Our visit to Digby Neck coincided with the Event of the Year:





Churches compete with one another for a chance to bless Bikers:

























Churches also feed bikers:





All compete with the churches to feed bikers:





Funeral homes are in there too:





Bikers taste heaven:





Everybody here loves bikers. The local cop and his undercover buddy, at first, like all cops, were wary of my camera. From experience, they’re, actually, more scared of cameras than guns (see the Kentucky incident). “Who are you going to show the pictures?” the uniformed cop asked me. “Locals? Are you a local?”
“No, I’m from Montreal. I’m going to make you famous there,” I joked.
“Ah, o.k. then,” he agreed.
“Is that an undercover agent?” I pointed to his buddy who was trying to sneak behind the scenes pretending he wasn’t. “Com’on, you can’t hide it with that military posture”.
The two of them laughed and let me take the picture. They were definitely more relaxed than the Kentucky Servants of the Mighty Order.
“Are you a biker?” they ask me.
“Used to be in the desert, on a cross-country bike. Otherwise no. But you have enough of them up your sleeve here,” I observe.
“Nah… They’re harmless, these folks. They’ve all decent jobs: lawyers, doctors, what have you. On the weekend they like to play gangsters and Hells Angels. So, once a year, they come here from all over the country for this big gig; run through that circus; eat hot dogs and barbecue ribs; then go back to their decent lives. They bring good business. And you, too, should go shopping now”.





Biker circus:










Yes, everyone loves and welcomes bikers:

























Funny things for the funny lot of you, welcome bikers:

Bikers’ eating habits: they harbour a soft spot for Tim Horton’s and hot-dogs.















Also, after a good meal, a good toilet for bikers:





Sunny bikers:

This reminded me of a discussion we had with Sasha over the summer about Africville and the documentary film about it, which told of how the black community was duped, discriminated against, despised for being discriminated against, and then chased away. After the 1812 war between the U.S. and Great Britain ended in 1815, Black loyalists were promised freedom and land in the north in exchange for their loyalty to the British crown. As usual, of course, this promise was a lie and these people found themselves slaving for atrocious wages for the wealthy and middle class whites in the various northern states of the U.S. and Canadian provinces. They couldn’t afford land or even basic decent living conditions, with the exception of the Elgin settlement in Buxton, Ontario, where the personal investment of the abolitionist and former slave owner, Reverend William King, oversaw that the people who escaped from slavery found stability in order to find the strength to re-build a healthy community.

About 400 people of colour settled in a self-sufficient community in Halifax, which was known as Africville. They had little of possessions, but much of dedication and love. They built their own homes, grew their own food, had the ocean, each other and freedom. The documentary conveyed the sense of dignity and community that the residents shared. The neighbourhood was situated on a higher ground next to the North End Richmond neighbourhood – that same area that was leveled down by the explosion of 1917. Wikipedia entry on Africville mentions that while much effort and aid was given to restore the white neighbourhood, “Africville received little of the reconstruction and none of the modernization which was invested into other parts of the city after the explosion”.

But then, in 1961, the meticulously, hand-built homes and gardens were torn down in a bid by the government to allocate it for development (ironic terminology) purposes. The film conveys the tragedy of this betrayal and the violence against the spirit of that community as the residents were transferred, mostly to social housing. Much controversy surrounded this unjust eviction, in light of which, the government froze the development, but instead of returning the land to the residents and investing in their infrastructure and safety, the government officials used part of it to build the highway interchange servicing the Mackay Bridge, while the rest went for the Seaview Memorial Park – yes, just like with Poplar Avenue, Cedar Lane, or the Caribou Provincial Park; murder and injustice masked by the symbolic and the violence of naming.

June offered Ljuba to pick some rocks from a collection of minerals that were being given away. Ljuba was glad to and enquired more about the minerals and the rocks, so June explained how to get to the rock and fossil museum nearby.

Fossils hold secrets of thousands and millions of years of life.









































We picked wild berries.





Some of the variety of local housing:



































Grapes grew all over Wolfville. We stuffed ourselves full with them. But then, Janet, a local resident warned us that Annapolis Valley and the whole area around has been poisoned by chemical fertilizers and the rest of agricultural concoctions. She said it was a strange mix here of artists, farmers, a large home-schooling and unschooling community. The farming was oppressive but they couldn’t do anything about it. “We bought a piece of land up over Wolfville, thinking that it’d give my son and me a break from being trapped indoors in the city. But now, he’s sick all the time from the smell and poisons that the farmer behind us applies. He’s a few kilometres away, but we still get it. It’s a bit easier for my asthma and allergies, because I’m away at work in Wolfville most of the time. But I’m really worried about him. But what can we do? The farmer could have had a small scale organic operation, but then that won’t do it for him. He exports it to other provinces. It’s all about whom the law protects. So, I don’t know…”















A bit of Bulgakov: a road sign pointing to spiritual connections and a cat. Tony, in Little River, told us that the whole area was a Master and Margarita novel, abound with Bulgakovskian writers and artists.





Margaretsville, on the Bay of Fundy, must be a testimony to the literature of the supernatural.










We spent a few hours strolling along the shore at the lowest tide. Again, we saw no signs of biodiversity.








































Finally, a bird here and New Brunswick on the other side of the Bay:





Dad and daughter racing towards me:










Little River:

























Stephen Cuzma, an artist from Manhattan, has been spending his summers here for the past countless decades because he fell in love with the Bay. “When I die, I want my ashes to be spread over this water. My lawyer has written it so nicely in my will: May the waters take me there where I be the ocean foam. I’m quite a character; no longer allowed to drive ’cause I’m deemed a menace on the road. So, my friend drove me here and had an excuse to stay and enjoy the air. The whales used to come here all the time. But I don’t see them anymore. Yeah, they’ve killed all the fish and now they have recession. Nothing to do. Everyone’s depressed. But I keep painting. Hey, I’m used to recession. My whole life’s been a recession”. We took Stephen home, looked at his art, and enjoyed the view from his living room.





