book launch July 21st

To order, go to the Shelburne County Archives & Genealogical Society, here. The book isn't listed on the page yet, but you can call or email to get the price etc. Or you could get it from The Whirligig, maybe.

time to celebrate

I'm so glad to have completed the history of the lighthouse and the island. It's ready to send off to the folks at The Nova Scotia Museum, who so kindly granted me research funds for the project a little over a year ago.  I hope I'll be able to share it more widely eventually, in some format or another. But for now, it's good to be finished.

McNutt's Island in Ottawa

Now that I'm an official dropout from l'école Centre Lartigue (mais j'ai completé niveau 5, alors je comprends plus qu'il y a un an, quand j'ai compris rien -- je suppose que c'est quelque chose-là ), I have the energy and time to return to McNutt's Island. Not physically, of course. But, you know, in my mind.  The way most people visit.

I have this research project, a history of the lighthouse, that the Nova Scotia Museums gave me a grant to do, last year, just before we had to leave the island. It's probably half-way finished now, and for the next few months it's going to be my main focus.

So last week I took a bus up to Ottawa, to see what the Library and Archives Canada had on McNutt's. I wasn't too optimistic. The federal holdings on this out-of-the-way place, I thought, would be slender. If I discovered any gold, or even silver, or maybe copper, I'd be happy. Mostly I thought I'd confirm that there wasn't much there.

And it's true that what I found was slender. It's not that there isn't federal material about obscure places. The lighthouse at Sandy Point, for example, which is the closest lighthouse to Cape Roseway, down at the opening of Shelburne's inner harbour. There's a huge folder, two inches thick, the government's reaction to an anonymous letter accusing the lightkeeper there of selling and bartering the federal oil he stored for the operation of the light. Oh, it's a wonderful file, filled with spite and blame and wounded innocence and little tiny stories that shine into the corners of life in a Nova Scotia hamlet at the end of the nineteenth century. They just aren't about McNutt's Island. Unfortunately for me either the lightkeepers of McNutt's were always terribly upright, or their neighbours were terribly uninterested in unleashing the scrutiny of the federal government upon them all.

Or take the applications for a post office. As I scrolled through the microfilm I became increasingly hopeful. Some applications, even from the smallest places, came complete with lists of petitioners and a cogent argument for why a post office was so very desperately necessary to the workings of some remote Nova Scotia village. Sometimes there was even a small hand-drawn map of surpassing beauty and detail. But when I finally scrolled my way to the McNutt's file it just said that the application had been accepted, and there would be a post office there starting soon. (Well, it said a bit more than that, and there's another file I've had to request because for some odd reason it's closed to public view, which I hope bodes well as long as eventually the guardians of the federal papers allow me to take a look).

Still, over all, there were bits and pieces, gleanings left along the edges for me to find and pick up, and I hope I didn't miss anything really huge. I loved the archives in Ottawa: it's a beautiful place, with wide banks of windows overlooking the river, Quebec stretching away after that. It's open until something like ten or eleven o'clock most nights. And the archivists were fantastic.  


I noticed while I was there that I've been in a time warp about research. Every other researcher was clicking away at documents with their cameras, or using their USB sticks to suck stuff off the computer and cart it off. I came with some pencils and a pad of paper. Next time I'll be more up to date. 

easier than you might imagine, really

An insightful report from the wilds of Maine ...
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/rural-life-without-the-hard-edges/

paperback writer

Now you can order Bowl of Light in a paperback format, here. Or you could ask your library to order it, or your local bookstore. The Kindle version is another way to go, for which see the post below. But a paperback offers you that yesteryear experience of holding a book in your hand and turning pages, or lending it to somebody.

Bowl of Light is available now

You can go here to buy Bowl of Light as an e-book. At that same site, you can download a free Kindle app that allows you to read e-books on your computer. It's a very nice app if you don't have a Kindle but still want to get the book.

The book made-of-paper will be ready in the next week or so. I'll post about it when it's available.

launching a Bowl of Light

After dillying and dallying around about a book I've decided to just go ahead and publish it on my own. So, it's an e-book, called Bowl of Light, and it will be available through Kindle Books on Amazon.com in the next few days.

