The Last Best Place (10 page)

Lord, talk about despair. And the feeling lingers. One hot muggy afternoon I sat with Elmer MacKay in a Tim Horton’s in the coarse little steel town of New Glasgow. Formerly a federal cabinet minister, he is now a lawyer and runs the family lumber business nearby. He’s a well-read, thoughtful guy who sprinkles his chat with quotes from Machiavelli to Casey Stengel. A good person to have a cup of coffee with and discuss the Scottish Highlanders—his own people—who arrived in the late 1700s after the break-up of the clan system. “Highlanders measure wealth not by how much money they have, but by how many people will follow them,” he intones quietly. “They tend to be melancholy, because deep down a lot of people did not want to leave Scotland. A lot of what is called Scottish pride is that they do not forget. They have long memories. They remember.”

By the time I saunter down to the field in Antigonish they are all here. Or at least they will be before the night is out. Even the people cutting hay in the fields stop everything when the Highland Games begin, because in Antigonish County only two things are really sacred: the Catholic church and their ancestral Scottish homeland. Which makes it entirely fitting that after spending a few minutes down at the field watching some young pipers and drummers going through their paces, I find myself at one of those long church-basement tables in the beer tent listening to a couple of MacDonalds chattering about the church and its troubles. The usual stuff: a bunch of priests being charged for taking liberties with choirboys; the latest foibles of former father Brian MacDonald, who
now lives crosstown with his wife, the former Mrs. Conrad Black; the editorial policies of the most magnificently named of all Canadian newspapers, the Antigonish
Casket
, an organ of the local diocese. Everywhere are tartans—Beaton, Gillis, Cameron, Chisholm, MacDonald, Macdougall, MacEachern, MacInnis, MacIsaac, MacLean, MacLellan, MacLeod, MacNeil, MacGillvary. I dodge the dancing kids, step around the old men with the Hiberian visages, leaning on their thick canes, and make my way to the bar for another round. When I return, the MacDonalds—not the D.D.s—invite me back for dinner.

Afterwards the man of the house drives me to the outdoor military tattoo, which for many people is the highlight of the whole event. Lots of gunfire, drumrolls and the peal of bagpipes, which always reminds me of small animals being pounded with mallets. Little girls highland fling upon a wooden stage; great bearded kilted men stride across the grass under the star-filled sky. At a stop sign after the show ends I ask a car full of people for directions. They say get in and drive me through the St. F.X. campus right up to the Student Union Building. Inside a Celtic rock band named Rawlins Cross is in full flight.

They’ve got two speeds—fast and faster. The effect is a sound so loud that it almost sucks the air right out of your lungs. Ian McKinnon, the leader and bagpipe player, once told me about a tour they made of outport Newfoundland. “Now you have to know that we don’t play ‘I’se the B’y,’ ” he patiently explained to the owners of the clubs, Legions and restaurants who booked them. Which
was fine until they landed in some hiccup of a place on the Great Northern Peninsula where they opened with a couple of their signature tunes, which fuse rock rhythms with traditional Celtic instruments. A few minutes into the performance a huge fisherman lurched towards the stage, slammed down a hand that McKinnon remembers as twice the size of his own and said through clenched teeth, “Play something I can fuckin’ dance to, will ya?” A test of artistic commitment. The boys from Rawlins Cross looked at him, they looked at each other. Then in perfect unison they sang: “I’se the b’y that builds the boat/I’se the b’y that sails ’er/I’se the b’y who catches the fish/and takes her home to Lizer.”

Me, I’m enjoying the hell out of it. A woman who reminds me of someone I haven’t seen in twenty years dances for a moment in a blue light and then is swallowed by the protoplasmic crowd. The effect is eerie, a momentary crack in time. Like if I scanned the room I’d see me as I looked in ‘78, perhaps doing the Lowdown, probably wearing army fatigues, hightop Adidas, a checked shirt with the tails out. I might have been with the girl I was dating at the time. For a moment I considered ordering a rye-and-ginger—the drink of the moment circa 1978—to really set the time machine in motion. Then thought about the dangers of adding whisky to a pathetic nostalgia for lost youth. Instead, I order a Keith’s and let the sound pour over me.

