"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.

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!

island destination

We're having a string of glorious days here. Everybody who had been thinking of visiting McNutt's Island aboard Brown Eyed Girl decided that yesterday would be the perfect day to come. We kept getting emails and phone calls from various people arranging for a picnic lunch, or a ride to the lighthouse, or afternoon tea. We had never made so many lunches at one time, or had so many people for tea. I think it was a dozen picnic lunches and a dozen for tea. I only have six teacups with matching saucers, but nobody seemed too upset with mugs.

By the time they gathered back here for tea beneath the oak tree, they had explored the lighthouse grounds, admired the wild sheep, looked at birds, examined the old guns and discovered the ghost barracks at Fort McNutt. After tea they hiked off again to the government wharf to meet Brown Eyed Girl for the trip back to Shelburne.

Brian and Stephen won the prize for the most adventurous mode of transportation. They kayaked across the western channel from Carleton Village, then kayaked completely around the island before arriving at our dock for lunch. It took them about three hours to go all the way around the island.

It's funny to think about McNutt's Island becoming a bit of a tourist destination. It's so off the beaten track. Because of that, though, it does appeal to a certain kind of intrepid and cheerful soul.

biking the island

A few intrepid adventurers have been exploring the island this summer. Brown Eyed Girl drops them off at the government wharf, then they walk to the light, or sometimes stop by our house to get their lunch and hitch a ride to the lighthouse in the McNutt's Island Express.

Today Sheldon and Laurel Scott and Ella McLeod and Brian Nickerson brought their mountain bikes with them on Brown Eyed Girl.

I think they had a lot of fun riding to the light and exploring the guns and the ghost barracks. After they stopped by here again they were going to ride down the lower road to the sheep pens at the head of the cove, and maybe go around to see the old cellar remains. You can cover lots of this big island when you're on a bike.

a fresh eye

Bernard Nickerson came to the island yesterday from Shelburne, bringing with him his camera and his eye for the terrific picture.I wish I knew where this wasp nest is.
And this little bird is a wonder.
Even more beautiful jellyfish floating past, in remarkably serene waters.

You can see more of Bernie's perspective on south shore Nova Scotia at his flickr site, including a whale spotted in the harbour during the return trip to Shelburne yesterday on Brown Eyed Girl.

Thanks to Bernie for sharing his McNutt's Island photographs.

Launch for Island Year on May 18th

We are so excited that Greg's book is having its launch. We actually did not know what a "launch" was. I'm still not certain. But I think I'm about to learn.

The launch for Island Year:Finding Nova Scotia is sponsored and hosted by The Whirligig Book Shop on Water Street in Shelburne. Whirligig owners Betty and Bill Camp have provided the Shelburne area with this extraordinary place where you can not only find or order the book you want, but also discover books that you didn't know you needed until you see them there. And The Whirligig is also a kind of meeting place where you never know who you'll run into, or what local goings-on you 'll hear about.

Island Year will launch on May 18th at 7:00 pm, at Osprey Arts Centre, another terrific Shelburne institution. But there's no need to wait for the launch to buy Greg's book. It's available at The Whirligig right now!

Black pilots' connection to Henry Mowatt

"The Black Pilots," as they are known around here, are an enduring mystery of McNutt's Island. I have written about them several times before, and you can find those posts by going to the label black pilots. They were four pilots who were granted a shared fifty acre lot here on the island in 1784. The first record of the pilots and their families can be found in The Book of Negroes, that careful listing of every black loyalist who left New York between the spring of 1783 and the fall of 1785, bound most often for sites of refuge in Nova Scotia. The pilots, along with their wives and children and other extended family members, left aboard the Ann in the last week of April 1783 -- one of the first ships to leave New York. The pilots and their families were among the first refugees to arrive at Port Roseway in the first week of May.

