant culture hundreds of thousands strong

Of course, that’s my view, the view of someone sitting comfortably in a Canadian home in 2009 basking in the safety of a modern democracy where governments apologize (however, obliquely) for past wrongheadedness like the deportation. Still, it’s hard not to think that Acadie has succeeded after all. The original Acadians were a people, not a country, distinct from their motherland and from the conquerors. They still are distinct. And they’re hundreds of thousands strong now.

By Archie • First Page, Memramcook, New Brunswick

tarmac of a parking lot under a big, blue, cloud-filled sky

Oct 15 2009

Tormentine’s been left behind

I can’t help but be awed by Confederation Bridge. By any standard, that’s a huge bridge. On a trip to P.E.I. during the nineties, at the beginning of what was supposed to be a trip across Canada, I saw the bridge in mid-construction. I saw it from the ferry, which would soon be replaced. For the ferry’s staff watching that bridge being built must have been like a condemned man watching carpenters build the scaffold he’d hang from. I don’t know, though, because I didn’t ask anybody. In fact, I had no idea the bridge was going to be anything but good for everyone.

Before that 1996 trip even began, though, on the road from Fredericton to the ferry, the drive shaft fell off the old truck I had bought. That alone should have warned me to abandon the whole cross-Canada trip, but I had committed myself to it and there I was. It wasn’t a pleasure trip and I don’t think about it much anymore. However, being in Cape Tormentine again this summer it was hard not to superimpose the two trips, the one with my son over the one with Elaine. The only consistently delightful thing on that former trip was my son, Christopher, who was 11 at the time, who chattered incessantly to everyone and always seemed to be happy just to be there with me. He’s a soldier now.

woman walking on boardwalk to beach with blue sky overhead

Tormentine’s weather as wonderful as I remember it

This summer, on the first of two trips to Cape Tormentine with Elaine it was the sunniest of days with the freshest of breezes. It had all the makings of a perfect day. Perfect for traveling, for taking photos, but most of all, it was perfect for being with each other. Our happiest times together are when we’re in the car going someplace. It doesn’t have to be somewhere new because we are always new and see things around us with new eyes and more memories.

I wanted to go to Cape Tormentine because in my mind it is an exciting departure point. My very first trip there, back in 1977, I was with another young soldier, Randy LaPointe from Lorne, N.B. We had hitched to the ferry from the army base and walked on with our packs on our backs and no cares in the world. It was sunny then, too. It was a good trip for both of us.

The next trip was still as a young soldier but alone on my motorcycle. I remember a hostel or two, some beaches, but mostly I remember the ferry. I remember going to the front of the line because motorcycles boarded first and I remember being the first one off. There’s something about watching the ramp drop and the wharf appearing and getting the signal to disembark that makes you feel like you’re off on some great adventure. The weather then was unrelentingly beautiful. At least that’s how I remember it.

Something hangs over Tormentine

So, I had expected wonderful weather this time and wasn’t disappointed. It was indeed sunny. But times have changed. Something hangs over Cape Tormentine now that wasn’t there on any of those other trips and it doesn’t go away. It’s like standing at a site where a terrible accident no one can forget has happened. It’s a town that’s been left behind, abandoned.

A few families still live there, but it’s mainly a cottage and camping area now, which means there is no nasty, thriving industry to spoil a holiday. No trucks. No trains. No traffic. Nothing. Where people once parked their vehicles waiting to board the ferry the paint of the dividing lines is fading. The wharf isn’t being maintained and is now fenced off, condemned. The government buildings look dark and cold even on a sunny, summer day. The family restaurant that must have been thriving back then, looks suspended in time, frozen at the moment the bridge opened and the ferries stopped running.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Cape Tormentine and recommend the trip there. It still has loads more character than its usurper, Cape Jourimain, where the bridge begins. I like Cape Tormentine for much the same reasons the residents are bitter: it has been forgotten. In Cape Tormentine it’s always sunny but the mood is melancholy, which isn’t always bad, especially when you can close the book or you can get on the highway and leave.

By Archie • Cape Tormentine, First Page, New Brunswick

old railway station converted into information bureau but windows boarded up

Oct 15 2009

Terminal Tormentine

The waves are choppy and the wind blows cold at Cape Tormentine, even though it’s early August. Tormentine, even the name sounds tortured, tormented, and harsh like turpentine. It’s a point of land sticking out into Northumberland Strait, the beginning of our coastal route and the closest point in New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island.

