Tag: Pomquet

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stroke-recovery Uncategorized

My “Year + Two Month” Strokeaversary

Somehow my one-year strokeaversary slipped by without a blog post, even though Sara and I marked it privately. Now here we are: way past twelve months. Already to 14 and counting.

I’m not sure why I didn’t push myself to post a one-year column on the actual day.

It could have been that I wasn’t emotionally ready. I was – and I still am – processing the fact that as far as I’ve come, I haven’t yet mended as I’d wished. Paralysed and stuck in my wheelchair a year ago at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital, Antigonish, I told my youngest, Gabe, that by September 2025 we’d be going for another 100 km walk to celebrate my recovery, like we did on the Celtic Shores Trail along the Cape Breton coast in the month before the stroke.

Well….that won’t be happening anytime soon, although I still hold out hope. While I can walk farther and faster than at any point since my brain damage, my best distance is a couple of kilometres with a limp. It’s hardly 100 km in a week like we did in 2024, striding into a new coastal village every afternoon in the late-afternoon sunshine.

I also dreamt that at one year post-stroke the part of my body the slowest to recover, my left hand, would be fully back in use. I imagined somehow I’d be chording smoothly on guitar, holding my mug of tea, and most importantly, typing. The truth is that yes, I can actually DO all those things, sort of! It’s a miracle. And I recognize that miracle when I’m properly “glass-half-full” thinking. For instance, I’ve typed this blog-post using both hands.

But the deeper truth is more nuanced.  Chording is still slow….usually too slow for a song to really feel like a proper song. A full cup of tea is dangerous to hold in my left hand for too long – and a hot cast iron pan more dangerous still! But I’m able to reach, and lift, and manipulate more with that hand every week. I can now screw the milk and toothpaste lids off and on as a leftie. I regularly empty the dishwasher with my left hand as therapy. I can almost snap my fingers and make the Vulcan salute. Holding a nail in September while hammering was sometimes an act of faith. But the nails got in. Eventually.

Typing is not as slow as it was. But it’s still tedious, difficult, and tends toward errors. Sara says that she can tell my typing has improved because in the last month I’ve written a lot more pieces – articles, reviews, and the like. “You must feel more comfortable composing,” she remarked. “You’re getting back to your enthusiasm for new ideas.”

I feel that too. This fall I taught an online course on Leonard Cohen and St Paul, and had a wonderful time with my adult students. My classes about early Christian asceticism at StFX are fun, and recently I took first-year kids on a tour of the Saint Ninian Cathedral, being sure to point out features I write about in my book “Someone Else’s Saint.” Sara and I each gave keynote presentations on subsequent weeks at different institutions in Halifax, which was a chance for trips “to the big city” and mini-holidays.

My public talks and interviews are happening again. I was interviewed this fall by Jesse Zink of Montreal Diocesan College in his “Principal Meets Author” Series. Be sure to listen to an upcoming episode of CBC Radio’s “The Cost of Living,” where I’ll be on a segment talking about Advent Calendars! This week I’m also presenting in the Research Chairs Colloquium Series at my university, an honour for me.

So, the one-year strokeaversary slipped by.

When she read what I just wrote above, Sara pointed out that maybe it wasn’t disappointment that stopped me after all. Maybe I let the 12-month blogpost slide simply because my fall has been so incredibly busy. True enough. But the anniversary didn’t pass completely unmarked.

It turned out that I had a follow-up appointment at the hospital one year to the day from my initial TIA – Trans Ischemic Attack, September 16th. So I ordered two cakes from our local Sobeys and Sara and I took them in to mark the day: one for the physio ward, since that’s where I’ve spent so much time post-discharge, and the other for St. Martha Regional Hospital’s third-floor hospital wing, where I lived for almost four months last fall.