The vista from Stephen’s modest home:















During the 3 days we spent on Digby Neck, I gave two talks at Digby High School about the state of the world and why the students, some of whom are to graduate this year, should care about it and should look at the root of the problem, because, none of the bla-bla-bla that has been enriching the oppressors so far has worked or will work. “If you don’t regain your ability to empathise with the world, you will keep killing until there is no one left to kill. You know better than me that there is no fish left in the waters and no wild-life around you”. An 86 year-old neighbour lives in the area. She doesn’t even leave her home, let alone use the lawn. But she had exterminators come and kill a family of 10 raccoons in search of worms, because they were messing up the artificially furnished carpet of grass. Yet, she believed that this lawn, which she didn’t need and didn’t use, belonged to her because a piece of paper signed – NOT between her and the raccoons, but – with some guys in some office, stated that she could choose to do whatever she willed on “her” “property”. Brutal – 10 lives taken because of one old woman’s whim. The same with the coyotes in Cape Breton. The media keeps endlessly boasting about human revenge against the whole tribe of coyotes, killing them indiscriminately to find the coyote believed to have mauled the young woman to death. Coyotes don’t usually attack people, but with all the space and the food taken away by human animals and all the individuals and species of various animals, humans, and plants killed, what if all the raccoons, the fish, the coyotes, the people of colour are to take revenge for the murder and betrayal of millions of their own?

A few students appeared to be genuinely touched. Yet, the minute the bell rang, the years of dressage proved their efficiency as they jumped up, switched off, and most of them with blank stares moved on to the next session of torture.

Sasha said that the view from the school lobby reminded him of star-trek: a large glass wall looking over the bay, that was bright and perfect and totally out of reach because the young people were incarcerated here for the best part of the day.

As for me, the elevated glass lobby made me think of “We”, the 1920 science fiction book by E. Zamyatin, in which the civilised human world was caged up in glass and wilderness was forbidden. The tragedy in the novel amounted to the loss of all hope and ability to remember the wild past. While the corridors made me think of a combination of hospitals and films about life after death, where souls travel endlessly through sterile labyrinths in search of light, but that light comes only at the expense of giving up this body and this world:





Also, during our visit, Tony and Anne-Marie, our hosts, took us swimming and kayaking in the lake with their friend Cindy, her grandson and his friend. Cindy is an American who has moved here a long time ago, but not before she had learnt Russian and been to Leningrad. After the lake, we picked veggies from her garden and prepared a delicious meal in the wood.










Green peas:










Ljuba and Travis:





Tony’s contour:





Cindy of the moonlit lake:





The Digby Heritage museum mural testifies that the euro-centric vision of the Darwinist narrative views Time as a Natural ally of white supremacy and the evolution of the world towards whiteness. “Don’t blame us for anything. It’s the tides of time that did it”.

1. Illegal aliens from Europe come and bring the kidnapped Africville folks along.





2. Mikmaqs share their “primitive” knowledge of healthy living that the white folks then modernise with trains, pesticides, guns, carcinogens, et al:





3. Forget the Mikmaqs, the coloured folk of Africville, the whole diversity thing. We’ve got it all fixed. It’s called evolution or the survival of the fittest over Time with its Tides; and, the fittest is the one who can kill’em all and rise to rule the world of poverty, misery, and death.





4. Welcome!





High tide:










Same spot at low tide:










Walking around the bay, as usual, no crabs in sight, no oysters, no fish. However, we found this object, brought to you from the Ukraine, by the possibility for globalist exploitation and cross-national participation in ravaging the ocean: a tube with cream against foot fungus:





Ljuba noticed this sign: “Mama, look, they say that people shouldn’t throw trash because they won’t be able to fish if they killed all the fish – not because it hurts the fish and other animals”.

Of course, that’s why it doesn’t work, which made me think of the ending in the Planet of the Apes, when George Taylor finally finds out the truth about humans: “O’ my God! …We finally really did it. [Screaming:] YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!”





But, if we stop cold in our madness, right now, we might still have a chance not to.



Continued in part 11

Cities are known for signs. John Zerzan traces the fall of the primitive into civilisation to the beginnings of language, symbolic thought, and technology leading led to hierarchy, violence, and domestication. Walter Ong and Jack Goody presented research that linked literacy to the need to systematise oppression and hierarchy around which time cities came into being. My observation is that signs and symbols are linked to ads and billboards proposing to link people through the information of exchange but whose presence signals the fact that these people lack a presence in togetherness. For, if they were together, why would they need signs, billboards and ads?






As opposed to Digby Neck, where churches and everyone, even funeral homes, welcomed and blessed bikers, in Halifax, churches blessed and welcomed students.

As our generous hosts, Kathleen, Roback and their daughter Halley, have counted, the Maritimes boast the highest concentration of universities per capita in the country. Tuition fees being the highest in the country as well, the students definitely need some outside intervention and blessings. Michael, a friend, has studied for two years in Halifax and shudders at the recollection of long hours spent at the rate of 7.5 Can$/hr in a fancy clothes store, selling shorts and t-shirts for hundreds of dollars each, and where some parents would ask him, “oh, my son is about your size, could you try this on…” while, himself, he wouldn’t dream of wearing any of the items he was coerced to sell. Only, all the church blessings in the world, Michael said, didn’t help pay his tuition and bills. In fact, the church asked him to help pay for the blessings.

The city was green, colourful, and quiet.

























Our hosts explained that the city was divided into North End and South End neighbourhoods, the first being the “cartier populaire” and the southern part for the snobs and exploiters. During World War I, the city flourished because of the harbour playing an important role in shipping the resources from the mainland to the western front. Until the Halifax Explosion on the 6th of December 1917, where a french munition ship collided with a belgian relief ship and blew up the North End of the city. About 2,000 inhabitants were killed during the explosion, 9,000 injured and tens of thousands left without shelter. A blizzard descended upon the city the following day, halting efforts of recovery and affecting the infrastructure and social dynamics of the city.