The ferry to Borden, PEI, used to leave from here, but now the terminal is abandoned and derelict. Wind blows through broken windows. Plants are breaking up the pavement and reclaiming the ground. The wharf and surrounding buildings all have fallen into disrepair and are unsafe. A chain link fence attempts to prevent access to the curious and foolhardy. A few recreational fishermen, mostly retirees, some fathers and sons cast their lines into the water in the areas where they’re allowed to go. The Confederation Bridge, built 12 years ago, has changed everything. What was once a bustling and important little village is now breathing its last.

dilapidated restaurant with RV park behind it and then the ocean

There are always survivors

But a few businesses have managed to hang on. There’s still a campground here that seems full enough and a restaurant, Smallwood’s. Actually, we surmise that they both may be owned by the same person — the campground provides captive customers for the overpriced, stuffy and unimaginative eating establishment.

The decor and the feel of the restaurant down to the swivel seats at the lunch counter are of the 1950s. Dust motes drift in the dingy light coming through the venetian blinds. It feels like a mirage or a hologram. It seems like the very molecules that comprise the place struggle to not dematerialize. The waitress at Smallwood’s confides, “I hate the bridge. I used to waitress at the restaurant in the Ferry Terminal”. Clearly, this is a step down, way down.

An old and sad story

Cottages, tiny palaces of summer pleasure and whimsy remain, wildflowers and whirligigs in the yard. These folks have stayed for the ocean.

The fate of this village is a story told over and over again in New Brunswick. Progress diverts energy and money away from small once prosperous towns — and the towns inevitably die unless they can reinvent themselves.

I just realized that I’m speaking of Cape Tormentine as if it’s a person. A terminal person (pun intended). Despite the stark and lonely aura of the place, I find beauty in the sagging, faded buildings. A once perky beauty relaxing into an inevitable greying and softening. The rusting water tower looks like a work of art with its varying shades of orange, brown and blue. The trees poking out of the windows and waving at us like neighbor’s hands in the wind make me smile. The forest knows it has a good chance of taking over again.

There is passion and excitement here too, though, and it definitely comes from the sea. Elemental, big whitecap waves, loud surf. Wheeling birds, flags and fabric flapping in the wind. It fills us with excitement, sadness and a strange kind of undefined longing….

From a distance, I can see something arching out of the sea. I imagine that it’s a water serpent or a roadway being held up on the tails of whales. But it’s man made — the usurping Confederation Bridge.

By Elaine • Cape Tormentine, First Page, New Brunswick

Sep 25 2009

To the lighthouse — Elaine

“Today I just want to get in the car and go,” Archie says. It is the first day of our summer holiday at our cottage in Cocagne, NB, and already Miscou Island is beckoning. We always drive until we get to the very end, to the lighthouse. It is a pilgrimage to the northeastern-most point of New Brunswick, to remote a place of beauty. Even on a cloudy day everything is luminous: rocks, flecks of sand, old lobster traps, scrubby trees, sea birds and, of course, the surf. When we’re there, a shift takes place.

Getting to Miscou is a relief. The drive isn’t easy. You have to really want to get there but then, at the end, I see the tall, massive, octagonal shaped, red and white lighthouse held down with guy wires and even though the lighthouse is so huge, the restraining wires give the illusion that it could float away like a balloon.

The Lighthouse

I have to crane my neck way back to see the top against the blue, blue sky. This sky color can only be seen once you reach the ocean. You don’t get that color anywhere else, only here. Everything opens up inside. I can see and breathe and the amazingly good smelling air has a healing quality. The rhythm of the waves calms me, the whole journey is a metaphor for my life the past couple of years.

It has been a struggle to work three jobs and travel back and forth between two locations, only seeing my much loved husband on weekends. Finances haven’t been easy, either. They rarely are during a time of transition. The grind wears me down but we are trying to start something new, but I do know where I want to go and the life that I want to have.