Those cakes turned out to be a pretty good metaphor for the hospitalization and recovery process, and for the nature of institutions. On the physio wing, it turned out that almost all of the Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists who’ve worked with me this past year were there. To a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” the cake was quickly divvied up. There was lots of laughter and shared memories, and many thanks and congratulations given and received. It was wonderful.

However, when I carried my one-year cake to the nurses’ station, it was a different story. That day, none of the faces looked familiar at all, except my own GP, who was at the desk. Apparently, there’s been quite a bit of turnover recently on the ward. A nurse politely thanked me for the cake, took it, and congratulated me on my recovery. Sara and I stood around a minute or two awkwardly, then left. I’m sure the staff there that day enjoyed the sweets. But through no fault of theirs, they didn’t know me from Adam. There was no one at the desk from “my” past, no one who shared my memories, and no one to mark with me those tumultuous months that were so significant.

That’s life, I guess. In the end, our experiences change us profoundly. Sometimes permanently. But for everyone else, things can sometimes go back to normal pretty quickly.

Speaking of major life-changes this fall: in October, Sara’s parents moved back to Moncton for the winter, after a wonderful, but very busy, summer of cooking, canning, and building. I took a very quick, very short trip to Montreal to hug my kids after their own family tragedy: the untimely death of my ex, their mom. Sara and I made our first juice from our first grapes, and filled our pantry with summer’s jellies. Since then my own step-mother, Mary Anderson (Hattum) passed away, along with another good friend in Saskatchewan, John McPhail. Oh yes, and a feral cat we’re calling Theodore seems to have adopted us, on and off….

Things aren’t the same as a year ago in so many ways, some large, some small. I keep having to learn and relearn the lesson that life is beautiful, often fragile, and that the time to tell folks you love and appreciate them is right now.

I feel very fortunate to be alive, and thankful every day for the chance to experience this world in all its confusing glory. Strangely enough, I believe my life has been enriched by my stroke a year ago, and by the struggles that have followed. I appreciate you who have accompanied me through this year (plus a couple of months). As the leaves drop, the Grey Cup finishes (yay SK!) and November tilts toward Advent and Christmas, I hope you find some love and joy in these days as well.

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stroke-recovery

10-Month Strokeaversary

…. in which the blogger makes a pop culture pun in each header.

“Rocky“

So, something fairly big for me happened recently. Following my stroke ten months ago, I would look out the hospital window from my wheelchair and see people–strolling on their lunch-breaks, walking their dogs, or jogging–up and down the small hill that leads from the hospital to the Bethany Gardens and farm owned by the sisters of St. Martha. At that time, I was a ‘two-person transfer’ and couldn’t walk a meter, let alone a kilometer. “See that hill?” I said to Sara. “I’m going to walk up it with you one day. That’s my goal.” There’s a small tower at the top. My dream was to touch that tower like Rocky finally able to take the steps from the iconic movie. It felt impossible, but I fervently envisioned getting to the top of that hill, giving thanks for my recovery–and being outside, right side up, and on my own two feet.

This week, it finally happened. Sara and I were running separate errands on a busy day and we both wound up in the vicinity of the hospital at the same time. We decided to meet for tea at the volunteer-run BreakAway Cafe that helps pay for new medical equipment. Last fall Sara had been there pretty well every single day to see me, and she still had a free coffee on her hospital coffee card. It had been a while since we’d both been at St. Martha’s together since my stay. After our drink and my medical appointment, Sara said, “is today the day?” and looked meaningfully at the hill. And we set off. It was surreal to make it all the way to the top.

It wasn’t entirely as envisioned. My gait wasn’t as smooth and confident as I’d imagined from my wheelchair in September. I was winded by the slope and had to stop to catch my breath. (That certainly wouldn’t have happened pre-stroke to this long-distance pilgrim!) And when we got to the top it turned out there was no way to actually touch the tower, which turns out to sit behind fences, cattle, and construction.

Even dreams that come true don’t usually do so in the ways we’ve imagined.

But – it felt wonderful to reach the top just the same! And I was thankful every step.

