The Last Best Place by John Demont Read Free Book Online

government into putting up the money for an archaeological survey of the site. It is our history, she explained.
    And it is mine too, even though I’m a white boy who grew up in the city. I hold on to the story of Birchtown, the ones who left, the ones who came back, for the same reason I hold on to the story of the Acadians and the other peoples who are patently not me. For in Nova Scotia there is history that exists in the air, floating high above our mundane existence of day-care, sinus headaches and the Goods and Services Tax. Forming us, becoming part of us. It is why we hear despair in the waves pounding the headland. And laughter in the wind.

Three
By the Rattly-Eyed Jesus

    L ET’S ALLOW FOR A SECOND THAT MAYBE THE BIG THINKERS ARE RIGHT . M AYBE myth expresses life far better than history, science or any of the provable things. Doesn’t matter at all if they are true, just that they are
your
myths, your fables. I hear “the stories,” which seem carried along by the very light and the breeze, and I know they have meaning. They are the subconsciousness of home sure as landscape is the atmosphere, history the collective memory. Deconstruct them and you’ll reach some kind of essential truth about Nova Scotia’s inner vision. But to do so is the death of fun—like searching for signs of racial alienation in an Oscar Peterson solo. Or seeking to glimpse the scars of an overbearing parent in a Wayne Gretzky end-to-end rush.
    Some of the myths seem to have no real origin. It’s as though they existed before everything else. In the beginning, say the Mi’kmaqs, was Glooscap, their giant warrior hero whom the Great Spirit endowed with supernatural powers. At the dawn of civilization he lay on his back, head to the rising Sun, feet to the setting of the Sun, left hand to the south, right hand the north. After seventy times seven nights and days a bent old woman born that very daycame to him—the grandmother who owed her existence to the dew on the rock. The next day at noon a young man came to Glooscap. He owed his existence to the beautiful foam on the waters, and Glooscap called him My Sister’s Son. The following noon another person appeared—the mother of all Mi’kmaqs.
    Before leaving for the Happy Hunting Grounds, Glooscap taught his people how to make canoes and he cleared rivers and streams for navigation. Once he was taking a bath in a trench dug out for him by Beaver. His friend Whale swam in and refused to leave until Glooscap walked to shore. Glooscap got up, and Whale swam away with such force that the great tides of the Bay of Fundy slosh back and forth to this day. Once Glooscap changed into a beaver, grew angry and slapped his tail on the waters of the Bay of Fundy five times with such force that five islands were created. Another time Beaver’s dam caused the waters to overflow into Glooscap’s garden. In anger, he hurled a stone but missed, instead cutting Digby Neck into the Bay of Fundy.
    These are the timeless stories that concretize the spiritual, creative essentials of our world. But along with the real myths of the natives a new land like Nova Scotia is infused with the old-world mythology and folk beliefs that came with the settlers. The very name, Acadia, with the hopes and expectations that go along with it, harkens back to those origins. So does an abiding belief in fore-runners, ghost ships, monsters lurking in lakes and woods and cloven-foot devils, tales that can be traced to the harbours of England, the dales of Scotland and the villages of Germany. Storieslike these help the explainable harden into pure fact.
    Yet there are also stories that linger because they remain forever mysteries. The
Mary Celeste
was a wonder of workmanship, one in a long line of hardy vessels that rolled into the ocean at Spencer’s Island, another tiny Nova Scotia community that produced fantastic sailing ships during the last half of the nineteenth century. Christened the
Amazon
when she was launched