This Christmas is the one I will be spending in my Christmas Childhood Home—here on the sea bound coast of beautiful Nova Scotia.
Memories of Christmas past keep coming in with the tide washing up warm memories. I have taken to call them, ‘Ghosts of the Coast’.
Prime among them are indelible memories of my Aunt Edie, my father’s eldest sister who pressed gingerbread men through the orphanage wrought iron fence to me and my siblings at Christmas time.
Like images on a kaleidoscope come visions of the dolls found under the tree on Christmas mornings, in pre-orphanage days, the ones allowed to be taken with us on Christmas Day when visiting our mother’s friend, Bernice.
Oh, how I hope that children of our day, now subject to Drag Queen ‘entertainment’, can find Christmas memories that go on to last a lifetime.
Some of this year’s Christmas Card greetings that grace the fireplace mantle in what I call “Our House by the Sea’ come with wishes: “I hope you enjoy your first Christmas in your new home”.
In the tiny Acadian Village we now call home
It was some seven months ago when Canada Free Press (CFP) suddenly had to pull up stakes in Ontario and made the 1,100-mile trek to Nova Scotia.
We decided on the move when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made it clear he could freeze the bank accounts of all who supported the courageous truckers in the Freedom Convoy that converged on winter bitter Ottawa last February.
In columns, CFP made clear their support of the truckers, and we still do.
But Trudeau may have done us an inadvertent favor. I have long wanted to someday return to Nova Scotia. In all of the years when I’d been away, God’s magnificent Atlantic Ocean never stopped calling me back, and now we’re here.
In the tiny Acadian Village we now call home there is a huge, buoy-decorated Christmas Tree down at the harbor, far more charming than all the splendiferous ones I’d seen over the years at the Toronto Eaton Centre.
At night time, one can see hundreds of lighted boats in the local harbor. I was delighted when my next door neighbor told me that many of those boats are crewed by fishermen from Tignish, P.E.I. where most of my maternal relatives live.
They come to Nova Scotia for the annual lobster run. The P.E.I lobster season doesn’t start until Spring.
Thank You, Adrian and Louise for bringing a Nova Scotia Christmas all back to me
Meanwhile, I find myself wondering if any of my cousins, whom I only met once in my life, are on those boats with lights burning in the night dark.
It is not just because of its breath-taking scenery that we love being back home in Nova Scotia, but for its people. Peaceful, loving and quick to smile, Nova Scotians really are the Salt of the Earth.
The picture above depicts the front of the favourite Christmas card received this year, a small, humbly decorated spruce tree, standing on scant snow with the Creator’s majestic ocean in the background.
This card was all the more special to us because it was walked up to our door by neighbor Adrian, who rebuilt our front porch and containing these handwritten words: “Louise and I hope that your first Christmas in N.S. will be a happy one. Thanks for allowing me to work on your home.”
Thank You, Adrian and Louise for bringing a Nova Scotia Christmas all back to me.
Meanwhile, to anybody reading this: Merry Christmas to one and all. May the peace and love of that first Christmas be with you always!
Judi McLeod——Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
This Christmas is the one I will be spending in my Christmas Childhood Home—here on the sea bound coast of beautiful Nova Scotia.
Memories of Christmas past keep coming in with the tide washing up warm memories. I have taken to call them, ‘Ghosts of the Coast’.
Prime among them are indelible memories of my Aunt Edie, my father’s eldest sister who pressed gingerbread men through the orphanage wrought iron fence to me and my siblings at Christmas time.
Like images on a kaleidoscope come visions of the dolls found under the tree on Christmas mornings, in pre-orphanage days, the ones allowed to be taken with us on Christmas Day when visiting our mother’s friend, Bernice.
Oh, how I hope that children of our day, now subject to Drag Queen ‘entertainment’, can find Christmas memories that go on to last a lifetime.
Some of this year’s Christmas Card greetings that grace the fireplace mantle in what I call “Our House by the Sea’ come with wishes: “I hope you enjoy your first Christmas in your new home”.