The pilots not only traveled together, which in itself would show that they were already a community of mutual support. They also had in common an important connection -- Captain Henry Mowatt, of the British Navy. Henry Mowatt was commander of HMS La Sophia, in charge of the entire transport of the fleet of refugees, white and black, leaving New York City in those anxious and turbulent days. In the whole of The Book of Negroes there are no other black refugees listed as under his care: only these four black pilots and their families (and a fifth pilot, James Collin, who traveled with them and who appeared to have had no family and was not among those granted land on the island). It's likely that Captain Mowatt had relied upon the pilots' skills during the long war of rebellion, much of which occurred along the Virginia waterways the pilots knew so well. He would have stayed in contact with them in New York City. Now he undertook to safeguard their journey to Port Roseway.

In The Book of Negroes there is a column for claimant, that is, some white person who claims that this black person is actually their slave but is trying to escape under false pretenses. When there was a claimant, the British investigated, looked for documentation, listened to the stories of claimant and refugee, and decided whom to believe. For the black pilots and their families there is no "claimant" attempting to drag them back into slavery. That column is blank for every one of them. As pilots who served in the British navy their status is secure.

But next to the column for claimant is a column for Names of the persons in whose Possession they now are. Henry Mowatt is listed here, for every one of the pilots and their family members. Henry Mowatt was an important figure in the world of Loyalists, as they are called in Canadian history. As the officer in charge of transporting the fleets from New York, he was in and out of Shelburne during its early days. He brought the governor of the province up from Halifax aboard La Sophia to see the progress of the raw new town that summer, and hosted dignitaries for dinner on the ship. He was much respected by the white Loyalists, an anxious, contentious lot, who wrote to Admiral Digby begging that Mowatt not be removed from this appointment. One of the long streets in Shelburne was named in his honour. In the disorienting, fluid world of early Shelburne, the pilots' connection with Mowatt would have counted for something, and may be the reason they were granted a lot on the island, even though it was only one lot, to be shared among them.

The meaning of the category -- Names of the persons in whose Possession they now are -- is ambiguous. It could be an indenture of some sort -- a specific contract for work for a specific number of years. Indentures of black loyalists by whites were common in those early post-war years. Mowatt could have made some sort of contract with the pilots, hired them out as his indentured servants in Shelburne or Halifax, the men and boys to go on ships, and then pocketed their wages. That is a possibility.

But I'm pretty sure that the connection between Mowatt and the pilots was one of protection and support, not exploitation. And in a later post I will tell you why.


You can see the actual listing of the black pilots and their families in The Book of Negroes at NSARM's virtual exhibit, African Nova Scotians. That's so amazing.

Island Year: Finding Nova Scotia

Greg's book is out! The cover may look familiar -- we both love this picture, which Greg took on the perfect foggy day. Here are the book summary and author biography from the back cover:

"As they neared retirement, Greg Brown and his wife Anne gave up their life in the U.S. to settle on a windswept Nova Scotia island inhabited by wild sheep and deer, where harbour seals sing in the fog and an old lighthouse still keeps watch over the North Atlantic. Island Year: Finding Nova Scotia tells the story of the surprises, challenges and discoveries of their first year alone on an island as they restored an old fisherman's house, explored the island, and began to learn how to live a Nova Scotia way of life.

This is a story for anyone who dreams of exchanging a fast-paced, high-tech life for something slower and just maybe more meaningful. This is a story about the night sky and the dawn chorus, lobsters and wild raspberries, a famous pirate, the kindness of others, and getting in touch with yourself again. Funny and inspiring, this book redefines what a rich life can mean.

Greg Brown was born and raised in California. His grandfather was from Pugwash, and Nova Scotia was part of family lore. As a young man he worked with German conscientious objectors in West Berlin, placing them in volunteer service positions in the United States and Canada. He served for twenty years as a pastor in The United Methodist Church in Washington DC. Also trained as a pastoral counselor, Greg worked with clergy and others in the practice of leadership skills. He restored old houses and was the cook on a tall ship. His passion for restoration, his love of the sea and his Nova Scotian roots prompted a life-changing move to Canada, where he is now a Landed Immigrant. He lives on McNutt's Island in southwestern Nova Scotia with his wife Anne, who reports on their activities at www.novascotiaisland.blogspot.com."

