Farewell to Nova Scotia

Mahone Bay, N.S.-It seems that someone else was writing the script during my three-week “work-cation” in Nova Scotia. Only an hour in my long ago home city of Halifax, I went down to St. Patrick’s Church on Brunswick Street, the church of my childhood. Reading the map posted out front to see see whether the church was even open to the public, a man named Alan Hemphill approached to ask if he could help. Turned out he was 20 minutes early for a meeting of the church Restoration Committee and gave Brian Thompson and myself a very welcome private tour.

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Within the next 24 hours, we met Michael and Holly Joudrey, the wonderful couple who are part of the driving force behind keeping St. Patrick’s open to the public. When Brian was booking the chalet where we have been staying, he did it online, and because he had never been here before, couldn’t have known the places that mattered most to me. We booked it mostly because of its nearness to Mahone Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, and of course because it came equipped with the high speed connection necessary to keep Canada Free Press (CFP) posted daily. Mahone Bay, Lunenburg and Bridgewater are not separated by many miles , and we have been able to take in local sights like the unbelievably beautiful Blue Rocks during our stay. To my way of thinking, the Town of Lunenburg could easily qualify as Most Enchanting Town on Earth. Its 1800s buildings, including sea captain homes; its spectacular views of tiny islands on the water; fishing villages like Blue Rocks that make you content just knowing that places like this still exist. The little church where we attended Mass this morning is right out of a storybook of times past. Built in 1839, a dwindling congregation in the 1890s caused St. Norbert’s to close its doors for 40 years until Newfoundland fishermen relocating in Lunenburg rescued and reopened it in the 1930s. In the present day, St. Norbert’s comes complete with the Rev. Fr. Joseph Christensen, Pastor, a beautifully-voiced priest, whose homilies are interesting and who looks as Charles Laughton must have looked in his younger years. The church is flanked by a tiny cemetery--the only cemetery left on church property in the whole of Lunenburg. It had been many years since I returned to the province where I was raised and it was the Ocean that called me back. For sure it wasn’t I who wrote the script during these past weeks in the province that can boast being “Canada’s Ocean Playground”. Promising myself before even leaving Ontario that I would find the orphanage summer camp where I spent summers as a child, we intended to call on the Halifax Archdiocese if necessary to track down a place called Herman’s Island. The day before officially moving from Halifax to Mahone Bay, we decided to check out the chalet. To my utter delight, we discovered that Herman’s Island was no more than a couple of miles up the road. This morning visitors to St. Norbert’s Catholic Church were asked to stand and announce where they were from and the ushers would give them a small souvenir, a lapel pin depicting the tiny church. There were just the two guests. The one from Toronto and a gentleman from Jacksonville, Florida. That tiny lapel pin, a replica of the tiny church, will be carried home by me to be treasured ever after. It’s been decades since departing the province I never quite left. My “Bluenose” sea blood kept calling me back and I suppose it always will. We will be leaving for home this week. Farewell to Nova Scotia where God’s Handiwork is so apparent, but only for now.