Travelogue

<- Annapolis Valley
I took August off from the blogosphere and most everything else, including gigs. I can't remember the last time I took such a long break. The highlight of the month was a family trip back to Nova Scotia, where my wife Clara and I both have family. It was a great vacation, to say the least. Those of you who have been to the Maritimes already know this, and for those who haven't yet been, maybe I shouldn't let the cat out of the bag, but Atlantic Canada is without doubt one of the most special places on earth. I spent the first half of my life there, and the last 25 years vacationing there regularly.

Every time we go, Clara and I pick another corner of Nova Scotia to explore. After all that time, it never ceases to amaze us that a turn down an unfamiliar little road can lead to a new and often breathtakingly beautiful spot. We certainly found our share of them this time. And it takes time for me to adjust to how really friendly the people are everywhere we go.

On the downside, the uncontrolled development and suburban sprawl in Halifax and particularly in my hometown of Dartmouth makes me puke. Cole Harbour (birthplace of hockey hero Sydney Crosby) is so bad that the only relief that I saw on the day we passed through was the purpose-built set location for the Trailer Park Boys movie. Endless strip malls, butt-ugly architecture, gawdawful public housing developments - I will never criticize Vancouver city planners again. Vancouver specials and monster houses have a long way to go to match the dross that I saw. The cities are booming. Dartmouth's population has increased tenfold since my early days there and local city planners are not dealing with it very well.

Halifax waterfront ->
I took about a thousand photos with my new digital camera - it's hard for me not to post most of them. As far as music, that all went by the wayside between family obligations and touring around the province. I had made some overtures to Paul Cram, a founding member of the NOW Orchestra now residing in Halifax, to hook up. Unfortunately the one new music gig he had in August fell on an evening when I was in Cape Breton. I quickly came to appreciate the rarity of such gigs in Halifax, maybe once a month at the best of times. Yet again, I am grateful to be a part of the Vancouver scene, where the improvised music community is relatively healthy and quite active (but still not lucrative!).

Whilst in Cape Breton, we sought out live music every day. The area is justly famous for its fiddle music, producing acts like the Rankins, Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaac. As a kid I was never a fan of this genre, and really haven't changed that much. What I do appreciate as a musician is that this is a living music, and that these people perservered for decades, regardless of being perceived as cool or not. Even though the Celtic music craze has cooled off somewhat in recent years, it continues to thrive in Cape Breton. It was great to go to a restaurant to hear an old pro play and to see the young musicians coming up, paying their dues, no different from jazz. And that this music comes from the hearts of the people of Cape Breton and much of the rest of the province, this is not something I can dismiss.

There is more money at play in Nova Scotia now, with offshore oil revenues starting to pour in. I noticed that many houses, even in poor fishing villages, have been spruced up. A lot of this is due to tourism - people there know it is a major employer in the province, second only to the goverment, especially the Armed Forces. People take pride in their way of life. Very few times did things ring false, in a tourist-trap way. There is also money flowing into the province as wealthy people "from away", mostly Americans snap up every inch of oceanfront property. Europeans, particularly Germans, as well as western Canandians (west being anything past New Brunswick) are also in the real estate game. Two hours south of Halifax, at the end of a nondescript road in the middle of absolutely nowhere, we found million-dollar-plus homes sitting on rugged headlands.

Fortress Louisbourg - fantastic! ->
Another factor, particularly in Cape Breton, is that an entire generation, maybe two, have left the province to work in Toronto, or more likely in northern Alberta in the oil patch. Money is being sent back home, and it's a rare person, especially a Caper or a Newfoundlander, who doesn't dream of returning home sometime.

A nice spinoff of all of this is that the food is way better. We ate at quite a number of great restaurants all around the province, some of them absolutely spectacular. Clara had a bit less luck than I did. She ordered a couple of Greek salads of dubious provenance, and got stuck with fake crab in crab cakes when they ran out of the real deal. That was pretty lame - you can fool the tourists but not someone who's lived their life on the East and West Coasts of the country.

My absolute favourite was the Red Shoe Pub in Mabou, owned by the Rankin sisters. Obviously they learned what made for a great restaurant while they spent so many years touring with their band. They took that concept home and adapted it to home cooking with some real flair, and added live music every night. It worked for me.

That same night, we enjoyed the bar at the Glenora Distillery, where we stayed with friends from Vancouver. Glenora is the only distillery in North America to make single malt whiskey (it can only be called scotch if it's made in Scotland), and Glenora's Glen Breton 10 year old holds up pretty well to a random sampling that we tried at the bar. The tasting was all quite erudite and dignified until the four of us got plastered. Then we retired to one of the guest chalets on the grounds. That's where I fell down the stairs - I've almost healed up from that one.

Clara was feeling a bit too wee the next morning when we did the distillery tour, and passed her glass over to our friend David, a born Scot, who was more than happy to oblige. I have Stan Karp to thank for turning me on to the ultimate single malt. Glen Breton still has a way to go to catch up to Lagavulin.

While on vacation, I had planned to do some composing, a graphic score for a string trio in particular. I also thought a few quiet days at my brothers' beatiful and isolated beach cottage would be conducive to going through a pile of various recordings that I've made over the last 5 years, with the aim of compiling the best onto two or three cds. None of that happened - we were just too busy and to boot, my laptop display packed it in after a few days.

So I returned to Vancouver with a couple of unfinished projects and a bunch of gigs. Clara is one of those fatalists who declared that summer is over on the Labour Day weekend, but I've decided that summer will officially continue until I finish these tasks. So I may be wearing shorts and sandals well into January, given my rate of production when a firm deadline is not looming...

Finally, a shot of me attempting to surf. It would have been great to have had a picture of me standing up on the board, but that would have required that I actually managed such a feat. Maybe Photoshop can help.