Would you like to join a group walking from Pomquet Beach to St Ninian’s Cathedral, Antigonish, linking South-West Scotland to Nova Scotia and remembering an ancient Celtic saint on his feast day? If so, contact Dr Matthew Anderson of Saint Francis Xavier University, Antigonish.
Saturday Sept 14, 2024 we’ll start from Pomquet Beach and head to Lower South River. On Sun Sept 15 we leave from Lower South River to St Ninian’s Cathedral to arrive in time for the 150th anniversary celebration. (This is an ecumenical pilgrimage, open for everyone, not just Catholics). On Saturday we will stop by Ste-Croix Church in Pomquet and have lunch at the Musée de Pomquet as we pass.
The walk is 23 km in total (17 Sat, 5 Sun). For more info see the FAQ sheet below. To sign up, contact Dr Matthew Anderson, Gatto Chair of Christian Studies at Saint Francis Xavier University, at manderso (at) stfx (dot) ca. Please also check out the three videos giving background information on Ninian, the Walks, and Antigonish’s Ninian connections!
Dr Anderson walked the Whithorn Way, the Scottish pilgrimage to St Ninian, in 2019. His book about that walk and this Nova Scotian trek will come out with Pottersfield Press in 2025.
Have you heard of the 1960s TV comedy series “Green Acres”? It starred Eddie Albert as Oliver Wendell Douglas and Eva Gabor as Lisa Douglas. Oliver and Lisa were a socialite New York City couple who moved from their urban penthouse apartment in Manhattan to a run-down place in the country to fulfill Oliver’s dreams of being a farmer. Oliver would drive the tractor wearing a suit and tie, and Lisa did chores in lace nighties or designer dresses while wearing her pearls. The locals were anything but yokels, and a lot of the plotlines revolved around Eddie getting himself into some pickle and having to be bailed out by bemused neighbours and their advice. (For those interested in such things, there was an interesting subplot with the locals and Lisa being able to hear the theme music and credits, while Eddie was blissfully unaware).
I barely remember the show. But it must have stuck somewhere. More than once this last year, while out trimming bushes or picking up wood or fixing a mower I’ve found myself humming “Goodbye city life, Green Acres we are there.”
Our two acres in Pomquet Nova Scotia (Mi’kma’ki territory) has no run-down century farmhouse, but a Kent mini-home. But after decades of living in Montreal, Nottingham, and Dublin, what I see when I look up is as different from the storefronts and sidewalks and constant traffic I’d grown used to as Green Acres was from the Big Apple. Here, the nights are quiet and dark – so still you can sometimes hear the blood in your ears. Two packs of coyotes often sing across the river to each other at dusk. On afternoon “golden hours” the light suffuses our marshy inlet, turning trees and water into some kind of Flemish Renaissance painting. The big excitement now is not a new café or a street festival, but five blue herons at once, a bald eagle low overhead, or the day we spied a pair of puffins in the salt marsh. Or eggs left on our doorstep by the neighbour, so fresh they’re still warm.
“Next year we’ll harvest some of those.”
From not owning a car for over twenty years, we now have two. Our bikes, once our main mode of commuting, sit idle, but we spend more time than we’d like on the ride-on mower. I’ve had to re-remember habits I’d forgotten: how to brace a gas can so it doesn’t tip over in the trunk, how to file the points and clean up a spark plug, changing oil, raking and shovelling and planting. How to safely burn brush, and the best way to cook sausages over the embers. I haven’t consulted a bus schedule in months – but we check the wind speeds and rainfall every day.
A year ago this month, when we moved back to Canada and first saw this land, there were ripe chokecherries filling the bushes along the driveway. We had five suitcases, our cat Sweet Pea, and each other, but nothing else. “Next year,” I told myself, “Next year we’ll harvest some of those.”
Things always happen more slowly than one would like. In just one year we haven’t even scratched the surface of our dreams and “druthers”. But this week I made chokecherry jelly. Plenty of mosquito bites went into getting those berries. But that first bite of a fresh roll with chokecherry jelly was just about perfect. These really are “green acres.” And we really are there.
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