Anyone fifty-plus knows making big life changes isn’t easy but unless I take steps to reinvent and renew myself, life becomes rote and unconscious and is a kind of death. After a low emotional ebb, after soul searching and praying, something opens up in me, just like the sky at the end of Miscou Island. I have that feeling of freedom, I am dwelling in a place of magical beauty and can see the big picture of my life. That’s what pilgrimages are meant to do.

Walking as mediation

I love to walk. I like to get a measure of a place through my stride, so down the beach we go sometimes looking far out across the water. I can see the deep, inky blue hills of the Gaspé from here, and they beckon. White cumulus clouds skirt the top of the hills, like icing on a cake. I like the feeling of connection to Quebec, a faraway kingdom, one that I’ll have to visit someday, too.

The sounds of the surf are fairly subdued today and the rhythm affects the way I breathe. They relax me. If I stop to listen, I can hear music and singing in the sound of the water. If I were a musician and could write down this musical score, it would be transcendent, brilliant, even. This place brings out the creative in me.

Beach stones

One of the biggest treats of Miscou Island is discovering the rocks and stones. Note to self: I must look into the geology of this place, but for now, I cast my eyes downward and look for interesting specimens. Almost all of them are tumbled into smooth spheres or ovals. Some are striped in layers of black and white like Yin Yang symbols, some are splashed with a deep red like spatters from a careless artist’s brush, some are speckled like a bird’s egg. All are beautiful, especially when they’re glistening with water. They are all sculptural and I want to take them all home — Miscou, please come with me!—but I have to settle for just a few and put them in the pockets of my hoodie. The rocks make me look like I have a lumpy tummy and they clack in my pockets as I continue to walk along.

Miscou beach goes a long way around a snub-nosed tip of land with inland tidal ponds along the way, each one a slightly different ecosystem haven for gulls, terns, cormorants and ducks. These pools, surrounded by razor sharp beach grass and succulent beach peas are full of life, the water’s surface still and glassy, or faintly rippling from a kiss of the wind, counterpoint to the moving, frothy surf. The seabirds dive here, spearing small fish.

Another treasure that I love to find at Miscou is beach glass — broken shards from pop or beer bottles or old cosmetic jars. The surf here rolls the glass smooth and frosty-looking in fairly short order.

I know glass, I used to be a stained-glass craftsman. Glass is basically silica — sand heated to extremely high temperatures and rolled into sheets or blown into vessel shapes. I like the cycle and irony that beach glass represents. Sand is made into glass by people, glass is made back into sand by nature.

The most common colors are clear white or brown. It’s always a treat to find green, blue or even sometimes purple or red. Into my pockets these jewels go, too. I’m going to continue the circle, another spiral higher and make these gems into some kind of art once I get enough of them. Then maybe I’ll bring it down to the beach and offer it up to the god of surf.

Engine Trouble

All of my imaginings are interrupted by the sound of engines. Two four-wheelers speed toward us, rooster tails of sand thrown up behind them. Deep tracks are left in the impressionable sand. I try not to be annoyed or judgmental, but I say to Archie, “How can they think that’s fun?” He looks at me like, Don’t you understand the energy of boys? I’m on a pilgrimage, and I guess they’re on a noisy, destructive quest full of adventure, danger and daring.

Time to turn back, the lighthouse again in our view, the friendly giant. The walk back always goes faster than the walk out. In some places we retrace our own footprints. I lighten my load of a few rocks, quicken my step and soon we’re back at the parking lot by the lighthouse.

Last year when we were here, an ice cream stand had appeared when years before there was no hint of any commercial enterprise. Pretty good idea, though. Ice cream on a summer day after a long walk on the beach is pretty appealing. Nothing says summer more than that! But last year when we ordered up two cones of vanilla, they said, “Sorry, we’re out of ice cream.” We were really disappointed. But Miscou is remote and when you run out of ice cream, who knows how far you have to go to get more. All the way back to Lameque? Shippigan?

But this time, they were well stocked. We lick our generous cones fast before the ice cream melts while sitting in the parking lot. Eating ice cream makes me feel like a kid, or is it Miscou that has me feeling renewed and youthful?

Flight

We finish and it’s time to go. The drive back, we know, is long. Just as we are leaving, the doors of a minivan open up and three men emerge, two with guitars in black cases and one with a double bass. They carry their instruments toward the beach. Are they going to test the acoustics in the lighthouse or just play on the beach in harmony with the sound of the waves? Again, a bit surreal. An Impressionist painting. Actually, I am thinking, this may really be a dream.