I'm quite happy with this book, which is a collection of essays, most of which began their lives as blog posts. The book is a whole nother kettle of fish from the blog. The strengths of a blog come from its immediacy and the sense that every day offers some surprising new variable. The strengths of a book come from a greater sense of coherence and maybe a greater reflective quality. Also, just as a music video may take away from the experience of a song by limiting the hearer's imagination, a blog's images can sometimes diminish the imaginative power of the written word.

On the home front, I think our grieving over the island is drawing to a close. I find that my gratitude for the experience has begun to outweigh my sadness over its loss. And here in Montreal, the epic struggle between light and darkness appears to have been decided in favour of light, once again. It's still cold, but the days are getting longer.

a lovely award for Greg

Greg was awarded the prize for best speciality column by the Atlantic Community Newspaper Association. Many thanks to Greg Bennett, editor of the Shelburne County Coast Guard, for nominating Greg's column.

I have copied the description of the award below, since you would only be able to read the newspaper page with a magnifying glass. It's quite an honour for Greg, and, as I wrote earlier when he was nominated, bitter-sweet.

Here's what the judge wrote:

Greg Brown's thoughtful and inspiring ruminations on nature and home life were a pleasure to read, not only because they are so well written, but because each column pays off in unexpected ways.

Crossroads takes first place as this year's Best Speciality Column because it's so easy for me to imagine regular readers of the Shelburne County Coast Guard anticipating its appearance in their weekly paper. It's obvious Brown strives to make his column accessible to everyone.

His ability to weave Christian parables into the narrative with subtlety and nuance expertly avoids the tendency for columnists working in this vein to come across as heavy handed.

Great work.

"island tales," next Thursday night

This event was scheduled long ago, before we ever dreamed we'd be leaving the island. But maybe it's not bad timing after all. Sometimes things have an odd way of working out.

beauty and the beast

On this drizzly morning a few sheep have ambled into the back orchard. Among them is The Major. He is not some stand-offish sort of ram who looks down his nose at the rest of the flock.He is content to graze near the newly emerging daffodils that line the rock wall.
He is, at heart, a simple soul. Modest and unassuming.
Yet there are times when he stands amid the daffodils and thinks deep thoughts.
Along with the rest of the flock, he has endured the long months of winter. Now he sometimes takes his ease, and lies down on beds of flowers.
How we shall miss The Major.

an unexpected turn of events

Oh, dear, I have been putting off writing this post because it will be hard to do. But now the time has come.

When we returned to the island in late February we were confronted with an unexpected turn of events that has an enormous effect on us. And now we will need to move away from McNutt's Island.

Maybe you can imagine our initial shock, followed by all the other kinds of emotion that don't need to be spelled out here.

But this was all happening at the same time that the tragedies in Japan and Libya were unfolding. And it helped us to keep some perspective on our situation. A disappointment is not the same as a tragedy.

We will always remember our four years of adventure on McNutt's with great fondness.

I will continue to do occasional blogging from here until we actually leave, so I hope you, dear reader, will continue to drop by now and then. Blogging from the island has been great fun for me and I hope of some value for you.

Greg and short in same phrase

Really, I never think of the words "Greg" and "short" very close to each other. Since he's a very tall person. But we learned today that his writing has been short-listed for an award, so there you go.
His regular column in The Shelburne County Coastguard is one of three nominees for Best Specialty Column by The Atlantic Community Newspapers Association.

That's quite an honour!

spring scenery

It's a fresh day. Many times I have tried to capture the beauty of Old Man's Beard. At least this gives you some idea of it.
A home for somebody, in an old apple tree. This tree does not give many apples, but it provides other benefits.
The apple trees provide a good place for insects to live, too. And they, in turn, are a food source for birds, who make striking patterns on the bark.
A fresh spring sky today. Lots of wind and sun, and story-book clouds.

teen age graffiti artists at Cape Roseway

Here are a few of the inscriptions you can find up at Cape Roseway Lighthouse. I've added whatever I was able to find about these names, mostly by going to the Vital Statistics at the NSARM, which is a fabulous resource. I think that most of these particular inscriptions were made by students at Alexander Hood Cocken's school. Cocken, the second lighthouse keeper, retired in 1860. So the graffiti artists would have been hanging out at the rocks during recess, chiselling away, before that. A few of their inscriptions are dated.

