Causeway: A Passage From Innocence (24 page)

I wasn’t at it for long when I had thirty-five dollars saved up, which was the price of a new bicycle.

The new car also opened up new summer adventures. One Saturday my mother asked if we’d be interested in an expedition to Louisbourg, where, long, long ago, there was an important French fortress. My mother loves history, and I am fascinated by all the adventure stories you can find hidden among the dry bones of the past. Teachers don’t seem to find the adventure stories important, but it’s through the stories about places like Louisbourg and the Highlanders and the Irish people and the Acadians that I’ve learned that Nova Scotia is one of the oldest parts of North America—and that the most important day in the history of North America happened on Cape Breton Island in 1758.

We left early on the Sunday, because it’s a long drive to Louisbourg. The sun was shining. We stopped for Mass along the way. Passing the city of Sydney, we could see the red clouds of dusty smoke over the big
steel mill. The air, filled with steam and smoke from the Sydney coke ovens, was prickly in the nose.

Between Sydney and Louisbourg, we encountered a serious accident with smashed cars and steam and ugly puddles on the pavement. And people lying under blankets, even though, by then, the day was hot. Seeing them left me queasy, and, by the time we were in Louisbourg, I felt a heavy sadness that only increased as the sun disappeared and a dense fog drifted in from the sea.

In 1955, there isn’t much to see at Louisbourg, even in the sunshine. After the second time the British captured it, they destroyed almost everything, just in case the politicians in England would be tempted to give it back to France in some treaty, the way they did once before. So the soldiers, after their victory, did their best to knock everything down and even haul away as much of the stone as they could carry. But the fragments of old walls and fortifications and batteries are still there, and there’s enough to build on in your imagination—especially with the fog blotting out everything but yourself.

A distant horn sounds like someone groaning. The moving mist reveals what could be the ghosts of soldiers marching silently and in slow motion over the boggy ground. You feel a chill. History is cold and damp and full of mysteries.

There is actually an old history book that is just about Cape Breton. It was written a long time ago by an Englishman named Richard Brown, and it has an amazing story about how important the battle of Louisbourg was and how the British won it almost by accident. It is why I think the most important day in North America happened here—June 8, 1758.

Here’s the story as I remember it.

The British couldn’t defeat the French by attacking the fortress directly, so they sent some boats, under the command of the famous General Wolfe, to attack from behind. They went along the shore to
a place called Fresh Water Cove, now called Kennington Cove, and launched an assault from there. But the French were waiting for them there, too, and were firing cannon balls and grapeshot from the surrounding hills. In addition, the water was almost too rough for the little landing boats.

When it looked as though the British weren’t going to be able to get ashore that way, either, General Wolfe, who was in a small boat leading the invasion, took off his big officer’s hat and waved it in the air as a signal for everyone to retreat. But some of his soldiers, in another little boat, misunderstood the signal. They thought he was urging them on. So they just kept on going—right through the grapeshot and the cannonballs and the bullets. And, by some miracle, they got ashore. And that was the beginning of the end of Louisbourg, and Quebec, and all the glory of France in North America.

Just think about it—British North America is British because a few soldiers, braver than bright, misunderstood the wave of an officer’s hat!

And it all started here. On this little island that some people are trying to say isn’t an island any more.

The way I see it, Mother Nature never approved of this marriage between Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island. It was clear in the way the tidal currents seemed to become increasingly furious the closer the causeway got to the island. And how, in the winter of ’54-55, the angry drift ice piled up in the bay behind the causeway; and how, south of the causeway, just out in front of the village, the water became unnaturally still and stayed clear all winter. It seemed almost melancholy, cut off from its own history—which is the way it will remain forevermore, I guess.

The face of Cape Porcupine also wears a miserable expression now, like some old wounded veteran who came home bitter and who, we
all know, will stay that way until he dies. Angry and resentful, always reminded of his trauma by an ugly scar.

