We had been in Montréal for a few years. I was laid off (again!) and had received a job offer, too good to turn down.
I would become the maintenance superintendent at a thermal power plant in Port Hawkesbury, NS, starting in the fall of 1973.
My new manager had rented a newly built townhouse for us. We were all set.
What a contrast this was to be, in many ways, as we found out.
It was about 35 deg C and quite muggy as we left Montréal on our way to Halifax. On arrival, it was a cool, clear and sunny fall day.
My new manager had rented a newly built townhouse for us. We were all set.
What a contrast this was to be, in many ways, as we found out.
It was about 35 deg C and quite muggy as we left Montréal on our way to Halifax. On arrival, it was a cool, clear and sunny fall day.
We soon established ourselves in Port Hawkesbury on Cape Breton Island, then a “major” (?) regional city with close to 2,000 inhabitants. It has about 3,500 today.
The nature is overwhelming as you are never really far from either the sea or the huge Bras d’Or lake that fills the centre of the island. The forests are thick with plenty of wild-life.
We had many nice experiences in the forests. We picked mushrooms, I hunted, or we hiked and camped.
My eldest daughter, seven at the time, and I would sometimes walk into the forest after I returned from work. We would bring a small tent and back packs, set camp and spend the night at a lake only a half-hour’s walk away. One morning, as I was cooking our breakfast, I saw her standing in the middle of a small group of deer. I tried to approach carefully but they still darted away. “Daddy, why did you scare away the nice dogs that I was playing with?”
After our breakfast in the wild, we would break camp and be home in time for me to have a shower before going to work.
The hunting was great and I quite enjoyed the outings with some of my colleagues from the plant.
I shot a deer in the first minute (!) of the first day of the hunting season one October day.
The nature is overwhelming as you are never really far from either the sea or the huge Bras d’Or lake that fills the centre of the island. The forests are thick with plenty of wild-life.
We had many nice experiences in the forests. We picked mushrooms, I hunted, or we hiked and camped.
My eldest daughter, seven at the time, and I would sometimes walk into the forest after I returned from work. We would bring a small tent and back packs, set camp and spend the night at a lake only a half-hour’s walk away. One morning, as I was cooking our breakfast, I saw her standing in the middle of a small group of deer. I tried to approach carefully but they still darted away. “Daddy, why did you scare away the nice dogs that I was playing with?”
After our breakfast in the wild, we would break camp and be home in time for me to have a shower before going to work.
The hunting was great and I quite enjoyed the outings with some of my colleagues from the plant.
I shot a deer in the first minute (!) of the first day of the hunting season one October day.
As we were cutting it up, I opened a discussion about how to divide the meat.
“Oh no, we cannot take any, it is all yours. We all filled our freezers last month.” That was said on the day that the hunting season opened.
That made me into a real man in the eyes of many at the plant. I was no longer “the weak city boy”.
The seashore on the east side, facing the Atlantic Ocean is windblown and not really visitor friendly.
The other shore, facing Gulf of St. Lawrence is the opposite. It doesn’t get quite as many damaging storms and has lush forests and some sandy beaches for all to enjoy.
There were many small, and still rather poor, villages on the coasts. They seemed to all have a well-kept church and a garage with a bright yellow school bus nearby.
The houses were far less than luxurious. The cars, parked near, seemed to be held together with a fair amount of “tape and baling wire”.
At this time, Nova Scotia was gradually returning from a long period of economical decline. The fishing industry was still going strong, but the earlier dominant coal mining industry had shrunk to almost nothing. Thousands of ex-miners now found themselves unemployed and, in many cases, living on the government largess and certainly not in grandeur.
The lifestyle was good and quite stress free, too much so as we soon found out, somewhat to our dismay. There was a great deal of a Mañana attitude around. Nothing could be done fast, and sometimes not at all.
Our area on the southern tip of Cape Breton Island seemed to be the centre for many great investments. Several large companies were setting up shop. The pulp and paper business was increasing and, best of all, the Canadian government had chosen to put one more Heavy Water plant there.
This was based on the on-going successes of the CANDU nuclear plant process, calling for heavy water as more and more plants were being built. That era didn’t last all that long, these heavy water plants were soon shut down as the new nuclear plants were commissioned. Thousands of barrels of heavy water, H3O, worth more than its weight in silver, were soon stored around the country.