By Elaine • First Page, Miscou, New Brunswick

Sep 25 2009

To the lighthouse — Archie

Pilgrimage

Once a year since we’ve discovered it was there we’ve made our pilgrimage to Miscou Island, the furthest point north east you can go in New Brunswick. Now, we always know we’re going. Even when we set out to go somewhere else, we know we’re going. Miscou has that kind of pull. This year, though, it had more pull than usual.

This time we had set out to explore Val Comeau Beach near Tracadie-Sheila, which is about midway between our cottage and the island. We weren’t up for a long trip since it was the first day of an all too brief holiday and commuting to work had been taking its toll on us as was being away from each other during the week. Much of the trip would be highway driving and in my little Echo with the wind blowing loudly in the windows — no air-conditioning — we may as well be traveling separately. So Val Comeau seemed reasonable.

Magical Naviagtion

woman measuring distance on map with finger

Val Comeau’s great. It’s a great beach and has a picnic spot by the beach that will be our lunch spot from now on when we go to Miscou. But halfway through the meal I knew we were going to Miscou. I’m sure Elaine did, too. “How far is it to Miscou?” I asked her while we were checking Tracadie later. “Not far,” she answered. Elaine’s the navigator. So we were on our way; as if we ever doubted it; as if we even had a choice. I don’t even remember asking if we were going.

What pulls us there? The beaches at Cap Lumière, another remote spot, are better. It’s not the restaurants. Miscou Lighthouse has only an ice cream stand which wasn’t there two years ago and last year didn’t have any ice cream. Locals have started to put some effort into making it more of a tourist destination, but we were going there when there was only the lighthouse. What drew us?

Elaine says you have to want to go to Miscou and she’s right because. It’s not enroute to anywhere you’re likely to be heading. But once you’re there…

woman walking on beach in overcast weather

Reaching Miscou Lighthouse is like reaching somewhere sacred. Stark, blown clean by the wind, most everything behind the beach is bog. It’s the edge of the province and when I step past the lighthouse it’s like walking through a membrane out of my world and into some other state of mind.

Most days the surf is serious ocean surf, the wind almost relentless, the beach goes on too far for us to reach the end. On a clear day across the Baie-des-Chaleurs you can see the Gaspé Peninsula, another province, a whole other world. When you look east you’re looking into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And always the wind blows. It’s an edge of the world.

It’s a place where you can breathe, where you’re conscious of breathing and how enjoyable it can be. The rhythm of the surf washes things away the way I thought confession was supposed to. When I emerge and am walking across the parking lot back to our car my perspective has always changed for the real, I see things clearer. I see myself clearer. I see Elaine clearer and she is more dear to me which tells me how things have to change in our lives, that we can’t go on working in two different cities. I guess those kinds of realizations are what you’d expect to get from a sacred place.

But what is the draw of Miscou? So it’s an edge of the world. There are many such edges, the earth being round and all. They stick out into the ocean and many have limited real estate appeal. We had thought of buying a cottage there until we visited in September. I was in nearby Lameque in March one year and it was like far-north tundra. But in July it is the temperature we’re happiest and most carefree but July is nice everywhere around here. Why go to Miscou?

There might be history there, but I don’t know any of it. I know something of Wilson’s Point on the other side of the island where about 13 families live. A Scotsman was the first European to settle there and it might be interesting but when we were there we thought only of getting to the lighthouse. “All right, that’s enough,”Elaine said after 15 minutes. Wilson’s Point was her idea.

It could be the lighthouse, which is kind of odd when you think that a lighthouse’s value is in warning you to stay away. It’s a wonderful structure, though, a true lighthouse and on past visits I’ve wished we could live nearby. Living in the lighthouse has never been a fantasy, but there is at least one cottage nearby that would be a great retreat and was even for sale once but we passed because not only had we visited in September, we didn’t have enough money to spend on a cottage we could visit once, maybe, twice a year unless we’re more independently employed.

In fact, I don’t think I would want to live there at all. It’s important not to. It could be a retreat, the kind where you have to go someplace like Shippagan for “supplies” periodically, but living there would be an ordeal, especially once the snow began to fly and I’ve had enough of that kind of living and don’t get me started.