“Telltale Heart“

(apart from the title, what’s below doesn’t actually have much to do with the Edgar Allen Poe short story, which is frighteningly narrated here, if you’re interested)

Today I was at the hospital for another important step in recovery. I’m still doing physio at St. Martha’s at least twice a week…odd to remember how when I was new to Antigonish I used to think I should go see the place because I’d never been inside. But this morning wasn’t physio. After three tries and two different technicians, they got an IV line into my arm for what’s called an “agitated saline contrast,” or echocardiogram bubble test, pumping “bubbles” into my vein, then watching them travel to the heart to see if my surgery in April had really closed the hole between my heart’s upper chambers.

The great news: it had. No bubbles got through. This means that now no future clots can sneak through there, either. I said thank you to Dr Amy Hendricks, and told her she plays a mean piano and violin (I had been surprised to see her perform in a wonderful concert at St Ninian Cathedral). She laughed and said thank you, and that everyone needs to have a few hobbies on the side. That’s life in a small town. (Pictured are my friend and fellow pilgrim Sister RéAnne and I at the concert before it began).

“My Left Foot (and Hand)”

This week I also got my Botox shot for leg spasticity. Or rather six shots, into my left calf, as I lay on my stomach on a clinic bed in Halifax. There was no immediate change, except some mild flu-like symptoms I’m presently experiencing. Apparently it takes 4-6 weeks for the poison to reach full efficacy and (we hope) work its wonders. However, tonight I feel like my leg already swings a bit easier, which might be psychosomatic. In any case, convincing my plastic brain to accept that my leg can be trusted again is apparently part of the point. We’ll see!

I’m starting to be able to do some slow and basic typing with my left hand. Just barely. Soon the hand tires and my xpinxkixe finger (there it is, doing it again), starts drooping and hitting errant keys and I have to go back to one hand. But… it’s a start. The trick is holding my left hand in the air without the fingers curling in (spasticity) or the whole hand dropping, then adding to that the coordination of using fingers to distinguish between the “a” and the “d” keys when they are only beginning to remember their connection to my brain…

“The Gatto Came Back”

Okay, that heading holds a fairly obscure pun, but IYKYK. (If you don’t, click here for “Gatto”; and watch Canadian entertainer Fred Penner sing the song here !)

My two universities have both been incredibly supportive through these months of stroke and stroke recovery. Firstly, Concordia’s Dept of Theological Studies and its chair, Dr. André Gagné, worked to renew for one last time my status as an “affiliate assistant professor” there. I love still being associated this way with Montreal, even though the thought of a trip to the big city and taking public transit in my present condition gives me the heeby-jeebies.

Second, Saint Francis Xavier (StFX) and my colleagues here in the Religious Studies department have been nothing short of wonderful. In addition to taking over my teaching last fall, interim chair Dr Robert Kennedy dropped by with a stunning white orchid from the department after my heart surgery. You may recall that they also sent flowers and cards during my hospital stay, and Sara got gift certificates for take-out and ready-meals from our then Dean of Arts office and the department. Recently, the University also made “a big deal” of my winning a Sask Book Award with a special news release. New colleague Dr Gerjan Altenburg invited me fishing with him and his son. And this last week, Dr. Erin Morton, Associate Vice-President, Research, Graduate and Professional Studies, and head of the Gatto Chair Committee, confirmed that my application for a one-year extension of my chairship was approved. This means that the research travel and meetings for which I had funding will not be lost to my months in hospital. I’m incredibly grateful!

“Running Back to Saskatoons”

I’ve been hanging ’round hospitals” is one of the lines from the 1972 The Guess Who song “Running Back to Saskatoon,” which also mentions libraries, grease monkeys, and Moosomin SK. But it’s actually now that I’m home from the hospital that I’ve really been able to enjoy Saskatoon (or as they say here in Nova Scotia, “serviceberry”) season.

