Nova Scotia Read Free Page A

sea with
the fishermen and sailors of the previous centuries, but I doubt
that I have suffered the hards hips that they have. I started
surfing when I was thirteen, further south on a warmer shore. Now I
surf a cold but immaculate wave, summer or winter, a stone’s throw
from my doorstep. The waves form as the wind pushes against the
water some 160  kilometres off shore. The storm subsides, but
the waves drive on through deep waters until they reach a stony
reef along the rib of land that is Lawrencetown Beach. If I’ve
walked the morning shoreline and observed that the waves are
plentiful, then I give up my meditative trek along the sand and put
on my wetsuit, grab my board and paddle out to meet them. As they
rear and sometimes rage in their final challenge of the coastline,
I paddle hard and tag along to tap their strength and energy. If
you don’t mind cold water, Nova Scotia is a surfing paradise. The
waves make their long pilgrimage here and rise up from the depths
as they hit the shallows along the shore. In their end is my
beginning, because I begin as many days as possible out on the
beach or out on the waves and I feed off their positive energy
until I am fully recharged for another day of
work.
        Lawrencetown itself, for all of its obscurity, is a place of
historic beginnings, and my link to the past here is my
relationship to the elements that shape this place. As for all of
Nova Scotia, the sea has demanded pre-eminence in the history
books, even in the story of this town.
        The first peoples of this province, the Mi’kmaq,
came to my beach in the summers for fish and mussels, and the
salt-water lake beyond my garden was known as Negsogwakade or the “place of the eel traps.” This was a fertile,
generous destination to spend the warm summer months feeding on
eels, gaspereaux, smelt, salmon, clams, quahogs and waterfowl. But
each year, the Mi’kmaq sensibly retreated away from the coast,
further into the spruce forests to avoid the hostility of winter
storms.
        Early attempts by Europeans to settle Lawrencetown ended in
failure. The first white people to try and make a go of it were the
French. They were not as intrusive as the English who were to
follow and did not mind that this area had no great harbour for big
ships. English surveyor-general Charles Morris, in his official
report of 1752, missed the advantages of this area altogether,
reporting that “the harbour to the [French] settlementf is but
indifferent, it being a salt water river or creek, with a shoal at
its entrance.” The Acadian settlers, however, had already been
finding sustenance from the fish and shellfish and most likely
built an aboiteau, a style of dyke, so as to control the tidal flow
on the marsh and allow for plentiful salt hay. a
        In search of the remains of anything Acadian, my daughters
and I have often set sail in my second-hand Laser across the wide,
shallow base of Lawrencetown Lake, which drains into the sea. The
forest has long since swallowed up anything remotely resembling a
community. There are no signs of the Acadians.
        To simply name a place is to instil a level of significance
to that geography, to foster a history or a mythology (sometimes
it’s hard to separate the two). I’m thinking of this town named for
Lawrence. I can’t say that I’m happy about who we are named after.
Charles Lawrence was an English military leader who governed Nova
Scotia in the 1750s. Considered by many of his peers to be a
military genius and great commander, history at various times
paints a picture of a man of heroic proportions. Rethinking the
past, we see a different man altogether. For it was Lawrence who
ordered the deportation of all Acadians in Nova Scotia and the
burning of their farms.
        Worse yet, Mi’kmaq historian Dan Paul points out that there
is a reasonable case to be made in comparing Governor Lawrence to
Adolf Hitler for his effective program of mass genocide. In
Lawrence’s