Even worse, though, living there would likely destroy what it is to us: a pilgrimage. Its value to us is in getting there, breathing for a while, feeling the waves, looking at the distant vista that is Gaspé and the Gulf and leaving. Leaving is as important as getting there.

Enlightenment, no matter how profound, is diddling if you don’t bring it back to the real world and use it. The enlightenment I got this year? That more than anything there is a person I would like to drive around with, write with, work with and explore with. I’ve had this insight before but it’s taken a year of long separations for it to actually make sense enough to want to make it real.

By Archie • First Page, Miscou, New Brunswick

Sep 9 2009

Jeannette Despres

Jeannette Despres loves the Cocagne Coast as much as we do. She settles herself in our cottage and checks the view out our front window to see how much of the water and Cocagne Island are visible between cottages. She would like a more expansive view, I can tell. She likes the open water.

She once had a house perched right above the shore, face onto the sea, just down the road from here from our cottage. On a blustery day the surf would splash the front of it. When hurricanes battered her picture window, she would tape it to keep it from imploding. Sometimes it seemed as if her house might be washed away. It scared her but she loved it anyway.

Jeannette thinks the best time of year is when the ice goes out of the bay in April. Everything is freed up and starts to move again, though the bad weather is far from over. She’s the kind of a person that loves motion, flow, progress, freedom, unfreezing of the spirit.

Even at 78, Jeannette was model worker

I met Jeannette when I was looking for an employee to work a few hours at the fitness centre that I managed. I had the brainwave that this would be the perfect job for a senior who needed social interaction, a little extra cash and a free membership to the gym. The supervisor at the seniors’ residence next door cooed “I have just the person for the job” when I called to ask her for possible candidates.

The next day Jeannette appeared, curly white hair bobbing, limping slightly, hips askew. She had a big smile, a smooth, strong, voice and was fluent in both English and her beautiful Acadian French. She smiled and talked at the same time, a feat I have never been able to master.

She really didn’t need the social interaction. She was involved in all kinds of things — president of the tenants’ association, cultural events at the Université de Moncton, plus she spent considerable time and energy helping relatives. She was the kind of person people sought in times of trouble, definitely a sweetie.

She didn’t need the money either. What she wanted was the adventure of a new experience, although the gym membership was attractive as well. With exercise she could work out some of her hip problems.

“I won’t feel bad if you don’t hire me”, she said, “I am old ― 78.” But my mind was made up. I didn’t care what the gym jocks thought; 78 can be fit, 78 can be healthy and beautiful and inspiring. She soon charmed everyone. We became friends and I admire her greatly.

Jeannette’s history of Cocagne

We wanted a first-hand story of how the area changed and grew and what the people were like. We invited Jeannette to tell us about the history of the area and about growing up in this small Acadian community.

Jeannette Despres was born in Cocagne, NB, in 1931, one of 10 children, in a small house on the Despres Road. “It used to be so cute”, she says of the house. Now it’s run down and shabby. She lived there before there was electricity or phones, before Treasure Island, now dense with cottages, became an island through the erosion by the sea and before there were cottages at Florina Beach, where we now sit.

I imagine Jeannette barefoot with skinny legs, banged up knees and a torn dress, a tomboy, sharp, sassy, rebellious. At five years old she chose to live with her grandparents because her mother was “hard”, as she puts it. “Hard” perhaps meaning worn down by too many children and too much work. Families were extended and more fluid in those days. Everyone had so many kids that they didn’t mind if a few were raised by other relatives.

Native people, the Mi’kmaq, also lived in the area. “We were afraid and would hide when they came around. I would tell the children to come inside. We thought they were les sorcieres — witches.” She laughs about this too, now.

A very Catholic education

All of the children were educated by the church. “They brainwashed us, but it took me awhile to realize that,” she says. She recalls how there was was a town drunk who was refused burial in the church cemetery. “We all felt sorry for him because we thought he was going to Hell.” She laughs about that now.

At the Catholic school she was top of her class, but one year she won a scholarship prize — a trip to Toronto ― because she didn’t have shoes to wear there. That was a huge disappointment.