And then there was what happened to Philip Ryan, who was twenty-one years old and working for a pal who needed a day off, when a crane tipped over and killed him up near the canal construction site; and George White, fifty-four, who was killed in a rock slide on the cape. And, of course, Angus L. Macdonald himself, whom nobody ever expected to die before his causeway job was finished.

If there was any doubt about how Nature feels, it disappeared on August 10—three days before the official opening of the new causeway—when the paper reported that Hurricane Connie was 430 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida, and heading for the Carolinas. We all know what that means. Everybody remembers last September, when Hurricane Edna ripped through here after her holidays in the south. Now it’s as though Nature has scheduled an early storm, just to ruin the big celebration and all the fun and games and the kilts and sporrans of the eighteen pipe bands they’ve booked. And to spoil the fancy suits and hats and dresses of all the big shots coming in from everywhere that you can think of to claim a bit of credit for this remarkable achievement.

The radio had a program called the “Reluctant Piper,” about somebody here refusing to play at the official opening because he thought the causeway was a bad idea and “praaaaw-gress” would be the ruination of the village.

I listened carefully, then asked Mr. Clough what he thought, and he reminded me that the ruination of the village happened long before the causeway and that a little bit of Progress is exactly what the doctor ordered for all our ailments. And not to worry about Hurricane Connie. Moreover, the “Reluctant Piper” was all made up by somebody who didn’t know what he was talking about.

And it’s true that hardly a day passes without a story in a newspaper about what a grand place Cape Breton Island will become, now that it has been connected to everywhere else.

It will become “a famous vacationland.” You get the impression from over on the other side of the island, in Cape Breton County, that they figure the causeway will do great things for the rusty old steel plant and the ancient coal mines. The melancholy strait, thanks to the causeway, will become a harbour—the deepest harbour on the Atlantic seaboard and a magnet for business and factories of all descriptions. Progress and prosperity are just around the corner, everybody seems to think.

A big-city reporter named Charles Bruce—who, I found out, grew up just over on the Guysborough shore—is writing about some local history that nobody ever heard of. We’ve all heard of the Highlanders coming after the Clearances in Scotland, and the starving Irish, but he is writing about refugees from
Florida,
if you can believe it. They were people who had to come here after England sold the place to Spain, mostly Americans who had moved to Florida to escape the revolution. Then they had to come here, to the Strait of Canso, and they would have starved if it wasn’t for the kindness of the Acadians in Isle Madame—which is a part of Cape Breton.

The
Post Record
reminds people that Cape Breton was once politically separate from Nova Scotia, and that there are people who think it might be time to become a province of our own again. We should, perhaps, revive the Snell Plan, a scheme by a Sydney businessman named Larry Snell years ago to break away from Nova Scotia.

I can’t exactly explain Mr. Snell’s logic. But it seems he was upset because Ontario stopped buying Cape Breton coal, and he started organizing a campaign to make people stop buying Ontario cars. Then he was talking about independence—provincial status. When he started getting a lot of attention, one of the car companies in Ontario
got nervous and sent somebody down to buy four train cars full of coal in Glace Bay. Then they shipped it all to Ontario with a huge sign on the train, saying “This is Cape Breton Coal!”

Mr. Snell’s scheme pretty well fizzled after that—but here they are again, talking about how Cape Bretoners are always being hard done by mainlanders. But all that is about to change.

Then I notice that everything settles down just before the big day—August 13. No more complaining or boasting. Even Hurricane Connie backed off and seemed to change her mind when she was still about 200 miles off a place called Myrtle Beach.

For me, the excitement started with the arrival of a seaplane on August 2. You heard it first somewhere in the sky, but, since the causeway started, it wasn’t unusual to see low-flying airplanes as photographers took pictures and strangers flew by to inspect the progress of the construction project.

But this one landed on the water near the causeway. Then people were climbing out onto the rocks.

According to Old John, who was watching from up by the camps, these were the people who were arranging final details of the official opening ceremony.