You can order Island Year: Finding Nova Scotia (Pottersfield Press) from your local bookstore, or Nimbus Publishing, which is the distributor for Pottersfield Press and ships anywhere, or Chapters/ Indigo, or, soon, the other usual online places (the publication date is April 30). Or ask your library to buy it!

A reading life

There were lots of old books in our house when we first arrived. Some were too dampish and mildewed  to keep. Those are now slowly returning to the earth from whence they came, in a place only I know about. Others are valuable resource books, like The World of the White-tailed Deer, by Leonard Lee Rue III (Philadelphia, 1962); A Field Guide to Wildflowers, by Roger Tory Peterson and Margaret McKenny (Boston, 1968); The Bottle Collector, by Azor Vienneau (Halifax, 1969), which sounds like a title for a novel, and has an entire section on Nova Scotian bottles; and A Reverence for Wood, by Eric Sloane (New York, 1965). In the realm of fiction we have A Century of Sea Stories, edited by Rafael Sabatini (London, n.d.), an anthology including excerpts from some of the classics as well as stories and writers I'd never heard of. It's a fine haul that can turn a quiet night in front of the fire into an exciting adventure, or at least into a greater knowledge of bottles.

Then there's the disaster-at-sea genre. Our house came complete with a copy of The Tragic Story of the Empress of Ireland: An Authentic Account of the Most Horrible Disaster in Canadian History, Constructed from the Real Facts Obtained from Those on Board Who Survived, And Other Great Sea Disasters, by Logan Marshall (n.p.,1914). Those Other Great Sea Disasters include an account of the S.S. Atlantic, which ran aground outside of Halifax on April Fool's Day, 1873, with enormous loss of life.

The story of Atlantic has been told again, by Greg Cochkanoff and Bob Chaulk, in SS Atlantic: The White Star Line's First Disaster at Sea (Goose Lane, Fredericton, NB, 2009). I am not a big fan of disaster-at-sea, but SS Atlantic has been nominated for various prizes this year, and Goose Lane is a very interesting publisher, so I sprang for it.

Or rather, I didn't spring for it. Instead, I used my now default method of acquiring books. If it wasn't already in the house when we came here, or if I didn't bring it with me, carting boxes and boxes of a much-winnowed-down collection across the harbour (and now they, too, belong to the house, forever, since as you may remember: lots of things come onto the island, but nothing ever goes off), then I borrowed it from the Western Counties Regional Library.

It's so much fun to borrow books from our library. I noodle around on line and read reviews. I write down the title and author of whatever looks interesting. As a Landed Immigrant, always eager to learn more about my chosen country, I go especially for Canadian literature and non-fiction. Books that hint they may allow me a glimpse into the shy and elusive Canadian soul. Then I log onto my library account and reserve the books. If it's a hot new book, like Michael Crummey's Galore, then I'll be on a waiting list for a while. It took a long time to get Too Much Happiness, and The Bishop's Man, and Under This Unbroken Sky, and The Winter Vault, which were all nominated for recent prizes, even though Alice Munro turned down her nomination. Only one of those books, by the way, contained very much happiness.

On the other hand, Lisa Moore's startlingly fabulous February, joyously heartbreaking or heartbreakingly joyous, and David Adams Richards' brilliant and infuriating Mercy Among the Children, came right away. Anyway, the waits, when they come, are worth it, and it's not like I'm just sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I do have The Bottle Collector after all.

