This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Aug. 27, 1938.
The visitor to Nova Scotia is always advised to see the South Shore, and looking at the picture of it, which I did as I travelled down from Sackville, I wondered if anything could be as beautiful as Mahone Bay with its 365 islands.
I read what President Roosevelt said about it — he had spoken of the “unhurried ways of the fisherfolk.” Ramsay McDonald had called it the “land of heart’s desire,” and wondered why he had missed it for so long. Dr. Brinkley of Del Rio, Texas, had caught a tuna weighing 758 pounds, off the coast at Liverpool.
A woman to whom I had been speaking on the train, a Lunenburg woman, looked at me enviously when I said I was on my way to Nova Scotia — for my first visit.
“I wish I could see Lunenburg harbour for the first time,” she said, “when the ships return and the masts stand up like a forest!”
She told me something about the coastline, with its indentations and its coves and creeks.
“The paved road has done a lot for the people,” she said. “I am not one that wants to keep the fisherfolk as primitive as they were in some places just to make the tourists stare and rave about them. I want them to have some comforts too, and now they are getting them, even radios and tablecloths.
“There are places along the South Shore where the people lived on fish and potatoes,” she went on, “never bothering with other vegetables, but with tourists coming and wanting meals, they began to make gardens, and live better, in every way.” Her maid lives in one of these places and she had heard about it from her.
“The women work in the hayfields with the men. Mary says she won’t take her holidays until the haying is over. Her two sisters work in Boston, and have learned American ways, but when they come home, they do what father says.
“When father says ‘We’ll make hay,’ they make hay! And they daren’t talk back to him.”
The heavy father who can rule his household may have gone from other parts of Canada, but he still rules in some of the fishing villages on the South Shore.
We motored from Windsor to Chester, through upper Falmouth, following the Avon River, until we saw where it had its source. The streams here, no longer subject to the tide, are clear and dark as if the colour of the trout has dyed the water.
The road we travelled is winding, and narrow in places, but in good condition, as well made. Drinking troughs along the way remind us that much of the transportation has been done by ox-teams, though we saw only two or three of these bringing out loads of hay. The heavy rains have damaged the hay crop, but there is already a fine crop of after-grass.
We passed some beautiful orchards before we reached the heavily wooded country, and I was interested to see the space between the rows of trees was planted with buckwheat, now in full bloom. This will be cut and left on the ground for a mulch. I wondered why the ground was not cultivated, but the sod-culture is in favour now and appears to be successful, for the trees are well set with fruit.
At Chester, the bay was all I had hoped, and more. Peace lay on the water and on the islands, which lead the eye step by step out to the open sea.
After leaving Mahone Bay, we saw many berry pickers offering baskets of blueberries for sale. There were stands beside the road where lovely waterlilies in crocks could be bought. Signs told us that hand-made rugs and quilts were ready for us, and about this time we began to notice that we were crossing the railway track very often. That is true of the whole South Shore. The highway and railway track seem to vie with each other in showing the traveller everything that is to be seen. No one can see it all, but we drove slowly and did our best.
Little sheltered coves, with canoes at anchor; beaches of pure red sand, where people lay in the sun; a party of picnickers opening their baskets; a woman on the verandah of a lovely white house reading a newspaper; two women driving by with a horse and covered buggy (I am sure they had a lap-robe embroidered in chain stitch); a white house, with rain barrels at each side, painted white too; fish drying on the shore in front of Frolic School; cobblestone houses at Dublin Shore — and then the sign — “railway crossing 300 feet, speed limit 15 miles an hour;” and always the sea with its fishing boats, steamers and at least one lovely yacht with gleaming sails.
Near Petite Reviere we got onto the honeysuckle county — great hedges of it, fragrant and beautiful. We left the railway track for a while, travelling on a good gravelled road. We smelled the odour of Linden trees and saw roses on lawns, supported by leaning trellises.
At Liverpool, we stopped for supper at a neat little restaurant where tourists with bandana handkerchiefs on their heads sat at the next table. We wanted to reach Lockport for the night, but a fog settled in from the sea, and we stayed at White Point Beach, where the great rollers of the Atlantic threw spray on the rocks and filled the air with a sound so much like a heavy rain that every time I wakened, I had to resist the impulse to get up and shut the windows all over the house.
The next day, in spite of some fog and rain, we caught glimpses of great beauty. Sea and sky and green meadow, with cattle on the land, and ships on the sea.
We had a good map with us and had been looking ahead for a place to have lunch.
We agreed the Pubnicos should be seen — there are so many of them, all in a row, on both shores of Pubnico harbour. There is Lower East, Middle West and West Pubnico, and the same number of East Pubnicos, and at the head of the harbour Pubnico itself. These are on the map.
In reality there are Mids and Centrals as well. But we had a good lobster salad with the Amiraults there, I think it was at Mid East Pubnico, in a neat little restaurant which displayed a sign that “no intoxicating liquor would be tolerated on the premises.” The proprietor told us liquor “makes plenty trouble,” and we agreed with her. The Highway Department is with her, too.
The window of the little handicraft shop in Pubnico is made into a winter scene, with salt for snow, and little houses made of bark, and ox teams carved from wood, drawing loads of logs. Inside the shop there are pictures made by a needle instead of a brush, with wool instead of paint and with carved frames.
We saw two of the Amirault family here, who told us these handicrafts are carried on by the women in the winter, the design handed down from mother to daughter. They invited us to visit the museum nearby, but rain was threatening and we pushed on. Crossed the railway at Pubnico — just plain Pubnico — and went on to Yarmouth.