Daily life in Cocagne

Life in Cocagne back then revolved around the sea. Fishing was the predominant livelihood and boats were the most practical mode of transportation. They even took a boat to church, just down the shore. The original church has since been torn down and replaced with a modern structure that resembles a boat. History and metaphor were not ignored by its architects. The names on the stones in the graveyard contain almost all of the original Acadian names from the handful of families from the era of the deportation, Le Grand Derangement.

Entertainment revolved around the sea as well. Jeannette told us that when the adults got tired of having all of the kids around they would say, “Here’s the key to the boat, go have some fun.” A group would take off and go out to the lobster traps, pull them up and fill their boat with the squirming crustaceans. ”Nobody minded back then, that we opened their traps. There were so many lobster that the traps would be full again by morning anyway.”

The kids would make their way to a beach, or to Cocagne Island, boil a big pot of seawater, cook the lobster, eat, play music and sing. It was simple fun. “Acadian people are very musical,” she says. Some of her childhood friends became professional musicians, but most just continued to make music for kitchen parties, the fiddle being the instrument of choice.

Her world stretched from Grand Digue up to Bouctouche, about 22 km. Each extended family group occupied fixed boundaries. She said going to visit another family like the Daigles or the Boudreaus was like going to another fiefdom or city state. Sometimes she stayed at a friend’s house for weeks, like a visiting ambassador. Or a gypsy.

Jeannette’s guided tour of Route 535

As we drive around she points out the houses that were there on Route 535 in the 30s. Few and few between they are sometimes a kilometre or more apart. After a while we can tell by the architecture which ones are the older homes. Some are still farms, some have been converted to summer cottages or remodelled year-round houses. I can see how much she enjoys this and how proud she is of her roots, and how this is bringing all of the good memories back.

I have always been intrigued by Cocagne Island. Jeannette tells us that there was once a lobster cannery there and several large buildings. One building, a grand house, maybe belonging to the factory foreman or manager, was moved off the island, over the frozen bay in winter and turned into a convent, right across from the Catholic Church. I find this fact almost too amazing to believe, but sure enough some local history books show photos of the move — a big white multi-story house with black trim being pulled across a kilometre of ice, ropes straining.

Jeannette once spent two weeks alone on that island, camping and driven crazy by the voracious mosquitos. There are no man-made structures on the island now. Luckily, locals stopped its development as a resort and golf course, citing the swarms of mosquitos as a major liability.

Jeannette grew up to become a mother of eight children, herself. I only have one child. I put all of my egg(s) in one basket, while her basket was full, I tease. “We were so poor,” she explains. But she proudly tells me of several of her children who became educated and successful professionals.

“Wood theft is still theft”

With her children grown, she moved to a small acreage where she raised her own food and maintained a woodlot. She often hired some Acadian men renowned for their strength to cut her firewood. “These men were so strong, that they could lift entire limbed trees and toss them in a pile.”

Once she discovered, to her dismay, that a lot of her wood had been cut and stolen, so she started a campaign to stop wood theft. “The RCMP couldn’t do anything, so I talked to a reporter with Radio-Canada and started the campaign. Have you heard the slogan, ‘Wood theft is still theft’? That was me that started that. Now it’s against the law.”

The reforms of P’tit Louis

“When did things start to change for the Acadians?” we ask. “With P‘tit Louis, Louis Robichaud, the first Acadian Premier of New Brunswick in the 1960s. He made better education available for Acadians, and built better roads in the area so we could drive better cars. He believed in equality. He didn’t work for just the Acadians. He worked for the English as well.”

Jeannette values education above all else, that’s clear. And improved roads allowed the Acadians to get to the centres of education, like Memramcook and, later, Moncton. Jeannette followed these roads out, too, eventually earning a nursing degree. She later taught chemistry at the Université de Moncton, an Acadian French language university built in the 1960s by the beloved and respected P‘tit Louis.

Jeannette is an elemental, as much of a coastal creature as the seagulls and hermit crabs. But she is also more than that. To me she represents the evolution of the Acadians very differently than La Sagouine, the character created by author Antonine Maillet, one of Jeannette’s contemporaries.

La Sagouine carries on with the old ways. She roams the coastal beaches in her galoshes and kerchief, digging clams, spouting folk wisdom. She is a caricature. Jeannette, on the other hand, has lived her life with the same energy as melting sea ice, striving to be free of constraints, flowing out to open water, happily carried by the tides.