A street in North End today:





The most efficient way to clean, Lasse Nordlund would fully agree, is with self made tools.

























Buses come from Mother England:





A little of Taj Mahal in the backyard:





Road workers are ubiquitous in Halifax. One hid behind the pole, while the other two shouted “bonjour Quebec” to us, even though our license plate says: “Je me souviens” or “I remember the betrayal of the French King who abandoned us to the brutality of the English heart”. Yes, the Quebecois have vowed never to forget.























































Furniture was thrown all over the city and everyone seemed to be moving. Rent was expensive but salaries even lower than Quebec. Also I saw larger and more trees than in Montreal.






























The Harbour in Halifax:

We left Halifax via the northern shore through Dartmouth:

Off to Annapolis Valley and the Bay of Fundy on the way to Digby Neck in part 10

Monday the 31st brought some improvisations to our plans. After all, we went to Antigonish. Leaving the Arisaig Cliffs behind, we passed by remnants of small scale lobster trappings that, by now, have mostly been replaced by large ocean vessels and companies.





A small fishing and farming community on the shore:

A Celtic music Piper’s Pub in Antigonish:










And a monument to a Scot:





We walked around the campus of St. Francis Xavier University. It’s architecture, reminiscent of the Gothic style of American colleges and universities, prompted Ljuba to exclaim: “not bad at all! Makes me think of Bryn Mawr College. I wonder if their psychology department is just as good and whether they have dance and theatre”.

In the bathroom, we bumped into a psychology professor who inspired Ljuba with the research conducted at her lab and assured her that the psychology department was simply one of the best. This day proved to be serendipitous altogether.

We, then, headed towards the tourist information bureau where we acquired more maps and info. We couldn’t send the message, however, because the internet was down. The young man at the info desk said that “there is a great internet connection at the tourist bureau in Cape Breton. Surely, you planned to go there. What? Having come this far in the Maritimes, if you don’t go to Cape Breton, consider you haven’t come here at all. You should at least check out the great tourist bureau at the entry in Port Hastings. Look, it’s a mere half an hour away”.

O.k., we thought, we won’t have the time to visit Cape Breton, but we’ll check out the info to plan a real visit in the future, plus the Northumberland coast was so beautiful, I wasn’t in a hurry to leave yet.

Upon crossing into Cape Breton, a monstrous quarry greeted us. Quarries are a big part of the local economy, but these open-pit mines cause major devastation of the local environment as they destruct irreplaceable plant communities, which in turn, affect the other communities that depend on them. Also, the extraction of the stone often involves explosives and that adds to the air, water, and noise pollution in the area. Local economy, also, depends on coal mining, petroleum and the harbour in Sydney. Cape Breton Highlands National Park is located in the northern part of the island. We turned left to the Port Hastings tourist bureau.

I walk into the tourist office still in my zen state of spirit induced by the storm. I see about 7 workers conversing. “One of them has the information for me,” goes through my head. At this moment, one of the women turns around and says, “yes, what type of information would you like?”

I ask her for maps, for general things to see in the future, and if we could use the internet. As Sasha proceeded to send a message to our friends, Susan tells me that her son is planning to move back and settle down in Cape Breton, because he wants to be close to the land and help restore the forest. “Most of it has been messed up by chemical farming and other industries, but here in Cape Breton, he says, there is a lot of ecological initiatives and great people who try to preserve forests and wildlife. You look like you should really meet these people,” Susan tells me. “There are two things to see in Cape Breton. If you go to the northernmost point, you can get one of those boats to take you to see the whales. On the way there, you should stop at Mabou and visit Neal Livingston. He’s one of our environmentalists who bought some forest a couple of decades ago and has various ecological things going on there. He travels a lot, but you should still go and see if you might be in luck to see him”. She draws me a map with directions and I take route 19 north towards Mabou.

Ljuba got immersed in Elijah, a book by her beloved author, Christopher Paul Curtis, and didn’t care which way I turned. Sasha said that it was a good idea to sea the coast a bit, but barging onto someone whom we didn’t know and who wasn’t expecting strangers did not appeal to him. “The guy is probably tired of wackos like us storming into his home because the women at the tourist bureau keep sending them there” he reasoned.

I suddenly realised that we’ve forgotten the map and the paper on which Susan marked Neal’s coordinates and turned back to the tourist info office.

Susan was gone for lunch and no-one else knew who we were talking about. Finally, I saw the map with the directions next to the computer, and we got back on the road – the point appeared to be that Susan was there at that moment to give me the info to go visit Neal and no-one else had that information but her. I was laughing and in a good mood, Sasha brumbles even when in a good mood, and Ljuba – read on quietly in her good mood.

A forest elf, crunching wild apples in a field of flowers, comes out of the wood and then walks back into it.















All the road signs are written in, both, English and Gaelic.










Driving up the hill to Neal’s place, we saw him come out and wave at us inviting us to come in.
“Travellers! Welcome! Would you like some coffee? Please, do come in and tell what brings you to this part of the world”. Ljuba, at first, didn’t want to get out of the car as she was snuggling with her book, all wrapped up in the sleeping bag. But Neal convinced her and she was pleased as she found out that he was an environmentalist documentary film maker and she was working on her documentary series on Life in North America.

It was wonderful to spend time with Neal and his partner Peggy Cameron, an environmentalist. After coffee we hiked together through the forest. Magical. Trees stand tall here, unlike the bonsai versions we see elsewhere in eastern Canada – with the exception for the old woods around lake Magog in Eastern Townships of Quebec. Spruce, birches, maple, red oak, and white ash, among others, live here in an ecosystem that has blended a boreal vegetation with the more temperate and variegated Acadian forest.