By twelve-thirty Piper’s is wired. I fight my way to the bar next to a Newsworld producer and his Antigonish-born wife who are down from Halifax for the party. “Dennis Hopper,” she says.

“Huh?”

“That’s who you remind me of. Dennis Hopper.”

“She’s right,” her husband tunes in. “She has this knack for picking out celebrity lookalikes. It’s amazing. You really do look like Dennis Hopper.”

“He’s thirty years older than I am,” I protest, not welcoming the comparison.

She shrugs, gets this half-apologetic “I hate to tell you this” smile on her face and says emphatically, “You look like Dennis Hopper.”

I slink away, casting dark glances over my shoulder. Then forget about it. Where I am could be Saturday night on the Isle of Skye. Except in the Outer Hebrides there probably wouldn’t be as many kilts and as many slurred Gaelic greetings of “Clamar a tha thu?” (How are you?) and “Slalnte” (Health). From the front of the room the lead singer of the house band booms out the last note of “Barret’s Privateers,” then slides into “Northwest Passage.” The dance floor is jammed—boomers, grungers, stepdancing old-timers, all lost to the moment. There’s a primeval feel to the whole thing, as if I’ve wandered into some primitive ritual viewed by outsiders on pain of death.

About then I recognize another Chisholm, this one a television reporter from Halifax wearing a kilt, pipe band jacket and a Tilley Endurables hat, a souvenir from the Gulf War. In tow is his baby-faced brother-in-law—a new millionaire after inheriting a family fishplant—and a tall guy with a huge head named Cameron, who I gather is some sort of legendary local brawler. Past 1 a.m. now,
which means time to refuel. We hop the four-foot chainlink fence in the Piper’s parking lot. Chisholm catches a foot near the top and hits the concrete with a splat, but bounces up instantly, like a light heavyweight pretending the knockdown was just a slip.

My notes start to get a little sketchy here. All I know is that we wolfed something down at the sub shop, then headed for the door, Chisholm gimping around like an amputee by now. We cab it to a house party across town. A young crowd, mostly standing around in the kitchen drinking and listening to the band from Piper’s, which had magically materialized here. Minutes later I’m in the back of a half-ton, getting a lift to my motel. When I tilt my head back I can watch the inky sky, white pinpricks and the tops of the big elms almost meeting overhead.

My next conscious thought comes when I open my right eye and see the alarm clock blink 8:30. Which means that after watching
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the Eighth Dimension
on the late show I had something like four whole hours of sleep. I lurch over to the window, open the drapes and shrink from the light like Peter Cushing in
The Horror of Dracula
. It could have been worse. The room is as spare, clean and white as a top-line hospital ward. The windows are open and the wind waving the long valley grass outside keeps the room cool and fresh.

Pay the bill. Down to the field, where the highlight of the competition, the ancient Scottish heavy events, are under way. Men with arms the size of my waist—including one Billy Morse, all six feet and 350 pounds of him, appropriately enough from nearby
Giant’s Lake—grunt, yell, then send heavenward big rocks, telephone poles and a nasty-looking thing called the ancient hammer. A behemoth named Harry MacDonald—who, I note from my program, is six-one and 320 pounds and hails from London, Ont.—seems to be grabbing most of the hardware.

A few yards away I notice the Newsworld producer and his wife cowering behind dark glasses, leaning on each other for support. I sneak up from behind, startle them with a lively “Howareyathismorning,” then feel immediately better watching them shake their heads in despair. I buy a big order of fish and chips and eat it leaning on a tree stump that is probably four feet in diameter. I feel full of pep now, spirits so buoyant that even an American tourist a few feet away droning on about his bypass surgery doesn’t spoil it.