“Oh no, we cannot take any, it is all yours. We all filled our freezers last month.” That was said on the day that the hunting season opened.
That made me into a real man in the eyes of many at the plant. I was no longer “the weak city boy”.
The seashore on the east side, facing the Atlantic Ocean is windblown and not really visitor friendly.
The other shore, facing Gulf of St. Lawrence is the opposite. It doesn’t get quite as many damaging storms and has lush forests and some sandy beaches for all to enjoy.
There were many small, and still rather poor, villages on the coasts. They seemed to all have a well-kept church and a garage with a bright yellow school bus nearby.
The houses were far less than luxurious. The cars, parked near, seemed to be held together with a fair amount of “tape and baling wire”.
At this time, Nova Scotia was gradually returning from a long period of economical decline. The fishing industry was still going strong, but the earlier dominant coal mining industry had shrunk to almost nothing. Thousands of ex-miners now found themselves unemployed and, in many cases, living on the government largess and certainly not in grandeur.
The lifestyle was good and quite stress free, too much so as we soon found out, somewhat to our dismay. There was a great deal of a Mañana attitude around. Nothing could be done fast, and sometimes not at all.
Our area on the southern tip of Cape Breton Island seemed to be the centre for many great investments. Several large companies were setting up shop. The pulp and paper business was increasing and, best of all, the Canadian government had chosen to put one more Heavy Water plant there.
This was based on the on-going successes of the CANDU nuclear plant process, calling for heavy water as more and more plants were being built. That era didn’t last all that long, these heavy water plants were soon shut down as the new nuclear plants were commissioned. Thousands of barrels of heavy water, H3O, worth more than its weight in silver, were soon stored around the country.
The mayor of Port Hawkesbury who had been so good at redirecting tax payer’s money to himself, was out of prison, but no longer the mayor. That role soon fell to our soon-to-be-friend, Mr. Chisholm, a man of many trades, who I helped elect that first fall in Nova Scotia.
I worked at the newly commissioned thermal power plant, in the middle of the picture, supplying both electricity to the province and hot steam to the nearby heavy water plant, in the upper part of the photo.
In my position I had to manage, hire and sometimes fire, maintenance personnel.
The local school system had, until only a few years earlier, ended at grade eight. Some of the graduates had not kept up their skills and far too many were not able to read or write. They were illiterate. Many of my employees were not qualified for their jobs and had to be replaced. It was sad, but necessary.
To hire locals proved not too easy. There had been far too many trade certificates handed out in recent years, far more than there were qualified people who should have had them.
The recent improvements in Canadian healthcare had its effect. People were healthy but provincial healthcare didn’t cover dental care.
There were very few locals who even had all their front teeth in place. The first local dentist set up shop while I was in town.
One local doctor, of the two in the area, needs to be mentioned.
He came from India and still spoke with an accent. He had very gruff “bedside manners” and many just didn’t like him.
Our baby girl got False Croup, an incessant high pitch cough that can be dangerous if not well looked after. The doctor was walking by as he heard our, then, two months old baby cough.
I didn’t know him from Adam when he knocked on our front door and introduced himself as Doctor …
He gave good advice and the coughing subsided in the next few days. The contact was made. He was never very friendly but, for sure, knew his stuff.
Some time later, my family and I were in Paris, France, for a short stay. There, I picked up a “stomach bug” that just wouldn’t go away. I kept getting stomach cramps. My appetite was poor, and I was losing weight precipitously.
See our “Indian” doctor; He ordered some tests. A few days later the doctor confirmed that I had a bacterial infection, quite common in India, sometimes found in France but almost unknown elsewhere.
He opened his very old fashioned safe and gave me some pills.
“You cannot get these in Canada. Take these”.
He was right, and I soon recovered completely and even gained some of my lost weight back.
“Indian doctor knows more than Canadian doctor.” as my native Canadian Indigenous friends would have said with a chuckle.
The people of Cape Breton Island were very welcoming, and we felt a certain kindness wherever we went.
Shopping for food was a new experience. There was no fish-store or any fresh fish at all to be found in our neighbourhood.
All fish were sold directly by the fisherman. Our initial consternation about the lack of seafood was resolved when we drove to the homes of some fishermen to buy fish. My colleagues had given me the names and addresses.
The product was absolutely fresh, often fetched right out of the ice-box on the fishing boat. Lobster was to be had during many months. The two sides of Nova Scotia had different lobster seasons.