Ljuba spotted a vacant hornet’s nest that Peggy later took home. Neal and Peggy told us about the wild-life that managed to survive in this part of Canada: the Canada lynx, the red fox, the snowshoe hare, the black bear, the white-tailed deer, as well as, moose, woodland jumping mouse, and masked shrew, among others. Raccoons, bobcats and coyotes hitched rides in trucks or crossed over from the mainland when the Canso Causeway was built in 1956. We also heard about the passionate environmentalists and the vibrant artists and musicians who lived in the area. Before departing, we joined Peggy and Neal at the Red Shoe Pub to take a peek at local Celtic musicians.

Another little funny thing happened before we left for Halifax. To help us with directions, Peggy asked which part of Halifax we’d be visiting. When we told her, she said, “don’t tell me you’re staying with Kathleen and Roback?”

The events of the day made me think about John Zerzan’s proposition that telepathic communication might have been the more effective mode for connection between people and other living beings before we got corrupted by language and symbolic thought.

But, in spite of our human linguistic drawbacks, I thought, we did fairly well connecting with the world in one single day, which appeared to be as timeless as the Cape Breton sky. Yes, I suddenly knew what it was like to be a speechless hattifattener from the Moomin Valley, forever wandering with the wind, energised by lightening, yearning to be out in the open sea, staring silently into the abysmal horizons, at one with gentle waves and the storm.

Leaving the immense skies over Cape Breton, we headed south, to the city lights of Halifax.

Continued in part 9

Along the road, I noticed a man indulging in a peculiar activity: he chose one tree and was trimming it into a rounded shape. How much time of his life must he spend on battling nature and its desire to grow out to reach the skies? Why does a round tree appeal to him or his master more than the magnificence of the widely spread majestic branches of an old tree that whispers of timeless existence to the wind?

Finally, on day 7 of our trip, in Caribou Park, we see a bird:





And, another bird:






And, two more:















The park was empty. We spent a quiet time on the solitary beach – few cars; few lights. A long arm over the water led to a private neighbourhood on a peninsula that was locked with a “No tresspassing” sign.

In the evening, we ventured into New Glasgow – an industrial town known for the Maritime Steel and Foundries (that they admit is) Limited, founded on the estuary of East River where tides play with salt and fresh waters. We walked around then headed out, further east. Just then, as we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere, the winds grew strong and the skies sombre.

We stopped in a clearing near a wood and watched unfold a storm’s capricious magic. How tiny, incompetent and utterly foolish of the human being to have ever imagined to be able to conquer the skies. We huddled quietly and faced the heavens’ wrath. As the winds rocked the car, Ljuba fell asleep, nestled cosily in the sleeping bag. Sasha and I talked softly, then he dozed off, too, while I stayed awake and relished the lightning, listened to the roar of thunder, and towards dawn walked out to meet the warm embrace of a summer rain.

With the first rays of the sun, we all felt rejuvenated by the storm and surprisingly, both, energised and serene. We continued going east savouring the crisp freshness of the world awakening after a storm. The plan was to spend some time around the water, then find a tourist info bureau from which to send an e-mail message to Kathleen and Roback informing them that we’d be joining them in Halifax that night.

The morning road:





The morning stop for coffee and hygiene with a radio on and early morning visitors:





At the cross-roads, we veered left along Northumberland Strait on Shore Road. As it turned into Sunrise Trail, we came across Arisaig Sea Cliffs, a treasure of paleontological and paleo-geological discoveries and well made information sheets. These cliffs, we learnt, are the most continuously exposed sections of Silurian rock in North America and provide valuable information on life on Earth from 448 to 401 million years ago. The Silurian period, according to geologists, was marked by a global warming that gave birth to corals and tropical vegetation and life on the coasts of the Canadian Maritimes.

Walking through the Arisaig Provincial Park, I was trying to fathom the 47 millions of years of the history of this spot on earth that was revealed to us by the rocks.

Otherwise, the park was silent and empty – not a soul in the vicinity; the pine wood stretched its bare arms and was neither welcoming nor frightening, minding its own mysteries of life on earth.

Ljuba chose a trail that we followed through the wood and down to the water.

Playing hide and seek:

Near the waterfall, we met a Dutch family with a 3 year old son playing with stones in the river. They told us that they used to live in Nova Scotia and that they have found no place more beautiful than Cape Breton, so now that they have moved back to Holland, they spend their summers here and urged us to do the same. But Cape Breton, we thought would be too much for us right now.

My wild man gathering and tasting kelp on the shore.




















While we were playing hide and seek with Ljuba, a sign appeared from the sea with an arrow pointing towards Ljuba’s hiding cave! Ljuba giggled and asked me to take a picture of the rock formation for remembrance.





Finally, we took the stairs back into the wood.





Back on the trail, Ljuba and Sasha walked ahead, while I decided to indulge in some forest raspberries, when suddenly I was attacked by wild bees. I shrieked with pain and surprise; then I yelped with pain and fear, finally, I ran screaming up the hill. By the time Sasha and Ljuba came back to find out what was happening to me, we heard the Dutch family slam the doors of their car and take off at full speed probably imagining that the wild Russian-Canadian kelp eater has attacked his Sudo-Russian-Canadian wife and that they better leave lest they be next on his meal-menu.

A theory in social psychology proposes an explanation to the general apathy exhibited by witnesses in public attacks, where people don’t bother to intervene and help someone in need because, apparently, each justifies his or her own inaction on the number of people present at the scene at the time, thinking that “someone else should do the helping; why should I bother”.

But the Dutch knew that there was no one else in the park. We had conversed together, so I wasn’t an abstract entity but a familiar face. Still they did not care to find out what has happened to me and whether I needed help or a phone call for help – probably, because, for some personal and superficial bias, they did not consider that I was worthy of their time.

In any case, I was saved from the bees by my two darlings. With lips sweet from wild raspberries and legs that felt like wood from the bee stings, I drove on towards Antigonish.

Continued in part 8

We left P.E.I. in the morning on Saturday, the 29th of August, spending the day on an isolated beach in New Brunswick.

