Ernest Blair Experiment

Our family spent this week in Pictou County. We coordinated several events in Nova Scotia: picking up grandchildren from Big Cove Camp. ; attending Sandy’s art exhibition at the deCoste Centre; early celebration of Great-grandad John’s birthday (97). Our three children rented a house in downtown Pictou. They came from Peterborough (Ontario), Whitehorse (Yukon) and Port Moody (British Columbia).

Highlights, besides the sea food, and Sam’s pizza, included group walks along the waterfront in Halifax (the port to historic properties ) and the waterfront in Pictou (Sandy’s ice cream to the lobster shop).

I am sure that everyone had their own special moments.

One of the things of note for myself was the changing use of technology. This was illustrated the morning we had to drive from Halifax to New Glasgow. It was a grey morning, as we headed out of the city it started a downpour. I was driving from the overnight hotel to get to New Glasgow. Laurel had her cell phone. As a passenger, she was able to direct me out of the city, predicting the necessary turns. My technology has been limited to the iPad. When we eventually arrived in Pictou, I was so very conscious of the tourists, navigating the downtown, device in hand, looking for particular shops. My challenge is to become ‘cell-phone savvy’.

At the end of a hectic week, full of stories, we have dispersed to Ontario, BC and the Yukon. Heather and I will go back to the Nova Scotian rural lifestyle, with new technology to learn. New places in Canada to visit.

This week, Edward is away; no graphics or links. In our travel, I did pick up one book.

Monica Graham. 2015. Cradle of Knowledge. Pictou Academy 1816-2016. Published by Pictou Academy Educational Foundation. About the life of Thomas McCulloch.

Heather and I want to thank the family visitors: Patrick, Emily, Logan; Andrew, Julia, Quinn, Isla Rose; Laurel and Marcus. And GrandDad John and Sandy. Happy to share this moment in time.

Note to CORAH

There must be many of my generation who need to be cell phone savvy : both for communication AND for navigating our landscape.

Last Monday, the Village of Lawrencetown Commission hosted a community meeting at the Fire Hall, given the notice of Library closure.

The meeting was well attended, hosted by the Village Commission, including Brian Reid and Jane Baskwill. They presented the concept of a community resource. They indicated that Lawrencetown was looking at the Canning model.

Next Monday (January 27) there is a town hall meeting at the MacDonald museum, to be hosted by Claudia Chender on ‘Action for Libraries’. This will include the strategy for the Middleton library. Heather and I plan to attend.

In my mind, it is remarkable that we live in a geography that has sustained writers, going back to Ernest Buckler (see Mountain and the Valley). This richness in our literature continues today.

To support the Lawrencetown Library, there remains a strong literary culture plus an appreciation of landscape through the resources at the Centre of Geographic Sciences. Let’s take the opportunity to work together for the common good of the next generation.

References

Raynor Winn, 2018, The Salt Path, Penguin Random House UK.

Zita Cobb, 2026, Shorefast 2025 Impact Report, (Online)

We enjoyed a mid-week visit to Annapolis Royal. We stopped briefly at the Library.

Given the controversy in England about the book, I was intrigued. Fortunately, they are able to bring it in via Interlibrary loan.

Next step, the Elm Tree Cafe at the Historic Gardens for a morning coffee. Sitting under the huge elm tree, we wondered about the history.

On the back cover ‘E Terra Vita’ by Tom Forrestall.

“The hand holds within its grasp flowers representing the native Mi’kmaq (mayflower), Acadian (iris) and British (rose) heritage of Annapolis Royal. It reaches outward to pass this heritage on to succeeding generations.“

At the Red Onion, I looked for British food, e.g. Weetabix., Branston pickle.

Last stop was JoAnn’s Chocolate Shop and Gallery. Besides the chocolate, I found in the second hand books, Barry Lopez ‘Field Notes’.

Heather stopped in, opposite, at the Bonnett House Art Gallery and found Sally O’Grady. Sally worked with us in the Parks Canada days. She has designed an excellent brochure/map, Annapolis Royal Art Map 2026 Fine Arts and Crafts.

He was our neighbour when we lived on Highway 201, Paradise; so many familiar faces and places from the Valley. Thank you, Dave for your excellent, continued contribution to our understanding of the local Geography.

References

Raynor Winn, 2018, The Salt Path, Penguin Books.

Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens. ‘Story of a Garden‘.

Barry Lopez, 1994, Field Notes, Random House Canada.