J. Locke, 1856. The Locke family was very connected to McNutt's Island. In the early nineteenth century at least two inter-related Locke households were on the island, among its very first settlers, when they brought their children for baptism at the Anglican Church in Shelburne. Mostly the Lockes lived around and in nearby Lockeport and Ragged Islands, with easy access to McNutt's Island by water, just as it is today.
Robert Miller was likely a son of The Rev. George Miller (an important Methodist preacher of the era, mostly connected with the church in Halifax) and Alexander Hood Cocken's sister Frances Cocken Miller. He would have been Alexander Hood Cocken's nephew.

John Alexander Fraser Purney was born about 1845, son of a Shelburne merchant and his wife. He married Angela Muir in 1872 and became a physician in Shelburne.
J.B. Vernon.Vernon is a significant name on McNutt's Island. Captain Nathaniel Vernon of Tarleton's Legion bought the old McNutt property at the northern end of the island, as well as other lots around the island. This may be the son of Nathaniel's son, Augustus Vernon.

I haven't found anything about J.T. Morrow, though he certainly did a nice job with his name.
J.Gibbons, 1856. There is a John Gibbons who was born in Sandy Point and was a schoolteacher, married to an Annie Perry, and living at the village of Roseway, on the western shore of Shelburne Harbour directly across the False Passage from McNutt's, in 1864.

Joseph Homer, a sea captain, was born about 1842, and married in Barrington in 1870. If he was a student at Alexander Hood Cocken's school at the lighthouse, he would have inscribed his name in the late 1850s.Tottie is a well-known name in Shelburne, because of Tottie's Store, which remains on Dock Street.

You can find more graffiti here, here, and here. I have always wanted to make a map of the rocks, showing where all the inscriptions are located. But I have not gotten around to it.

very important birds, expertly observed

In yesterday's post I gave you the latest on lichens, from Brad Toms, who is Wildlife Biologist at the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute. Now here are Brad's bird observations from his visit to McNutt's last week:

There were American Robins out at the lighthouse on the lawn and there were Winter Wrens (4 males) singing, scattered along the length of the road to the lighthouse. You might hear their very beautiful rambling and lengthy song while you are outdoors.

(Brad wrote later that he had sent his observations to Dr. Ian McLaren who was pretty sure that the winter wrens Brad heard were the first arrivals this spring in the province. Go, winter wrens! We've heard them for the last four years, but we had the hardest time identifying them. Greg said they sounded like they were singing Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. Last summer Sue Abbott finally told us what they were. The robins have been here all winter, though I do believe there are more that arrive with spring.)

Brad's observations continue:

Another interesting sighting of the day was 3 male Harlequin Ducks below the lighthouse point at the in the crashing waves.

This was a new location for sighting these birds whose nearest known large concentrations of wintering adults is Port L'Hebert. A few are seen now and again near Baccaro but this is the first time they have been sighted at Cape Roseway to my knowledge. They're hard to see, but very beautiful, birds if you get the chance to see them before they leave for the Arctic in the next few weeks.

I also noticed your owl post on the blog from last fall. It looks like a Short Eared Owl (listed as a Special Concern under the Species at Risk Act) rather than a Barred Owl.

The clear/whitish under wings and the white circle around the face are the give away features. An exciting sighting!

Here's a not-very-good photograph I took of the short-eared owl that I thought was a barred owl. You can go here to see more pictures of its visit to the bog last fall.

Thanks to Brad for his excellent reporting from McNutt's Island! I hope in the future that more naturalists will pay attention to this remarkable and overlooked place.