In the evening, we headed towards Nova Scotia, spent the night close to Tatamagouche planning to proceed along the coast to New Glasgow and down south to Halifax, but, tuning in to the spontaneity of the universe can take one in a different direction towards the most interesting encounters with the world.

Coming from P.E.I. and New Brunswick, the closer we got to Nova Scotia, the more I found myself talking about my long ago experiences in England. Yes, Nova Scotia has awakened the buried memories of grey skies, solitary ocean waves, the ubiquity of the British flag gently flapping in the breeze like the rosy cheeks of Mother Queen, and the trauma of English breakfast.

I had never given much thought to the possibility of having been traumatised by English breakfast until this day, but, for some mysterious reason, I found myself unable to shut up at the horror of, wherever I went in England, every single day, first thing in the morning I had to face mashed potatoes, bacon with eggs and eggs with bacon, in addition to the white puffy thing they called English muffin with plastic-like marmalade. I never imagined that so many years later, one day, I’ll start shuddering and stuttering about it, and least of all, here in North America, the land of royal burgers and their kings. Talk about subconscious connections!

I woke up in the morning in face of reality: the connections were no longer subliminal. Signs of civilisation were definitely more numerous than in New Brunswick, and all the many of them were decorated with the flapping flag of the Brits. With each step east towards the rising sun of Mother England, the grass grew heavier, the grey waves — stricter, and the Englishness brighter and flappier.

Two British and two Canadian flags, i.e. one of each per capita:





Even forest gnomes live under British flags next to the road:





Also, Canadian monuments reminded me of the Soviet dedication to the sacrificed soldiers. I have always suspected that the zeal to bring down the Soviet Union was motivated by envy:





Local design:

All along route 6, cafes boasted signs for affordable and, as they claimed, edible English breakfast. Having suffered my recollections of the Very Great Britain all of the previous day, Sasha and Ljuba dashed to see the splendour of English breakfast for themselves. Yes, it was real. Every cafe that we entered boasted square tables in square rooms with English-looking grey-haired people sat with straight stiff backs next to plump, rosy cheeked boys, sometimes girls too, chewing bacon and eggs and eggs and bacon, mashed potatoes and the whole galore right down to the English muffin. This happens all over the province. No wonder the hog farms were rampant in the eastern provinces.

But English breakfast and flag is not all there is to Nova Scotia.

If New Brunswick is the land of DDT and poisoned dreams, P.E.I — of potatoes and characters who think they are potatoes, then Nova Scotia is the realm of cemeteries, which we found in great abundance along most unexpected spots, and of The Church of the Armed Man usually with some thick and long protrusion hanging from his behind:

Here, they got it all: the cemetery, the breakfast, and the sacred house of the armed man:

It was Sunday, so apart from the notorious breakfast, everything was closed. Finally, in River John, we came across an artisan shop with vegan snacks, herbal teas and fresh brewed coffee. The owner was friendly and talking to some elderly couple who were having breakfast. While we were getting coffee, she inquired about where we were coming from and where we were heading to, told us a bit about the place and before we left, gave Ljuba a whole bunch of large almond and peanut cookies and biscuits that fed us through the day. The generosity was touching and welcoming.

Otherwise, River John was foggy, quiet, inducing a contemplative mood.

In addition to the regular flags, the main plaza boasts allegiance to the U.S.A.:





Our next stop was in Pictou, the place where the Scots – without any invitation by the locals or visas or passports – landed Ship Hector in 1773. The official town’s tourist website acknowledges that the illegal aliens would have perished through the long winter and the diseases they brought with them from Europe, if not for the sharing and caring Mikmaqs, who, when showing them how to survive, had no idea what these aliens were going to bring unto them and their world in such a near future. They couldn’t imagine that the sea shall be devastated, the wildlife exterminated, the land privatised, the forests poisoned and cut down, food confiscated and put under lock, labour unequally valued, and a government run by rich white men would be imposed on everyone, and all the rest that comes with civilisation (the wikipedia entry on Pictou, though, is prone to amnesia and fails to mention the Mikmaqs at all).

The aliens have come out of sea:

There used to be an old fisherman in Pictou and wet floor.

continued in part 7

Statues of armed soldiers guard most of the churches I’ve come across in the Maritimes.










The northern shore was much colder, but the red earth just as stunning:

Victoria by the Sea has a distinct character. I loved the unkempt, wild gardens. Just before turning towards the town, we passed this house with a sign on the window: NO.






























Back to Argyle Shore:








































Our new friend decided to emigrate with us:

We splashed and swam in the shallow and warm waters of Northumberland Strait and in the evening of the 26th drove to Argyle Shore on Prince Edward Island.

The sky was deep, the Strait shivered with violet waters, and Confederation bridge, like Jack’s beanstalk, vanished into the night. This picture is the day version of our experience:

Source for photo: wiki

Upon entry into PEI, the license plate was photographed just like they do at the border with the U.S. Probably to keep people away from stealing potatoes and pesticides.

PEIers’ chests swell with pride at their two landmarks, both of which are omnipresent and ineluctable: Anne of Green Gables and potatoes.

Anne was the main character of a book published in 1908 by Lucy Maud Montgomery who grew up on the island. Anne was an orphan who was eager to please, and hence won the approval to stay and work for the family who’s ordered an orphan from an orphanage in Nova Scotia. Anne proves to be an excellent resource who is happy and grateful for having been taken in to help around — a domestic(ated) dream come true! Even when she gets a chance to go and study at a university on a scholarship, she gives it up in order to stay and take care of the owner.

At a certain point, the narrative reveals the connection between the two landmarks as Anne betrays that she thinks of herself as a potato: «I’m not a bit changed–not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out».

That reminds me of Van Gogh’s painting: the Potato Eaters, which leads me to conclude that obsession with potatoes makes one resemble potatoes and, by extension, obsession with pig, or chicken or anything for that matter, makes one resemble the object of one’s obsession: pig, chicken, or anything for that matter. But even more scary, is that we get to resemble the primitive conception we have of the object of obsession and not the real object itself.

