When was the last time you left home? I mean not just for dinner or a vacation; but for a prolonged time, over a long distance, with little expectation of immediate or frequent return? I’m here talking about separating yourself from family, friends and environment; not just going around the corner or moving to the countryside. I’m talking about settling somewhere entirely new and different? Maybe even a place you’ve never been before?
When I was growing up I left home every year for school, whether public, undergraduate or graduate. It was always in a new place, sometimes estranged by an entire continent, others by different cities, once by a different province. Home then was where my parents and sister were. As much as I clung to and admired my friends at school, I knew it was never home. When I began my career in Almonte following almost two decades of detachment from my family, it meant a great deal to me that, by coincidence, I was reunited to my parents, my sister, her husband and their two children, all of whom lived within 45Kms and whom I made a point of visiting regularly either at their respective homes or with them at my own.
As chance would have it, we have two younger friends who now (as I did 55 years ago) are moving to Nova Scotia from Upper Canada. Though we Canadians are accustomed to dismiss the vast distances separating our ten provinces and three territories, it is a mistake. Even within our large ten provinces the distances are both immense and material. These distances of which I speak are the carnal, intellectual and spiritual divisions between the inhabitants. Our friends, being originally from what we here call “Northern Ontario”, are already light years away.
Going to Nova Scotia promises to be a cultural change. Though it is easy in the urban hubs of Nova Scotia to diffuse and clarify the mist that separates the view, it is a fiction to presume to have penetrated the fog. My experience as a newcomer to the maritimes (the collective for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island) was not resistance; rather it was the imperative gently to absorb the definition. Like a ship’s bell there was no face, just the announcement. The transition to the maritime vernacular is spirited by the magnificence of its lands and proximity to the mighty North Atlantic Ocean. The maritimes are on the edge of a continent, separated themselves by endless roads from their Canadian and American neighbours; and by a colossal sea from the world across the water. Make no mistake, it is no less prodigious now than it was in 1492 to have crossed the open seas from Europe to North America.
Though the maritime history (that is, the recorded chronological events) is only 500 hundred years old at the outside, its inherited First Nations influence is far more longstanding and undeniable, the evolution of hunting, fishing and living by the sea for generations.
Venetian Italian explorer Zuan Chabotto (Italian: Giovanni Caboto) known in English as John Cabot, was the first European explorer of the North American continent. His voyage of exploration ushered in an irrevocable transformation of global social and economic interaction. Cabot’s voyage received financial backing by Italian banking houses in London and the Bardi family banking firm of Florence. With financing secure and patent issued by Henry VII to Cabot and his three sons, he set sail in 1496. Upon landing on 24 June 1497, Cabot raised the Venetian and Papal banners, claiming the land for the King of England and recognising the religious authority of the Roman Catholic Church.
But my intention is not merely to highlight the differences or distinctions between the maritimes and wherever whence you hail; instead it is to focus you upon one point in particular. And that point is this: the maritimes is an enviable planet, one which will require about one year fully to absorb and to acclimate. It is likewise predictable that during this period of accommodation, you will be visited by blunt and sometime remorseful inclinations to return home.
Of course, little in our lives is irreversible. But the import of my advice is the caution to be undertaken in the enterprise. The evolution of change though imperceptible is incremental. An important element I discovered of the maritimes is that its roots with modern civilization are deep and perpetually burgeoning. When you consider the obstacles which faced the original inhabitants and settlers of the area, the progress of development is not to be diminished. And it all started not too long ago. So you are part of that growth and forward movement. But it is similarly wise to keep in mind that, given the maritimes were the first point of landing for our European cousins, the maritimes enjoys the richest and most prolific history of Canada. It is a reminder that, as much as we Upper Canadians are execrated as snobs, the maritimes have us beat! The maritimers are, in a word, a hard act to follow. But they’re a great crew to join. Accordingly my wish for you, as your venture “down east”, is to rise to the shining sunshine and the uplifting waves upon the sea.
Meanwhile I await your episodic communications as I sit here at home at my desk upon my comfortable cushion, looking upriver into my own current mist. I am now too old to undertake further exploration. But I am watching yours with vital interest and a measurably degree of envy!