If the Western Regional Library doesn't have the book I want, I can order it from another regional library in Nova Scotia, or from the Halifax Public Library, or from Acadia University in Wolfeville. Eventually, from across the Province, the books of my desire arrive at the McKay Memorial Library in Shelburne. They sit on a shelf with my name attached until Greg stops by and pick them up, along with whatever he has ordered for himself. I do think the library is one of the world's best inventions. And the internet, too.  A fabulous combination for someone whose reading habit can get very expensive, and lives on an island. Or anywhere, for that matter.
                                           
So I got SS Atlantic from the library. And I'm glad I did. It's a gripping, detailed account of a colossal failure made up of carelessness and negligence, poor communication among the officers, and a deadly combination of ignorance and overconfidence, with the inevitable result of disorientation. Not good when you are steaming full throttle at a huge rock. Which most of us find ourselves doing at some point in our lives, I guess, so it's a cautionary tale. I came away with fresh appreciation for the dangers of these North Atlantic waters and this Nova Scotia coast, and for the wondrous lighthouses along its shore.

A look at the salmon farm

When we walked along the eastern shore the other day we took photographs of the salmon farm that's now located off McNutt's Island in the eastern channel of Shelburne Harbour. You can see the former military base at Government Point in the background -- that's where the outer harbour ends and the Atlantic begins.

I could only count nine cages but I've been told there are thirteen in this location. Maybe some are attached behind others.

Nobody really knows what effect salmon farming will have on the harbour. There are many other already-established aquaculture sites and proposed sites within Shelburne's inner harbour. These are the only cages in the outer harbour as of now.

As you can imagine, it's controversial. If you want to know more about it, here's a link: Friends of Shelburne Harbour.

Totally famous

Someday people will visit McNutt's Island just to see the place where the famous Nova Scotia band, The Holdup, performed in its early years. Yes, their roots are here. They have actually walked along these very roads. Their music has been inspired by these very spruce trees, these very gulls.

Last week they triumphed in Yarmouth at Nova Scotia Music Week. And next week they leave on an all-expenses-paid trip to Prince Edward Island, where they will compete with bands from all over Canada.

And to think we can remember way back when they were just a few kids, a drum and a couple of guitars.

Remembrance Day

It was late October 2006 when we first came to look at McNutt's Island, before we made an offer on the house. Everyone we saw in Nova Scotia then, it seemed, was wearing a deep red poppy pin made of some velvety material. Eventually we learned that it was for Remembrance Day, November 11th. They are commonly worn for a couple of weeks before that date. I have never seen anything like this in the U.S.

At first, Remembrance Day was for the vast losses suffered by Canadians in the First World War. Later its scope widened to include the deaths of Canadians in the wars and peace-keeping missions that Canada has committed itself to since.

David King Goulden was born in this house in 1919 and grew up on McNutt's Island. There's an account of his family here.

He attended the McNutt's Island School. We found his fourth grade graduation certificate in the house when we moved in.

David was a young fisherman, working out of Lockeport, when he enlisted in 1940. He arrived in England with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders in July 1941.

A year and a half later, he married Barbara Lynette Redding of Bournemouth.

He landed at Normandy on June 6, 1944 and received special mention when, during the fierce fighting, he mounted the hulls of two Sherman tanks to rescue the commanders. He was killed in action on October 9, 1944 during the Battle for the Belgian Channel Ports. He is buried in Adegem Canadian War Cemetery, Maldegem, Oost-Viaanderen, Belgium in Row E, Plot 1, Grave 11.

On Remembrance Day I think of this young fisherman with a gentle face and smile who grew up in this house and died so soon. Sometimes war becomes very abstract. Knowing a little about a particular person's story makes it less so.

For the account of David's military history I am quoting and summarizing from a wonderful virtual exhibit, Shelburne County Men: Second World War and the Korean War, assembled by Eleanor Robertson Smith for the Shelburne County Archives and Genealogical Society and included in the Virtual Museum of Canada. This is a remarkable exhibit of local history for the Shelburne area.

The poppy image is from the Canadian War Museum.

Exploring local history

My search for more about the history of McNutt's Island took me to The Shelburne County Archives and Genealogical Society. It's above the fire station and the offices of the Shelburne Town Hall, on Water Street.Inside is a large and comfortable space, with plenty of room to work. During the summer the archive is open all week, but after that it's only open on Wednesdays.
It is a repository of primary and secondary sources. It would take many Wednesdays to become familiar with all that is here.