Source for photo: wiki




Low tide: no birds; no sealife; no animals; no-one except for Sasha, Ljuba, and our hosts’ dog walking into the Strait.

Originally, the island was inhabited by the Mi’kmaq Indians. Many of the Mi’kmaq women intermarried with the Acadians (the French colonists) and many more perished due to the the diseases brought by the invaders. However, there are still Mi’kmaq communities that continue to live on the island and the surrounding islands, even though the European invaders have turned the place into one big potato farm with an intensive pollution by pesticides, herbicides and fungicides.

Doctors report that residents of PEI, particularly children, develop some of the rarest cancers and genetic diseases in the world. In an article on cancer and potato farming on PEI, Martin Mittelstaed says that potato farmers use chemicals more heavily than others, often up to 19 sprays in a single growing season and on «on a weekly basis, or even more frequently to try to prevent blight… as well as herbicides to kill the tops of the plants at the end of the growing season to make the underground tubers easier to harvest.

There is likely to be more pesticide exposure on the Island in recent years than there once was because potato acreage has expanded dramatically — doubling since 1980 and up about 40 per cent since 1990, to meet the booming demand from French-fry makers». Pollution was found to be ubiquitous throughout the air over PEI and even as far away as remote wharfs in the Northumberland Strait with no nearby potato cultivation.

According to the report, there are three facts that fail to be connected by the farmers, politicians, and even many of the victims of cancer: 1. PEI has a high rate of cancer; 2. there is a confirmed connection between pesticides and the disease; and 3. there is a confirmed intensive usage of chemicals that pollute the crop, the air, and the water. Yet, «farmers insist that their sprays are safe because all crop chemicals used on the island are approved and regulated by Health Canada, according to Ivan Noonan, general manager of the Prince Edward Island Potato Board, a growers’ association».

Children are the first to develop cancer «because their rapid cell division makes them more sensitive to cancer-causing chemical exposures than adults».

And yet, children are forced to stay for years in these boxes, that go by the name «school», and that prepare the young for a life in coffins and which rely on high school manuals that provide false information and leave important facts and connections out.

Yes, this windowless, claustrophobic building is called school, just as it says over the door, in case you doubted:

This high school «science» manual’s misrepresentation of scientific evidence is cruel and dangerous. First, the authors admit that less than 1% of the organisms that accompany the life-cycle of any particular crop that could cause some harm, whereas the remaining 99% are crucial to life. Then, they contradict themselves — in bad grammar, once again proving that school is NOT a place where one would learn consistency, clear self-expression, or logical thinking — and state that it is «necessary» for the farmers to use these poisons so as to increase their PROFITS! With a maximum greed factor:

«There are many plants and animals which co-exist with crops in a farmers field. Less than one percent of these plants and animals are pests. Pests are organisms which attack crops and harm them in some way. It is critical that these pests are controlled for a farm to earn the best income. The use of synthetic pesticides in agriculture world-wide is still the most widespread method for pest control. Farmers could not achieve the same yields without the use of synthetic pesticides».

What’s even worse, is that the eradication of one “pest” creates more pests from the imbalance of the organisms that used to live together with the eradicated pest and hence turn to consume that which they didn’t harm before and without any checks from the community of life that existed before the eradication of one or two of them. In addition, the chemicals used to kill one pest, inevitably harm others and humans, especially children, since their body sizes are the smallest.

Furthermore, in his research on pesticides, Wee Chong Tan has observed that those societies that practice organic farming have a much healthier sperm count than the farmers involved in chemical farming. In an article titled: Chemical Pesticides Causing Population Infertility and Birth Defects, Tan says that «PEI has twelve times the national rate of child asthma and twice the national rate of prostate cancer. I was told that PEI has a huge population of children with learning disabilities and that PEI has four times the national rate of spinal cord defects in newborns. PEI’s water table is high to the surface of the ground, and so is more susceptible to pesticide spray contamination. The main crop grown in PEI is the potato. So they have to spray pesticides in such a way as to get the pesticides to the potatoes in the ground. I was very shook up. Statistics Canada has provided some interesting information as well. For Canada, maternal death rates have reached 7.8 per 100 000 live births, the highest rate since 1981. It is commonly reported in the media nowadays that exposure to pesticides can cause birth defects and childhood cancers. Prince Edward Island (PEI) has the lowest life expectancy in Canada».

Thus, in addition to the air and the crop pollution, water gets contaminated as well, since the level of the waterbed is pretty high. Looking at the incredible colours and contrasts of a brutalised nature, the meaning of the silence of the skies, which Lucy Maud Montgomery describes with nostalgia in Anne of Green Gables, acquires a threatening ring.

This is a great pity, for, the islanders extended the most generous welcome to us. Their family togetherness touched me deeply. And yet, there lurks this tragic discrepancy in their understanding of life and the threat with which they doom, not only their kin, but their whole world.

Prior to European fisheries and farming, the maritime ecology was gushing with biodiversity. Many of the peoples who inhabited the land were the Abenaki, the Algonquin, the Attikamek, the Micmac, the Montagnais, the Nipissig, the Ojibway, and the Ottawa. Across tribes, they communicated in the Algonquin language and spoke a variety of other languages.

J. V. Wright in A History of the Native People of Canada describes the archeological evidence for the existence of thousands of years of maritime cultures: early, middle, and late starting from ten thousand years. During the Woodland period (1000-1 BCE), apparently shellfish gathering became an important base for human diet.