Atlantic Books Today, No. 103, Spring/Summer 2026. (online edition HERE)

Annapolis Royal 2026, Art Map: Fine Arts and Crafts, Designed by Sally O’Grady.

Dave Whitman, 2026, Music in the Annapolis Valley, Bailey Chase Books.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to both, Edward Wedler and Heather Stewart.

Friday, it was time to head up the Valley to Kings County. Our destination was the ArtCan Gallery and Café in Canning.

We arrived in time to enjoy a tasty, home-made lunch. In the gallery, there was an exhibition of the surrealistic painter, Frank Forrestall (son of Tom). In the cafe were hung beautiful landscapes painted by the owner, Ron Hayes.

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Afterwards, we strolled down the Main Street to the Merritt Gibson Memorial Library. This library is not part of the Annapolis Valley Regional Library (AVRL) network. As such, with the engagement of community volunteers, it offers an alternative operational model for the AVRL.

In the Library, I was able to sign out Andrea Wulf ‘The Invention of Nature.:Alexander von Humboldt’s New World’. This is a ‘big’ read.

Passing by the cafe, back to the car, one of the staff ran out with a sweater that Heather had accidentally left at the lunch table.

This endeared us to Canning. It is a wonderful example of local rural culture. The streets emphasize the arts: library, cafes, galleries, wool shops etc.; plus, proximity to Wolfville. We can not afford to move there. However, we can take a drive, enjoy the Acadian dykes, and the rural landscape between the two mountains.

Today, Saturday, Heather is busy, attending a Japanese-style flower arranging workshop at the Granville Ferry hall, organized by the Annapolis Shambhala Meditation Centre.

Reference

Andrea Wulf, 2019, The Invention of Nature: Alexander van Humboldt’s New World, Alfred A Knopf, New York, 473 pp.

Acknowledgements

Edward added graphics and links to this post. Thank you.

Monday (June 15) we went to BelleIsle to visit Doug Brown. It was time to get our bicycles serviced, and to ride the Middle Road. No-one home, so we continued on to Annapolis Royal.

As we entered town, we passed the Dunromin Campground sign. My comment to Heather, was ‘we are done roaming the world’. Stopped at the Brown Dog Café. The Annapolis Royal library was open. It is one of the libraries NOT closing.

I picked up Raynor Winn’s book ‘Landlines’. From the cover ‘Some people live to walk. Raynor and Moth walk to live’.

It describes long distance hiking trails in Great Britain from the West Highland Way, to the Pennine Way, as far as the South West Coast path. It is a Sunday Times best seller. I am half way through the Pennine Way. For each trail, it describes the landscape, wildlife and random encounters with other walkers. The sub-text is the impact of long-distance walking on Moth’s health.

From the back cover:

‘“Thousands of feet over thousands of years have trodden many of same trails we have, tracing their passage on to the landscape, imprinting their memories in the soil. What remains are not just paths, they’re precious landlines that connect us to the earth, to our past and to each other.”

Back to electronic reality, we received a phone call from Bell Canada that they intend to replace the router on our Internet service. Not sure if this is real or not. Must wait to see if a technician comes to the house.

Today, Grant McBurney arrived with four copies of our property survey. One for each neighbour, one spare and one for the safety deposit box.

Reference

Raynor Winn. 2022. Landlines. Penguin Random House, UK.

Acknowledgements

Grant McBurney and Lloyd Lombard for their good work.

Edward has been away painting, plein air in Parrsboro this week. No graphics or links.

This week, Heather and I addressed a number of technical issues. On the ground, we decided that we needed a land survey of our property. Fortunately, through COGS, we were able to contact Grant McBurney to produce a land survey of the boundaries between our neighbours, as well as the right of way to the Annapolis River floodplain.

The second issue was the management of our online communication. This started with a conversation with Dave MacLean at COGS on the management of Facebook files. Not being familiar with this environment, I stopped at GekkoTech Computer Services in Berwick. They were able to point me in the right direction. Later I had to go to COGS to get advice on deleting files in Facebook/LinkedIn. I could empathize with parents who are trying to manage what comes in online.

I did make the suggestion that CORAH might offer a course on the intricacies of Facebook/LinkedIn.

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Heather found an excellent photo album on Pictou County. It brought back to her, many memories of growing up in that corner of Nova Scotia.