It’s going to be big, he said—the new premier of the province and big wheels from Ottawa, priests and bishops, tens of thousands of people. And all those bagpipe players. Poor Old John was trying to imagine the racket they would make, hundreds of them all blowing at the same time.

On the Thursday before the Saturday opening, they broke a cofferdam and started flooding the canal. On the mainland side of the causeway, you could see the outline of a grandstand, just about where they’d cut a ribbon to mark the official and final opening of the new road over the water.

They have decided, according to the paper, to call it the Canso Causeway
and
the Road to the Isles. There will be a green sign, with both names in white. A lot of people still thought it should be named the Angus L. Macdonald Causeway, but, when he was still alive, he said that would be wrong.

I find this reaction unusual for somebody important. But that’s why everybody admired Angus L. He was modest, which is how I think real heroes are supposed to be.

Friday, you knew for sure that this celebration was a big deal. Up by Murdoch MacLean’s abandoned house in Newtown, where Beulah the cow once seemed to be the only living creature, they filled the field with great military tents for food and entertainment—a gigantic
ceilidh
for after the official ceremonies and the parade across.

And not far away a carnival, with a Ferris wheel and other rides and wonderful games.

We all stood in amazement, watching how they slapped everything together in what seemed like minutes. The big wheel was assembled in sections, the way you’d put together a simple toy on Christmas morning. Even Jackie Nick was impressed and just stood there watching with his mouth open, stuck for words for once.

And that evening we drove up in the new white Chev, just to take a look. Even then the traffic was all backed up, but nobody seemed to mind.

I was in the front seat, with my mother and father. I was actually sitting by the window, with my mother in the middle. As we were creeping past the carnival ground, which was just across the road from where Angus Neil and Theresa used to live, a pretty girl with dark hair and a beautiful smile stuck her head in the car window and said “Hi, Lin,” practically touching my face with hers.

I almost died.

My father looked over with a smirk and said, “Who was that?”

My mother gave us both a look, and I couldn’t help feeling about two feet taller.

I couldn’t really say who it was. I think I spoke to her once at Mrs. Lew’s. Somebody named Joyce, I think, from Prince Edward Island, staying up at Larters’. But I’m not certain.

Later, I was thinking about my plan to be a priest and how there would be no Joyces after that.

Oh, well.

There was nothing but the sound of cars and people talking when I awoke on August 13. When I looked out the window, they were everywhere. I suspect the conversations were all about where to park. The roads were lined with cars. They packed the yard in front of the school and the church, and they lined the back roads up as far as you could see. People were wandering around looking for the best places from which to see the big event. The strait seemed to be filling up with boats. Down near Mulgrave, the navy cruiser HMCS
Quebec
crouched in the misty morning, a dark grey ghost.

When they weren’t talking about where to park, the other conversation was about the weather. The skies were gloomy. People studied the clouds, looking for the hopeful glow of sun behind the murky billows.

Then they’d shrug. Rain or no rain, it’ll be a great day, anyway—a day to talk about for the rest of your life. The day that Canada joined Cape Breton. Ha, ha.

By mid-morning you could see the big buses manoeuvring past all the cars and pedestrians that packed the roads—yellow school buses and brownish army buses and big blue and white Acadian Lines buses. People in Highland dress pouring out of them. And then you’d hear the skirl of pipes. Men and boys and girls walking slowly by themselves,
facing away from everybody, tuning up. The air suddenly filled with the brave doomed cries of history.

I suddenly remembered business—the
Post Record.
I’d been told there would be a special edition of the paper, and it would cost more. And, this being a Saturday, my share of the price was larger than on weekdays. I’d make a killing—more than enough for the rides and games at the carnival down in Newtown. And best of all, with all these people and because it was a special day, the papers would be gone in a flash.

I had time to spare and so, when I bumped into Mr. McGowan and he invited me to go out on his boat to see all the vessels in the strait, I said Thanks and Sure.