Tourism was great, but certainly not as overwhelming as today.
Some friends visited us, and then a Cabot Trail run was obligatory.
The Cabot Trail, a spectacular road, close to the St. Lawrence Bay on the western side, is sometimes terrifying. I preferred driving it in a northerly direction, then you are farthest from the cliff sides, on the inland side of the road.
Radio stations were still, in those days, operating on the AM band. During the day, you were lucky to get a couple of static free local stations.
Our Port Hawkesbury station was a CBC affiliate. It was very local, to say the least, and would only connect to the CBC grid well into the late evenings. The other alternative station was from all of 40 km away, Antigonish. That station seemed to have half all advertising paid for by “Webb-the-superstore”.
It was with great anticipation that we drove to Antigonish, a few weeks after our arrival.
The “superstore” was a convenience store. I suppose “super” had a different meaning from the slightly larger metropolis of Montréal.
I did put up a 30 metre-long outdoor radio aerial. One of those, made from heavy duty copper wire with insulators on each end, had been standard equipment for me ever since my teenage years.
After dark the radio scene was all different. You could receive all the powerful stations in North America. They were all in English and French, of course, with the odd Spanish speaking Mexican station. This was all so different from my youth in Sweden where you could hear dozens of languages and different music, just moving the dial a few millimetres on the scale.
Life was quiet, sometimes very quiet.
With our little baby at home we weren’t really free to venture too far.
Sure, we went to a few parties in the area. They were shocking to us, to say the least.
Coming from “the big city”, both my wife and I had clothes that may never have been seen before. We had no idea that we looked “different” until it was pointed out.
My pants were too tight, and my wife’s dresses were way too short for the local scene.
The drinking was heavy during the parties. It didn’t much bother us. We assumed, like we always did, that one half of a couple would be sober enough to drive them both home safely. My wife who was a light drinker and still nursing our baby, stayed quite sober and always drove us home.
No, there were no women here who were either sober or otherwise able to drive themselves home.
In this macho (?) world, only men drove. The women didn’t have a driver’s license, nor did they know how to drive.
At a late hour, after much merry-making, many a man would retire to his car and lie down in a drunken stupor. He would eventually stagger back. Now he was ready to drive his wife home.
I suggested that they, perhaps, should take a taxi. No that was not an alternative.
The results were terrifying. I witnessed how one man, hardly able to find the key hole for the starter key, drove straight out onto the main road – through the host’s carefully tended hedge. No wonder so many cars were dented.
Some of these people were outed for all to see: Monday mornings had a section in the Halifax Herald newspaper, always in the upper left corner of page two: “A list of drunk drivers apprehended in the last seven days.”
It was more than shocking to see how many I knew from among our employees and suppliers, just by working at the power plant.
Winter on Cape Breton Island could be brutal. The storms seemed to never end. They just changed wind direction. Some dropped rain, other ice pellets or mountains of snow.
I received a one dollar parking ticket for not using my driveway this day. Can you find it?
We did meet up with some expat Norwegians. They, as we, loved cross country skiing. That was a wonderful experience, as always and everywhere in Canada. Most outstanding was a three-hour after-dark cross-country ski tour, over absolutely white fields, no wind, under a full moon. We had invited a few of the locals too. One had brought a guitar that he played, keeping his fingers supple by sitting very close to our impromptu night-camp fire.
Other than partying hard, the local entertainment scene was rather meagre and, for the first and only time in my life, TV became of interest.
The TV is one part of two events that made us decide to leave.
Two events?
1. The local Sobey’s store had run out of Coca-Cola.
“The truck comes every second week, so we’ll get some more in a few days.”
2. And as I stepped in the front door and shed my rather smelly work clothes;
“I wonder what’s on TV tonight?”
Enough. Life is more than this. We decided to seek our futures in a larger community.
Our two years in Nova Scotia ended a couple of months later. I had a new job and we were back in Montréal.
But I am and will forever be carrying my love for Nova Scotia in my heart.
The fishing, both in fresh and seawater, the hunts for birds or deer, the Acadians, the black communities, the Highland Games, the scots, the bag-pipes and even the days when there were seals on TransCanada Highway.
Seals? Where?
Sometimes, in blinding winter storm white-outs they would enter the causeway in the upper left corner of the picture. That, for sure would stop all traffic.
There is so much to remember.
Oh, and Oland beer in a “stubby”.