The SCA & GS has published a veritable library of excellent local history resources, which can be ordered through its online bookstore. Most recent publications include the transcription of Captain William Booth's Remarks and Rough Memorandums, a fascinating, often snarky, diary of life in the tumultuous days of Shelburne's beginnings; and Founders of Shelburne, an impressive summary of what's known about more than two hundred early Shelburnians who remained here after the Loyalist tsunami receded.
Kim Robertson Walker is the genealogical society's archivist, and encourager in chief. One Wednesday when Kim was in Halifax I was helped by two knowledgable and dedicated volunteers, Wally Buchanan and Laura Nicoll. On another Wednesday Kim took phone calls from people all over Canada and the U.S. who were seeking information about their ancestors.

As Wally explained to me, when ten thousand people pass through a place in a brief time, it means that two centuries later there are lots of far-flung descendants curious about that chapter in their ancestors' lives.

Dock Street, Shelburne on an autumn afternoon

I was waiting for the Shelburne Museum to re-open one afternoon last week, so I walked down Dock Street and took some pictures. Shelburne really does have a lovely Historic District. Dock Street is several blocks long, and runs parallel to the harbour.
Shelburne didn't even exist until ten thousand or so refugees arrived here in 1783/1784. There was nothing at Port Roseway before then except a few settlers here and there, eking out a living in this wilderness.
A decade after it was founded, Shelburne's population had fallen from more than ten thousand to three or four hundred people. There are several good explanations for Shelburne's rapid decline, and it isn't necessary to choose just one of them. They all played their part.*
Visitors in the early 1800s told of grass and stumps left in the streets and livestock wandering through the remains of empty houses.
The people who stayed, though, made a life for themselves. They grew vegetables in their garden plots.
They built ships. They fished.
It's hard to realize how quickly Shelburne was built, from nothing, in a few years, and then how quickly the town emptied out.
It became a village, in the midst of the forlorn remnants of its brief glory.
What remains today is a serene beauty.

* You can read the story in Stephen Kimber's Loyalists and Layabouts: The Rapid Rise and Faster Fall of Shelburne, Nova Scotia 1783-1792 (Doubleday Canada, 2008).

New perspective

Sometimes it helps to go away from a place so you can see it more clearly. I had been wanting to search the local archives in the Town of Shelburne for information about McNutt's Island. I was looking for material I couldn't get online.

And it worked out that I could spend a few days there this week. I visited the resource centre at the Shelburne County Museum, on Dock Street. I picked up some leads and hope to return next week for more poking around.

While I was at the resource centre I met people who were at work on very interesting things. Susan Gilson and Philip Neville were in town filming interviews for a Council of Nova Scotia Archives project called Routes to Your Roots. They chatted with Jeannie Peterson, a volunteer, and with Finn Bower, who is the museum's Curator. (Left to right: Finn, Jeannie, Philip, Susan.)

I saw a bunch of pigeons on top of the cooperage on Dock Street. I spent a terrific day at the Shelburne County Archives and Genealogical Society, too. I'll write more about that visit next week.

Brown Eyed Girl

Brown Eyed Girl stopped at the government wharf this afternoon to pick up two island visitors. The boat dropped them off this morning and they hiked to the lighthouse, then came by our house for afternoon tea. Brown Eyed Girl makes a second trip from Shelburne in the afternoon, when she takes her passengers all the way around the island, and then picks up anybody she has left off here in the morning. This is the first summer for Ken and Sherri Taylor's Shelburne Harbour Boat Tours. I think they are happy with how well the summer has gone for their new enterprise. We are glad that it offers people a way to visit McNutt's, or to see it up close from every angle.