As we go forward, it is important that the province recognize the need in rural Nova Scotia for technology resources, both formally and informally. I am fortunate to access excellent resources through NSCC (COGS and CORAH). These resources will be even more important, as society’s needs continue to evolve.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the staff at NSCC: David MacLean, Darren MacKinnon, Jaime Dennison. Also to Grant McBurney and Lloyd Lombard. Edward added the links, map and photographs.

PS. We took a quiet drive to Lunenburg Bound this afternoon.

Reference

Norman Munroe, 1989, Pictou County, Auldearn Press and Stellarton Press

This morning, Heather and I attended a rally on ‘Save the Library’. It was held outside MLA David Bowlby’s constituency office on the corner of Bridge Street and Highway #1, next to the Needs store in Middleton (see Hollowing Out of Rural Nova Scotia). The attendance was high with placards on the need to keep libraries open in the Valley.

We arrived early and had a chance to speak briefly to a member of Bowlby’s team about the finances of the Valley Regional Library and the contributions from the different municipal units. The MLA did not step outside and address the crowd. We left after about an hour with a sense that the residents fully understand and appreciate the importance of libraries in rural Nova Scotia.

The event did raise a number of other questions about the viability of small towns in the Valley — Middleton, Lawrencetown, for example. On Middleton’s Main Street there are many vacant store fronts. What is the role of the town, county, province in guaranteeing and defining ‘essential services’? Do we have a viable financial model?

It is somewhat encouraging that the municipality is hosting citizen forums.

From the rally, it appears that citizens who choose to live in rural Nova Scotia do have a strong sense of ‘essential services’ and are prepared to make sure that Middleton, ‘Heart of the Valley’, remains healthy and engaged.

I look forward to seeing the media coverage, given this type of ‘grass roots’ rally, and the response, from our politicians, at all levels of government. At the end of the day, it is all about the money, engagement of the citizens, and the structure and priorities of the political system in rural Nova Scotia.

This week, we received a notice that the Annapolis Valley libraries are closing five branches, citing “static [flat] provincial funding”. This comes on the heels of a notice from the NSCC that they are laying off library staff.

Perhaps the assumption is that the population can access information via the Internet. Or that there is in-depth coverage in the local newspaper. Have you recently read the Chronicle Herald? Or better, the weekly Bridgetown Reader? Or are we outsourcing information sources to big tech AI that may know no geography?

Do we need to examine the role of community centres in rural Nova Scotia?

In the short term, it will lead to a ‘Rally to Save our Libraries’, Friday June 5 at 10 am, at David Bowlby, MLA’s office at 10 Bridge Street, Middleton (see the online petitition Save Public Libraries in Nova Scotia)

There are a number of larger questions that need to be discussed, many of them geographic in nature.

1. What is the impact of technology on access to information?
2. What are the changes in rural Nova Scotia? Population, activities on the land use: balance between resource management and conservation.
3. Are the changes in the demographics in line with access to the necessary resources.g. education, health, employment?
4. What is the relationship between urban NS and rural NS?
5. What is the relationship between NS and other provinces % urban v % rural?

If we reduce access to information resources how are we going to maintain a ‘creative rural economy’ Furthermore, what are we hollowing out when our Tourist Information Centres are closed?

Yesterday, Heather and I had lunch at the pub in Middleton with old friends, who live in Annapolis County.

A couple of topics arose:

1). Did I realize that if I wanted to visit England, I would have to renew my British passport to enter the country of my birth?

No, but I stopped at the Middleton Library and made an inter-library loan request. There is a copy in Cape Breton (now a collectible book).

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Today, we needed to go for a walk. We selected the French Basin Trail in Annapolis Royal. There was a cool breeze off the Basin (see also Annapolis Royal Visit).

Afterwards, we stopped at the Historic Gardens café. Today (Saturday) was the cafe opening for the season.

Yesterday, we needed to purchase Valley Kitchen pancake mix.

I had noted in The Reader, Howard Selig’s one page advertisement, that retail sales will be discontinued at 188 Marshall St. Effective June 5th; still available at the Independent grocery store.

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By way of contrast, today’s Chronicle Herald ( Saturday, May 30th. A1) contains several articles on the theme of Energy Transition.

‘Over the coming decades Nova Scotia is going to onshore much of its power via a hard turn to wind, potentially locally fracked natural gas, biomass, solar and imports from neighbouring provinces.

The environmental and human impacts of energy products that we’d tacitly exported over recent decades will also be coming home, but everything will come at a cost – to communities, to the natural world and to our pocket books’.

Sounds like there will be a need for Geographers at the local level — the Centre of Geographic Sciences, for example!