This would make sense, since farming in particular, but even hunting, require more energy, effort and destruction of the environment than gathering, particularly in such places where the incredible high and low tides offer an abundance of seashells and other gathering possibilities from marine life and the forests. In the Bay of Fundy and the Ungava Bay tides rise and fall up to 17 metres and according to Heike Lotze, a marine biologist from Dalhousie University, and Inka Milewski, a marine biologist and environmentalist from New Brunswick, this region has sustained indigenous human and non-human populations for thousands of years. But today, we are facing an insane rate of the degradation of marine and coastal biodiversity that began in the past several hundred years and escalated with the introduction of high fishing technologies in the 1960s that scraped off the bottom of the ocean and bays and destroyed fauna and other forms of life

«For thousands of years, native people lived, fished, hunted and cultivated land around Passamaquoddy Bay…. European explorers first visited the shores of the Bay of Fundy in the early 1600s, but permanent settlements were not established until the late 18th century. Then, however, the new settlers transformed the region culturally, economically and environmentally within a matter of years» (Lotze & Milewski 2002).

What a tragic and wasteful attitude towards life on our planet. How selfish, ignorant and apathetic the contemporary, civilised human being is. And yet, ironically, it is this being – the one who is the least fit to survive on our planet, the creature who has failed to adapt to life on earth and cannot fathom life without air conditioners in the south, heaters in the north, without clothing, without housing, without suffering, without torture, without murder, and without fear — it is this devastating and most dangerous creature who so adamantly clings to the myth that evolution through «natural selection» and the «survival of the fittest» leads to superb creatures most adept to living on the planet. The civilised human animal cannot even conceive itself of surviving without artificial limbs, other creatures’ fur, in the cold or in the heat.

«What? You’re radical, you’re insane, if you ask me, the Civilised Human, to abandon my sadistic, predatory, egocentric and maniacal way of life and to walk out into the forest naked. You want me to die?»

Unfit to live in the world, this creature clear cuts the forest and annihilates wilderness; that is, because of its selfish fear of life, it spells out death to all.

Inka Milewski in her tribute to Rachel Carson and the Rivers of Death says that even though the poisons of the 60s, such as DDT and which were sprayed over thousands of hectares of forests and farmlands, have been replaced by more biodegradable substances, «recent research demonstrates that a key contaminant in that chemical soup is endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) – compounds which do not outright kill a fish but affect the fish’s behaviour, compromise its immune system, alter its reproductive capacity, and reduce its overall fitness. EDCs have been linked to disorders in human sexual development and reproduction and include such compounds as DDT, DDE, dioxin, furans, and PCBs. EDCs are potent at levels much lower than the allowable limits of exposure set by current government standards».

Needless to say, farming and animal husbandry require intense chemical interventions because keeping creatures miserable, incarcerated against their will, alienated from their wilderness, crowded, stressed out, traumatised by witnessing their kin and brethren ruthlessly slaughtered, ultimately, leads non-human and human animals to all sorts of diseases and disruptions. Any attempt to annihilate competition (even though pests comprise less than 1% of the biodiversity that surrounds any one living organism) creates other problems for whose solution the civilised apply more «science» and chemistry. This produces a cycle of high water and air pollution that requires further pollution to deal with the problems caused by having killed or damaged along with the pests the remaining 99% of the much needed bio-diverse symbionts – all of which leads to the failure of the immune system of ecosystem and to environmental destruction.

For example, «Factory Hog Operation» in New Brunswick has been in the news for a couple of years now. The fact that the terminology remains technical, alienates people from the true meaning of the holocaust waged against non-human animals and veils the horror of what it means to be a victim in such a «factory», forced to be unhealthy and obese and to know that they will be next in line to be murdered like their fellows and kin before them and that the train shall carry their corpses to the feast of the ultimate predator, the most greedy of viruses, the most unhealthy of the diseased: the human animal. This terminology denies us the possibility to be a part of the world we chose to modify and strips us of our dignity that comes with the compassion for the despair of those trapped in this concentration camp with no exit. This lie allows people to continue to daily devour the dead flesh of their victims, consuming their pain and despair.

«According to Inka Milewski, Science Advisor for the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, the scientific evidence is stacking up against intensive livestock operations (ILOs). “In jurisdictions where these operations have been studied, large quantities of nutrients are discharged into watersheds resulting in severe degradation of freshwaster and marine ecosystems.”

“The problem I see is that the scientific evidence is way ahead of the regulations and policies we have in place to protect human and environmental health. For example nutrients, which are a class of contaminants, are not even regulated in Canada. In New Brunswick, ILOs are not subject to full environmental impact assessments”».

Numerous anthropologists have observed that even in the harshest of climates, self-sufficient, sustainable livelihoods have been liberating while the technological organisation of contemporary society has been enslaving. Lasse Nordlund, for example, conducted an «experiment» on how much time and effort were needed to sustain a gathering lifestyle in the cold climate of eastern Finland and arrived at a maximum of 4 hours/day give and take depending on the season (a bit more in the summer and less in winter).

«What is economically viable cannot be ecologically gentle, and for that which preserves nature, it is impossible to find economic viability,» he says in an essay titled The Foundations of Our Life: Reflections about Human labour, Money and Energy from Self-sufficiency Standpoint. The reason, he says, is that the production of technology and machines requires much more energy than manual labour, which is the most efficient way of sustaining life. Thus, the production of technology itself depends on energy from «abroad» (he mentions the Middle East) — I would add to that the food and human labour needed to mine (mines and quarries are one of the most important industries in Quebec and the Eastern provinces), to produce raw materials for the machine parts, to invent the machines, etc. He calculates that the equation of input and output energy always works on deficit since the production of newer machines depends on previous machines and the energy that went into their production.

«The pressure to intensify production by feeding more energy into the system has a particularly disastrous effect on the energy balance of primary production, where productivity has its natural limits. Directors of finance may talk about overproduction in agriculture, but this only describes the amount of commodities in the market compared to the demand. The more realistic situation in terms of nature is that we have the greatest shortage in primary production in history. We use hundreds of times more energy to produce a unit of food than the Stone Age human. Within the scope of a pricing policy, part of the “overproduced” goods may be disposed of to keep the prices stable, which makes the energy deficit of our way of life even worse. Agriculture, which used to collect renewable energy, is one of today’s biggest users of nonrenewable energy» (Nordlund, p.8).