Weather report, August 13th 1789

A Philadelphia newspaper called The Pennsylvania Mercury contained this item from a correspondent in Shelburne in its issue of September 19th 1789:

August 13, 1789
The week past has been the hottest weather experienced here since the settlement of Shelburne. On Tuesday and yesterday the thermometer, hanging in an open passage, in the shade, was up to 85 at three o'clock in the afternoon.

Today the thermometer, hanging in an open passage, in the shade, hovered around 68 at three o'clock in the afternoon. That's about 19 degrees in Canadian.

The Town of Shelburne is hotter than McNutt's Island in the summer. The island's summer is foggier and cooler, moderated by the Atlantic. Shelburne is deep inside the inner harbour; the island is on the outer edge of the outer harbour. I would bet that if The Pennsylvania Mercury's correspondent had been reporting from McNutt's instead of from Shelburne he (or she) would have given a high temperature of somewhere in the seventies that day.

But this summer has been cool and wet both on the island and in town. And there's word in town that Environment Canada is forecasting a string of summers like this one for the region, an effect of the continued melting of polar ice. I haven't been able to find this in writing anywhere; maybe it's an urban legend. It makes sense, though, that huge expanses of ice melting into the northern seas would keep everything cool and foggy for a while.

Those Loyalist settlers of Shelburne were probably delighted with a temperature of 85, and went around town 220 years ago fanning themselves, shirtsleeves rolled up, grinning at their good fortune: a hot spell in August and the hottest day since they'd set foot on this stony land.

Thanks to Harrison Howeth in Delaware, who is magically able to find ancient newspaper items about any topic, and happy to share.

Schooner Amistad in Shelburne Harbour

Amistad arrived at the town dock in Shelburne today. She's a powerful symbol of courage and resistance to injustice.

Amistad is a replica of the ship which was carrying enslaved Africans out of Havana in 1839. The Africans rose up and took over the ship.
If you don't know the story, Steven Spielburg's movie Amistad is a great way to learn about it. They are showing it in town this afternoon. And there are several other excellent events surrounding the Amistad's arrival. In case you are near Shelburne, you can find out about the week's activities here.
Amistad will be travelling to Cuba later this month, then replicating her historic voyage from Havana to Long Island. There's lots of information about the trip at Amistad's web site.

Today in Shelburne the townspeople marched out to greet her. These are the Third New Jersey Volunteers. That's our solicitor, second shako from the left.

It's always a bit head-spinning for us Yanks, since we think of New Jersey as being on the American side in the Revolution. But in Nova Scotia when we refer to the Third New Jersey Volunteers we mean a regiment of British Loyalists, or as they would have been referred to in the newly independent American colonies, traitors. Head-spinning. But we are on the Nova Scotian side of things now.

Actually, people in Shelburne dress like this a lot. If you are going to live in Shelburne you might as well go ahead and invest in some eighteenth century clothes. You will need them.

There is an organic connection between Amistad and Nova Scotia, and particularly with Birchtown, here in Shelburne Harbour. In 1792 a large group of former American slaves, who had won their freedom and a Nova Scotia refuge by actively supporting the British cause in the Revolution, left Nova Scotia and sailed to Sierra Leone, which was then also the site of a British slave-trading outpost. There they established Freetown and a new community of freedom in the midst of an active slave trade. Over half of those new settlers to Sierre Leone came from Birchtown.

Nearly fifty years later, the Africans aboard the Amistad were enslaved near Sierra Leone and taken to Cuba to be sold.

If you imagine a skein of connection between the American colonies (later the new United States), Nova Scotia, England, Sierra Leone and the slave embarkation points along Africa's west coast, and Cuba and the West Indies where slaves were needed for the sugar plantations, then back to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland for cheap salt fish to feed the slaves, you have the bare outlines of a vast global economy based on slavery. Both the Nova Scotian settlers of Sierra Leone and the enslaved Africans who took control of Amistad were courageous people whose personal actions furthered the end of a system so deeply entrenched that many thought it would be impossible to eradicate.

A wonderful book on the end of slavery is Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005). Hochschild is a great story teller, worthy of his huge subject.