“HOW’S FISH?”
In sharp contrast to the fish-schooners is the brig, brigantine, or barque, painted white, with water-casks the last thing in paint and fancy designs on deck. She is discharging hogsheads of molasses brought from Barbadoes or other of the British West Indies. Molasses has played its part and commandeered the sailing vessel of the Bluenose fleet from the earliest times. For in the rationing of the sea-craft up and down the coast molasses was the “sweetening”; and old-timers to this day prefer it to sugar.
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In addition to her fishing industry and tale of ships, Nova Scotia enjoys a pastoral side no less rich in genre. Farms are here. In following the highways and little by-paths rambling among apple orchards and gardens, potato fields and hay meadows—paths etched in Spring by the pink flush of apple-blossoms, or in autumn by boughs curving to earth under weight of rosy Baldwins or creamy Bellefleurs—one follows everywhere hard on the heels of romance. It is her hand that beckons into every little cottage snugly tucked away in valley and glen; where every grandmother sitting carding, spinning, hooking rugs, knitting or reading her daily portion of Scripture, can keep you entertained with tales and the recounting of interesting happenings and not go outside the range of the half-dozen houses which have been her little world for more than half a century.
Along these roads and about these inland homes, friendly old willows mingle atmospherically with tall and stately Lombardy poplars. It is on these uplands of Nova Scotia one follows the old Post-roads—roads that recall the dashing coach of other days and still cross rivers by old covered-bridges, and preserve the quaint, rambling old houses that served as Inns where passengers of old sought refreshment, or spent the night, while waiting to make connections with the coach to this or that objective.
Sitting down by the roadside to rest, some old-timer driving a span of oxen and urging them along with an apple-bough goad, is sure to come along and enter into conversation in that happy way which is half the charm of adventuring by Nova Scotia highways. This old farmer-carter well remembers Harry Killcup, the Robin Hood-Jehu of the Post-road from Annapolis Royal to Halifax. He relates how Harry was talking to a girl and didn’t pay attention to his horses, and drove them too near the edge of the bridge and they fell over, dragging the coach with them. “The river was in flood, too, but Harry managed to get the girl clear of the wreckage, and saved her, but the young man, with whom she travelled, was drowned.” It sounds like a movie stunt in the cold light of to-day, whereas, in fact, it was Victorian realism and a typical incident of the dashing times of the chaise in which Sam Slick engaged a permanent seat in that other “chaise of Canadian literature” by which Judge Haliburton eventually established his name in Canada’s Hall of Fame. The events live very graphically before you as recited by this old eye-witness; who, with many a “gee” and “whoa there”, again starts his oxen on the way.
To the period of the Post Road belongs that old landmark of time and the road, Grand Pré Church, outstanding figure of the countryside in which dwelt Evangeline and her people. In order to catch its romantic spirit, the time to see Grand Pré church is in the evening, when there is just a wee flare of daylight and a soft mist arises from the waters of Minas, shedding itself like a diaphanous veil over the land, as one strolls up the country-road that comes through the village from the North, under willows and poplars, to the door of the old church and then rambles off to the South between clover fields and stacks of hay; the hay resembling Hottentot villages outlined against the ashes-of-roses sky. It is at dusk, that the rather austere lines of window, tower and roof lose their sharp, almost Quaker-like severity. It is at that hour that the old stones of the graveyard become time-softened, ivory-tinted pages of history assembled under the stately poplars. Inside the church, in the strong, simple lines of its painted box-pews and high pulpit; in the old gallery; and in the square windows with little panes, there is the quaint atmosphere which clings especially to old churches of the early Colonial Period. Sitting in these old pews during service is to be carried away on the wings of history to a pivotal point, whence to behold a Cyclorama of all Canada. To the left, on this great canvas—Glooscap and Micmac; succeeded by crude Breton and Portuguese fishermen in their strange bateaux; followed by stirring panels of Annapolis Royal and Louisburg, contrasted against panels of tenacious pioneer Scotch and English settlers; in the next, the clash between France and England for supremacy, not alone in this sweet countryside of Grand Pré, but in every other contained in the word Canada. These are followed by a panel of United Empire Loyalists—very realistic this, because, in the village, you have just been looking at an old oil-painting of Colonel Crane and fingering his fine old sword, that never wavered in its allegiance.
The other half of the Cycle, begins the New Order. First, a symbolic figure of the stream of emigration flowing through the Maritime Gate to the great Canadian West, followed by prairie scenes and mountain peaks, mining scenes, cattle scenes, tawny grain, and Trans-Canada trains, sisters of “Glooscap”, and “The Flying Bluenose”. That, is Grand Pré Church—a link between the Past and the Present.