Images of the winter wren, harlequin duck and short-eared owl are from Robie Tuft's Birds of Nova Scotia, courtesy of the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History.

lichen report

There had been rumours swirling around the island about some lichen experts who had visited here a week or so ago to hunt for a rare lichen -- so rare, one person said, that the whole island would be closed down if one was discovered. But nobody knew anything specific. Who were these mysterious lichen hunters? And what had they found? I put it down to one more unsolved McNutt's island mystery.

Then I received an email from Brad Toms, who is a Wildlife Biologist at the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute. Brad told me I could quote him. So, Dear Reader, you are about to hear the lichen report in its entirety. Nova Scotia Island Journal does not monger in rumours! (Except maybe now and then).

Here is Brad's report, which includes the link to his site:

I just saw your blog when I was searching for something else on the internet about McNutts Island. I work for a research cooperative (www.merseytobeatic.ca) and Skipper brought us onto the island last Wednesday to do a little work. We were doing surveys for rare species of lichens on the property owned by the Federal Government near the lighthouse. One of our principals is to share the results from our research so when I saw your blog I thought 'who better to share it with than the people who live nearly full time on the island!'

We didn't find anything of great interest at Cape Roseway but while walking back to Skipper's wharf we found a few interesting species close to the road in the middle of the island. The ones we found were called Peppered Moon Lichen, Powdered Moon Lichen and Foliose Shingle Lichen. None of these are particularly imperiled in the province but they only occur in specific habitats close to the ocean and are rare enough that we noted them (the powdered moon lichen is the rarest of the three). In the places where we found those (wet maple and fir forests) there was a good diversity of what are called "Cyanolichens" (lichens that have cyanobacteria as the partner with fungi instead of algae).

peppered moon lichen on McNutt's Island (photograph courtesy of Brad Toms)

spring snow

Just beyond the garden fence, raven is out for his morning stroll. A little spring snow deters him not at all.
A junco perches within the safety of the garden.
Snow gilds the queen anne's lace.
A lovely spring garden.
Junco has flown into the oak tree, everyone's favourite place to sit.

spring visiting

Yesterday was such a social day on the island. In the morning Peter and Sherry came over to the island, and came by for a visit. A dark-eyed junco made a flying house call.
Actually, many song sparrows and juncos spent the day settling in after their long trip back to the island. They twittered about unpacking their bags and checking out the menu at local diner (which is the same menu as last year).
The sheep came by to greet the returning birds.
Blake and Ashley came by. They brought lobster from Blake's dad Skipper, and stayed for a visit. Later Skipper himself came by, with mussels and eggs. We really don't need to go to the store.
At the end of the day Greg sat in his favourite place and appreciated the beginning of spring.

good night moon & hello spring

Last night the full moon would be closer to the earth in its orbit than at any time since 1992. Apparently its orbit is not like a bit of industrial machinery, always doing the same thing over and over.

Everything, from the tilt of the earth's axis to the distance between continents and the speed of the earth's rotation, is always changing. Sometimes, as when tectonic plates shift, changes are dramatic, and we notice them. Most of the time they are infinitesimal, and we don't. Changes continue whether or not we pay them any mind. We are being changed, too, since we are a part of the whole cosmic reality, even if only in a very small way.

This morning Greg took these pictures of the close moon.

It was about to set across the western harbour as the sun began to come up through the forest to the east.
A few minutes later morning had broken, but the earth still felt the moon's quieter power.
Then the last night of winter was over. Today (at 5:21 PM here in Atlantic Time) the sun will cross over the celestial equator, and spring will arrive on McNutt's Island.

meet your farmer!

It's exciting that our dear friends Mary Morse and Leroy d'Entremont are the current stars of Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture's "Meet Your Farmer" -- a way to highlight the wide range of farming activities in Nova Scotia. Here's the link: http://meetyourfarmer.ca/profiles.php?profile=morse-and-dentremontI'm very glad to see that Nova Scotia island sheep are getting the recognition they deserve, and of course the intrepid shepherds! To read everything about sheep and shepherding on McNutt's Island, go to the label "wild island sheep."

Here's a portrait Greg painted of Leroy looking for his sheep...