It’s a good year here on our three acres for Saskatoons, even if you’d laugh to watch how slow I am to pick them. My first attempt at a Saskatoon crumble was only okay (not enough berries). But today is Saskatoon pie day. I followed a recipe from the beautiful – and fun – cookbook Flapper Pie and a Blue Prairie Sky, which devotes several pages to Saskatoons and their place in prairie cuisine and culture.

It’s not a beautiful pie…I used a store crust, and my thumb marks disappeared in the baking. But it’s mine. And what I really wanted to say was not so much about Saskatoons (or pies!) as the feelings that arose in me this year as I picked the deep purple berries. The other evening I was out during the “golden hour” with my plastic pail. Somewhere in the near distance I could hear children playing. A rooster crowed from one of the nearby farms, and the songbirds – we have a lot of song sparrows, vireo, yellow warblers and more – were calling to each other.

Despite the mosquitoes, deer flies, and ticks, suddenly there was so much peace and joy welling up inside that I could feel it like a physical presence. Here I was, standing on my feet, reaching with both hands, however awkwardly, for berries, and tasting the sweetness of this land where I live.

I feel incredibly blessed to be living, period, and to be living in the country. Yes, the power goes out sometimes, yes, there are critters, some great, mostly small, to be aware of and learn to live with, yes, there is grass cutting and incessant yard care, and yes, there are no bakeries or restaurants or cool little take-out spots just around the corner like I enjoyed in Montreal. But there are other pleasures, like sitting with tea looking out at the little bit of salt water that fingers in at the foot of our yard, like watching herons rise up into flight or eagles float lazily overhead. Like tossing ripe Saskatoons into your mouth and hearing the soft tap-tap-tap of a downy woodpecker somewhere deeper in the bush. And feeling alive and connected to it all.

“Radio Ga Ga”

This old song by Queen actually has pretty prescient lyrics in the age of TikTok and Instagram.

Another recent highlight for me was being interviewed by CBC Radio One Montreal’s Sonali Karnick about my new book, Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia. Interview HERE. Because I’ve known lovely, warm, and good-spirited Sonali for years, and All in a Weekend’s equally warm and thoughtful producer Jill Walker and I are so comfortable with each other, the interview felt like a happy reunion. My friend and fellow author Ken Wilson said as much on social media: “You two sounded like old friends. It was like eavesdropping on a fascinating conversation at the next table.” (Speaking of fascinating, Ken’s book Walking the Bypass is coming out this fall). Did I mention you could hear Sonali’s and my conversation here?

These Are the Moments

The 2009 album “These Are the Moments” by local Cape Breton group The Rankin Family contains the song “Fare Thee Well Love” – which is my wish to you, in your moments, whatever and wherever they are..

That’s a snapshot of what’s been happening. It’s been ten months since the event that overturned my life last fall. That one moment of garbled speech, of a tingle running down my arm, of Sara running for the Aspirin and calling 911, has led to all these moments since.

Isn’t it profound how a single moment can change our lives, and how often that happens, in some form or another?

And yet life still goes on, until it doesn’t. And for this moment now, I’m thankful. And thankful to you for taking a moment to read this. Tonight is garbage night. Time to head out with the wheelbarrow, and then maybe try that pie…

[Update: As they say in the Maritimes, it was some good.]

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First Solo Pilgrim on the Nova Scotia Ninian Way

When Sara and I first arrived in Nova Scotia for her new job at St. Francis Xavier University, I was bemused to find all kinds of connections to Saint Ninian. In Montreal, I’d endlessly debated Ninian’s existence with Prof. Sara Terreault when we taught pilgrimage together at Concordia. When we moved to England and I was taking advantage of pilgrimages there, I’d enticed friends Ken and Christine to come over and join me as the first group of Canadians to walk Scotland’s nascently revamped Ninian walk, The Whithorn Way. Almost as soon as I arrived in Antigonish I admit I started concocting a fanciful pilgrimage here called “The Nova Scotia Ninian Way,” that would explain the strange choice of Ninian as the patron Saint of the cathedral here while weaving in the often suppressed histories of Gael and Acadian settlers, and original Mi’kmaw peoples on this Land.