It is what people in these parts call a big day—a day when you feel kinship with the world and just about everyone in it, including by God the couple from Halifax now in the grip of their awful hangover. On days like this it’s hard not to feel the sense of communal loyalty that comes from believing we’re all in it together. The principle is unconditional; it applies in good times and in bad. That, I suppose, is the true test of this concept of tribe. If I had any doubt of this it disappeared the moment I left Antigonish. Around here they remember when everything was here, when the place brimmed with confidence, when their farmers were the most productive wheat growers in the province and when their industries—shipbuilding, steel, coal—were the envy of the rest of Nova Scotia.

The scrappy towns and hamlets of Pictou County exist in a knot tied so tightly together that it is impossible to tell where New Glasgow and Stellarton end and Trenton and Westville begin. It’s in my mind, I concede, but Plymouth will always be different. Maybe it has always looked as it does today, its streets lined with the tiny semidetached boxes built by the mine companies, and the unemployed miners and pensioners shuffling down the sidewalks. Everyone has been to spots like this: working places where you can’t help being reminded that someone else always calls the shots. Here, most of all they remember the day a fireball shot through the Westray coal mine on the outskirts of town, leaving twenty-six local men entombed in the pit. I was in town that day, watching the weeping family members stagger to their cars after learning there was no hope. Four years later I stood by a memorial as some of the same men and women embraced and wept under a powder-blue sky, so different from the wet, grey day when the explosion took away their sons, brothers, husbands and uncles. It was as if time had stood still for them: the bodies of eleven of the men remained buried underground and the answers about who ultimately was to blame for the disaster were no closer.

Again it was just weary, eternally sad people, clinging together in their pain. They looked timeless, as if centuries ago they could have stood in a far-away land, huddled arm-in-arm with the same anguish on their brows. Then, as now, the tribe was the best hope for survival. At the very least it provided a fire to warm themselves against the terrors awaiting in the dark.

D
AWN CANNOT BE FAR OFF NOW
. I
T HAS TO BE NEAR
. I
HAVE TO KEEP
thinking that morning will eventually break here in the woods atop a far mountain in darkest Nova Scotia. All my best instincts told me to be wary of the liquid, clear as nitro, in the plastic two-litre pop bottle. I had been warned about the blind and halt stumbling through institutions across the province after a night spent guzzling this swill. But that is the root of its terrible power. One glass, actually just a finger mixed with a tumbler full of Coke, and I’m carrying on a perfectly lucid conversation. Next thing I know there’s this roar of awful accordion music all around me, I’m peering through the cigarette smoke at what looks like a huge dog—a golden Lab who I have to admit can really step out—waltzing on its hind legs with this dangerous-looking character. And a voice, frighteningly like my own, screams “Yessssss, how we love to polka, we all love to polka!”

Just look at this crowd dancing round the kitchen floor: the systems analyst from Halifax, the identical-twin Polish pepperoni millionaires doing the can-can, the mechanic fixated on Dostoevsky; the aw-shucks peacekeeper from the Persian Gulf, the old moonshiner,
face-down asleep at the table a few minutes earlier, now performing his strange little jig. Then me, leering like an idiot, helping the others belt out a polka tune as loud as Nazis in a Munich beer hall. It is one strange, strange moment.

“You having a good time, son?” someone yells in my ear.

I just smile as the first shudder of what will inevitably be a monster hangover ripples through my body. The pathetic thing was, I had only myself to blame. No one held me to the ground and started pouring this swill down my gullet. It’s just that I’ve always been fascinated by this inherent underpinning of the Nova Scotian identity—this larcenous streak that just refuses civilizing. Once these shores were haunted with pirates, then privateer boats preying on British vessels, then speedy little schooners running booze for Al Capone’s boys, then smugglers running illegal swordfish beyond the 200-mile limit. Onshore we had highwaymen. They disappeared. But the bootleggers in North End Halifax and Sydney’s Whitney Pier stayed as busy as ever. As for the moonshiners, they passed along the secrets of their underground art from generation to generation like magic spells. As liquor got cheaper and cheaper it made less and less sense to distill—I use the word advisedly—your own. Yet the stills kept simmering away back there in the woods. Because this was not really about money. Just a small, lovely act of defiance, an unwillingness to accept someone else’s definition of right and wrong. A rebel’s yell.