By Archie • Bouctouche, Cocagne, First Page, New Brunswick

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.

By Archie • Baie Vert, First Page, New Brunswick

Aug 9 2009

Bas-Cap-Pelé plays

I told Archie to go and explore Le Goguen Musée de l’Art Brut on his own (“brut” means raw or rough art). I was feeling sick and irritable and my broken toe throbbed. We were in Bas-Cap-Pelé checking out some of the “attractions”.

Le Goguen Musée de l’Art

One Desiré Goguen’s sculpture. This one is a rocket ship made from barrels and astronaut’s made from, among other things, tin cans.

This Musée Brut place had lots of found-art sculpture in the front yard. At first glance, it looked like a lot of junk, but hey, the guy seemed to have a sense of humour and he was recycling. He was offering something to the people who passed by—a smile and something to puzzle over.

So Archie went over to explore the outside museum and took a bunch of photos.The Two Bishops in a Kayak that Archie speaks of actually had the tops of bleach bottles glued to their heads with some kind of ropey fiber or coconut husks glued onto that. The meaning I took was they were early missionaries plying the coastal water and out to convert the natives, but they just looked silly. Maybe that’s how they looked to the natives, too.

3,000 plus monkeys

man with wall of stuffed monkey — Désiré Goguen with a fe of his 3,000+ stuffed monkeys.

Then Archie was invited into the inner sanctum and disappeared inside the “monkey house”. He came out smiling, looking delighted if somewhat puzzled. He told me about the 3000 plus stuffed toy monkeys inside covering every surface.

Monkeys of every kind, huge ones, tiny ones, mechanical ones. I’ve been in scary “fun houses” with skeletons and ghouls, but this seemed to be a silly fun house. What would it be like going to bed with monkeys looking down at you from the ceiling? How could you dust that many fuzzy toys?

Bas-Cap-Pelé is a playful place, we concluded. There were several really nice “terrains de jeu” for the village children with swings and slides and jungle gyms and grassy areas to run.

Fifties reborn

Near one of these playgrounds someone had erected replicas of a 50s style gas station and diner right in their backyard, complete with antique gas pumps and “White Rose Gas” and “Coca Cola” signs. They were really well done replicas. The gas station was really just the owner’s garage painted yellow and white with all the antique service station pumps and signs outside. Were there antique tools inside? What was missing was, of course, an antique car but it may have been parked inside. I like to think it was the Ford my dad had back then.

Railcar Diner?

The railcar style diner was red and had rounded corners and a cute little striped awning on the front. But it was done on a smaller scale than a real diner—kid sized (I think it might have been an industrial mobile office once). I almost felt like I was back in the 50s when buildings like these were shiny and new, heralding “modern” times. How the world has changed. If I was a kid, I would have loved to play there. They put me in a good mood.

What makes these old guys so playful?

I am wondering what makes adults like Désiré Goguen and the man who built the replicas do what they do? As a child, at one point I realized that when I became an adult I could no longer play with my dolls. That was just for kids. There was a sadness with that realization. Who made that rule?

I still have my doll family that my aunt bought me when I was seven-years-old. They’re stored in an old carrying case. They’re from the 50s too and my daughter played with them for a while. I told myself that I was saving them for her but now I find that they represent so much joy and happiness that came from my childhood, I just can’t bear to part with them. Am I saving them for my grandchildren perhaps? The dolls are in their case just waiting to bust out and play with the next child that comes along, I imagine.

The Bas-Cap-Pelé people who made these “attractions”, maybe they’re retired fishermen or farmers who worked hard their whole lives without much leisure time. Now they’re playing and inviting others to do so as well. Or maybe their lives were such that their outlooks have always been playful and good-natured.

From what I’ve read of Acadians, they rolled with the hard times, but enjoyed the good times. When the fishing and farming seasons were over, they filled their long winter hours with music making, collecting and hobbies. Now it’s just more of the same. In any case, these grassroots expressions of the spirit of this place caught our attention compelling us to linger and explore this community a little more. These folks had something to share and they wanted a reaction.

By Elaine • Bas-Cap-Pelé, First Page, New Brunswick

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