Ghosts On The Coast

Particularly because of Mighty God’s majestic Atlantic Ocean, Nova Scotia has always been part of my life. When I headed out for Ontario, decades ago, Catherine McKinnon’s song ‘Farewell to Nova Scotia’ was on the Hit Parade list. My eyes welled up every time I heard it.

So how’s it going now, or as our dear Florida friend, Doug Bronson would ask, “Wuzz up?”

Though we’ve been here almost a year, some folk in the little fishing village where we live, look upon us as “those people from Ontario”. Perhaps this is a good thing as the work of keeping CFP on line, leaves little, if any time, for socializing with our newfound neighbors, nice as they are.

There are many benefits of living in N.S., first among them, the wonderful sea air, and being able to look out on the ocean from many windows of our house, which I call ‘The House by the Sea’.

Although we are expecting a major winter snowstorm this evening, we’ve had no snow other than a couple of inches here and there, and a Christmas morning dusting on the ground.

I tell friends calling from Ontario that winter weather here is like their month of April. Snow today, but all but melted away a couple of days later.

Still when the wind comes from the Northeast over the ocean in sub-zero temperatures, it feels mighty cold, but we knew that before coming here.

Food is still ample and accessible, including roadside fresh farm eggs, selling for about $5 a dozen. They’re unlike supermarket ones, always large, extra large, or jumbo—and at one of the places we frequent, the chickens even come out to the stand to greet you.

We can head down to the docks to pick up a box of fresh, flash-frozen haddock. It is not only incredibly delicious but easy to bake in the oven. When I was growing up in Halifax, it was halibut, which is also delicious, but when it comes to taste, haddock is even more so.

And that’s not to mention that one neighbor, a tug boat captain, sometimes drops off fresh haddock at our door, or that our next door neighbor, a lifetime lobster fisherman, sometimes delivers fresh lobster to us.

Once a week errands find us in nearby Yarmouth, where its many parks and historic harbor make it one of the most beautiful towns I’ve ever seen. Summer runs along Highway 3 take us through picturesque Tusket, a bucolic little town that looks and sounds just like its name.

My ‘Ghosts on the Coast’ are memories that keep drawing me back in mind to relatives who once lived here, my beloved Aunt Edie and the nuns who helped raise me in my orphanage days. They may be gone now but continue to live forever in my heart.

Much more than just puzzling, opinions—not even a single one—are ever heard from people worried about what is happening in our beautiful country; its dramatic change for the worst.

But that was the same back in Ontario.

As I responded by email to dear friend ‘Springhill Pete’ this morning, “It’s as if they’re sleepwalking toward a disaster they don’t even know is there”.

In a world seeming to get crazier by day, I sometimes on starry nights go out to my back deck to gaze longingly at the stars and the ocean, as a surefire way to hold onto my own sanity.

The best way on Earth for reassurance that God Who created both stars and ocean, is still in His Heaven, seeing all that is happening down here on Earth.