For over 15 years, Lasse has been living on mushroom hunting, berry gathering, small-scale farming, and fishing, making his own clothes and tools such as fishing nets, wooden shovels, spinning wheels or weaving looms. He abandoned animal husbadry because it was superfluous. This has gone beyond experimentation and has become a chosen and more rewarding way of life for him: he now has a family with two children. Again, his «experiment» took place inland, in one of the world’s harshest climates in the north. Imagine the possibilities offered by an ocean washing up shells and clams on the beach.

I remember, the first stroll along an ocean coast that I’ve ever taken; it was on the Atlantic coast of Brittany and Normandy in 1988. I was dazzled by the variety of wonders of ocean-life scattered among the rocks and crawling creatures trying to make it back into the water. Heading to the Maritimes in 2009, the Normandy picture conjured an image of expectation to be embraced by the skies, wilderness and life. But I saw only empty rocks, void water, and lifeless skies whose silence was occasionally interrupted by military helicopters and planes. The whales stopped coming to Digby Neck. Someone mentioned that we had to go to special places to see them, rent expensive tours on motorboats to venture out into the open ocean to make sure to catch a glimpse of the frolicking sea-mammals, who our friends on Digby Neck said only a decade or two ago used to be a regular sight from their home. And even expensive tours did not guarantee anything.

Shouldn’t this all strike people as a worrisome sign? Still, politicians continue to talk about «sustainable» politics, «hope», and «change» flashing these empty slogans that are as lifeless as the inept creatures who have «evolved» into the deadly planetary tumour.

The omnipresent Acadian flags of New Brunswick.

In Bouctouche, we veered towards the Northumberland Strait and stopped for lunch at the marsh reserve. Ecologists have posted numerous signs with clear explanations as to the importance of every single variation of microclimate in general and, in this specific case, of why the marshes are vital for the local ecosystem. Again, how much of these changes are driven by compassion and not by self-centred concern of survival remains an important element in the equation of life that will have a final say on how far these changes will go.

In New Brunswick, we passed several road signs in an American Indian language — the only official signs we’ve seen in Canada indicating some sort of acknowledgment of the existence of inhabitants other than the francophones and the anglophones.

Acadian flags were everywhere.

Here, they have assembled 5 flags on one lawn: the blue and white of Quebec, below it is the Canadian flag, at the bottom the Acadian, and on the second pole the flag of New Brunswick on top and of France at the bottom. The British flag was missing in the northern part of the province (although I saw it all over Fredericton), understandably so, for the brutality with which the Brits had dealt with the French colonists when the francophones refused to take to arms against the Indians and the French during the 7 years war of the 18th century is still fresh in the memory of the Acadians. In any case, we got compensated for this lack of British flags here later with the sight of New Scots indulging in English breakfast beneath the British flag in Nova Scotia. But, more on that later.

The history of the Canadian land dates back millions of years, even though paleontologists and archaeologists believe that North America was the last of the continents to have been inhabited by humans. The European period of the history of Canada is, on the other hand, extremely short and began in Newfoundland and the Maritime region since it was there that Leif Erikson supposedly landed in 1000 AD. The various Norwegian expeditions in the 10th and 11th centuries and then the Italian, John Cabot’s, explorations on behalf of the English king during the late part of the 15th century, along with others — all these expeditions prepared the ground for the European colonial strife for the possession of the Americas. Fishing vessels and fur traders followed on the footsteps of the initial explorers, even though, they did not settle initially, and would regularly come to exploit the seas and the animals throughout the 16th century always returning to Europe.

During the second half of the 18th century, European settling began in Newfoundland and the Maritime provinces, a phenomenon that imposed new attitude to «resources» and a different approach to the utilisation of space along with all the living and sentient beings dwelling in that space providing, which the foundation for today’s Canada’s and its national heritage.

Full comprehension of the scope of the devastation inflicted on the land and sea by the European invention of the humanist dogma and its obsession with civilisation is a feat of insanity, because how can one possibly understand, witness and feel the despair of living beings — animal, human or plant — rendered helpless at protecting their children, their wilderness and their lives by the civilised model: the bludgeoned seal babies is the most overt of the perversions, however, domestication of farm animals holds just as much horror.

No wonder the civilised can barely function without legal and illegal drugs to induce oblivion and lull their conscience debilitating them senseless. They delude themselves with that ignorance is bliss and dive head down into the hell they dare not acknowledge. And so they desperately seek a remedy for their chronic depression, except that the only remedy that can ever work is freeing ourselves from the nightmare of humanism and murder.

Reading the accounts of the abundance of wildlife on the continent a mere 200 years ago and travelling through the lunar landscape now, I had to find a way to come to terms with the contrast between the amazing colours that jolt the heart yet deceive the expectations of richness offering instead a contrast of bareness and silence, the silence one meets in the absence of life. Where are the thousands of wild buffaloes, the wolves, the bears, the crabs, the seashells, the snails that roamed their green homeland only a few of centuries ago?

European invention of «resources» and «management of resources» (the most important terms that «drive» the «economy» of the Eastern Canadian provinces) is the key to deciphering this landscape of death.

Aboriginal forestry stands in stark contrast to this European, now going by the names of capitalism and democracy. In a paper titled «Aboriginal Forestry», Reginald Parsons and Gordon Prest say that:

«Aboriginal forestry can be seen as sustainable forest land use practices that incorporate the cultural protocols of the past with interactions between the forest ecosystem and today’s Aboriginal people for generations unborn. Aboriginal forestry combines the strengths of current forest management models with traditional cultural Aboriginal forest practice. Aboriginal forestry practice is more than just following a prescription outlining when, where, and how to harvest, but prescribes how a respectful relationship with the natural world can be developed».

Today, we drove through the landscape with the «cottage»-«vacation» culture on the left by the beach facing — and depending on — the civilised agri- (and) culture on the right:

Continued in part 3