Acadian shores
I’m browsing at the farmers’ market in Belliveau Cove, Digby County, on a sunny Saturday when I get to chatting with Sheila LeBlanc-Joyce, an Acadian artist selling bread and paintings. She tells about her family’s cabin down by the river. It hasn’t got running water and was only recently wired for electricity, but its one room is enough for her, her husband Keith and their two kids.
Intrigued, I invite myself round for a visit. The wooden cabin sits in a lush copse of trees a few metres up from a brook, giving it a bayou feel. Sheila greets me at the door. Jaimus, a curly-haired two-year-old, zooms out front on his plastic trike while Evelyn, a lively eight-year-old, swings on a rope fastened to the ceiling. Keith is working on the brick oven across the lane.
Sheila and Evelyn give me the tour; it doesn’t take long. At the back of the cosy, cluttered kitchen/dining room/living room is a sawdust toilet. The brook serves as a bathtub. A 1970s TV with no cable or rabbit ears uses some sort of time machine to connect to a DVD player. That seems to be it, but a giggling Jaimus gives the house’s secret away: his mom pulls on a rope in the ceiling and steps spring out, revealing the bedroom in the attic.
Sheila wound up down by the river in 1999. Born in Chetticamp, she lived in Alberta and Montreal after university before meeting Keith in Maine.
“I was homesick wicked,” she remembers of her time as an activist trying to get Ralph Nader elected. One day a rogue radio wave blew the CBC her way: Costas Halavrezos was discussing quilting on Maritime Noon.
“I was so homesick for a Canadian voice – you can’t believe how far away from Canada Maine is. So far!” she sighs. She took it as a sign and followed Costas’s voice home, bringing Keith with her.
The cabin, owned by a friend of Keith’s, was overgrown with weeds and the floor was covered with dirt and dead animals.
“There’s no dead birds now,” she says with a smile, before Evelyn cuts in: “There is dirt.”
Her mom grins and concedes it could use a sweep.
Sheila and Keith fixed it up and moved in. Evelyn and Jaimus joined them in time.
“It’s fun,” chimes in Evelyn, who’s turning fast circles on her swing. “Usually in houses, you go outside to play on a trampoline, then go back inside, play a few video games on your X-Box, go back outside, go to soccer practice, go to a hockey match, blah blah blah. Me? Swing on the swing, eat, swing on the swing, play with dolls, eat, swing all the time, go somewhere, eat, swing on swing, watch a film, swing on the swing!”
Sheila laughs, and says it’s the community that kept them here; the
happiness of living near people who cared about their lives touched her Acadian soul.
“There’s an Egyptian family that moved here a few decades ago, and they’re totally Acadians now,” she explains. “They have married Acadians and their children are part of the community. That’s how Acadians have survived: because they married the Mi’kmaq people and the communities were very close at one time.”
The old friendship was badly damaged after the Le Grand Dérangement, she says. Acadians were scattered, some fleeing to the States, others hiding in places like Kijimikujik. When they began returning after 1763, their situation was bad. It was even worse for the Mi’kmaq.
“There was a point where it was a $50 bounty on a male Mi’kmaq scalp, and I think that at that point, there was kind of a, ‘I don’t know you,’” she says. “There must have been fear, because of how the Mi’kmaq people were treated. You don’t want your people to be treated that way, so you keep your distance. You could have stood in solidarity, but … you’re not in a position to really change situations when you’re poor like that.”
She sees signs the two communities are rekindling their ancient affection. “There’s a deep healing that needs to happen,” she says.