Then the Antigonish Heritage Museum invited me to give a talk on Ninian.

Sara found it a bit weird that I was pulling all-nighters for a talk that wasn’t any longer than a lecture for class. Finally I revealed to her that the talk was spiralling out of control! The deadline for the annual Pottersfield Prize for (unpublished) Creative Non-fiction was approaching …. one thing had led to another and I had myself a manuscript. It was a braiding together of two walks to Ninian–one in Scotland and one in Antigonish–and the stories of impossible underdog successes amid terrible colonial destruction on both sides of the Atlantic. To my amazement, the book, Someone Else’s Saint, won second prize!

Since there was going to be a Real Life book, I knew then and there that there had to be a Real Life pilgrimage to match. What kind of a fraud would I feel like at book talks if I hadn’t even walked the trajectory I was describing? So the “word became flesh.” Soon, a map was drawn, rest stops were arranged, and a dozen or so adventuresome pilgrims (you know who you are…and thank you!) signed on to walk the inaugural Nova Scotia Ninian Way. We timed the pilgrimage to end at Saint Ninian Cathedral just in time for their 125th Anniversary Mass.

Talk about a bucket list moment.

I sure didn’t think it was likely the Nova Scotia Ninian Way would be walked again.

But today, my friend, and fellow walker/writer Ken Wilson is out there in a heat wave walking the entire 25 kms!

I shouldn’t be surprised. Ken essentially has a PhD in meaningful walking, he’s the author of Walking the Bypass, out soon with University of Regina Press, and he’s all through the Scottish portions of Someone Else’s Saint (although he wasn’t 100% enamoured of his depiction in the infamous STINGING NETTLE scene and the WET SOCKS FIASCO) as he let me know via his blogged review.)

But what an honour to have the likes of Ken check out this Antigonish Pilgrim Path AKA The Nova Scotia Ninian Way!

__________________________

Check out Ken Wilson’s blog “Reading and Walking”: https://readingandwalking.wpcomstaging.com/…/22/pomquet/

Buy Someone Else’s Saint: https://www.indigo.ca/…/someone…/9781990770692.html

Preorder Walking the Bypass: https://uofrpress.ca/Books/W/Walking-the-Bypass

Read about the Nova Scotia Ninian Way: https://somethinggrand.ca/…/29/a-nova-scotia-ninian-walk/

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SOUTH BRANCH SCRIBBLER

This prairie boy remembers feeling on top of the world when he got called a “Montreal Creative” by Nantali Indongo on CBC Radio One Montreal in 2012:

But I have to admit being “author Matthew Anderson of Antigonish, Nova Scotia” feels pretty great in 2025. That’s my moniker in this “Story Behind the Story” interview for the South Branch Scribbler. Interviewer Allan Hudson is a New Brunswick writer and promoter of writing, and The South Branch Scribbler is his blog. He reached out to talk about the backstory of Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia, published this coming week.

If you live near Moncton NB, I’ll be joining Allan at the 3rd Annual Greater Moncton Riverview Dieppe Book Fair, April 26 2025.
Riverview Lion’s Centre 10am to 3pm.

If you live near Antigonish, the official launch of Someone Else’s Saint will be at the Antigonish Heritage Museum on May 1 2025 at 7pm, where I’ll be upstaged by the glorious Mary Beth Carty and blessed in Gaelic (at least I hope it’s a blessing – my Gaelic isn’t too good yet) by Lewis MacKinnon.

If you live further afield, Someone Else’s Saint is available from Indigo, or by request at those two symbols that the world is still a good and just place: your independent bookseller or your public library.

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A Nova Scotia Ninian Walk

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.

FAQ sheet Nova Scotian Ninian WalkDownload
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Our Own Green Acres

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.