Striking a Balance

This story starts in Baddeck and ends in the Valley.

Last week we stopped at the Alexander Graham Bell museum. I wanted to catch up on the work of the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere Reserve Association (BLBRA). At the gift shop, I was able to pick up a CD copy of the TVO documentary series ‘Exploring Canada’s Biosphere Reserves’. It covers eight biosphere reserves and is narrated by Jim Cuddy. One of the Biosphere Reserves is Bras d’Or Lake striking balance.

Within the pavilion at the Historic Site, BLBRA have a display. One of the brochures describes the dream of ‘Walking Around the Bras d’Or’.

” The Mi’kmaq have lived here for thousands of years. The influence of the five communities in the Biosphere is what makes dreaming about ‘Awki’j’ (trail) even more vital.

” The concept of ‘two-eyed’ seeing links Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal thinking. One eye learns using indigenous knowledge and the other eye learns using mainstream knowledge. They see together.

” Think of the history, the culture and the ecosystem while walking the trail using two eyes.”

While in Iona at the Highland Village, I happened to pick up a copy of Charlotte Gray’s book, “Reluctant Genius. The passionate life and inventive mind of Alexander Graham Bell.”

Chapter 14 describes ‘A Shifting Balance’ and by Chapter 16 ‘Escape to Cape Breton’. I have still to read the Cape Breton years at Beinn Bhreagh (Beautiful Mountain).

“He would stand on Beinn Bhreagh, taking great gulps of Cape Breton air and letting his gaze skim down the ten-mile length of St Andrew’s Channel to Grand Narrows. The frustrations and worries that haunted his Washington life fell away.” p.295.

On returning to the valley, I had the opportunity to read a review of ‘Wines of Nova Scotia’. The map was created by cartographer, Marcel Morin from Lost Art Cartography for the Wine Association of Nova Scotia. Morin talks about the art of Cartography and the new technology. The message, for me, was the need to ‘Strike a balance’. I did manage to pick up a copy of the map at Grand Pre Wineries.

One final story from the Cape Breton road trip. We stopped at Wildfire Pottery and Books ( I could not resist the ‘and Books”). The owner, Paul,  showed me a copy of The Fiddle Tree by Otis Tomas (including the CD). Tomas makes musical instruments. The book describes a specific tree, the process of curing the wood, the design and making of the instruments. The CD includes music written by the author, played by musicians on the instruments made by Tomas from the Fiddle Tree:  a remarkable symbiotic relationship between nature and culture

 

There’s Nothing There: a rural myth

“There’s nothing there!” scolded Joan, my plein air artist friend. “You’re sending us to a place next week, to a crossroads, where there is absolutely nothing to paint”. Joan was referring to the intersection of Black Rock Road and Brooklyn Street , Kings County, Nova Scotia — our fifth paint-out site of the season (we have 21 more to paint). “I go by there almost every week. Why are we going THERE?”

En Plein Air sketch of decaying home along Brooklyn Street, Kings County, Nova Scotia by Edward Wedler at http://www.dootdootdaddy.blogspot.ca

That’s part of the problem. Through familiarity Joan has become numbed to the nuances of this rural setting — the details many would miss just driving past. Along with six other artist friends we rhymed off to her the many scenes that can be captured there. “You can do the graveyard or the decaying house across the road from the Grafton Community Hall. What about the cows or the rows of corn in the farmer’s fields? Have you ever looked up the road, towards North Mountain, to see the thick fog hanging in the air from the Bay of Fundy? If you drive up the mountain you can look back at the patchwork quilt of farmer’s fields and see the sunlit silos across the Valley on the South Mountain. “

My wife, Anne, was trained in acrylic art by Floridian artist Joseph Melançon. He paints in the form of the Canadian Group of Seven artists and can create masterpieces from what look like banal landscape photos, devoid of details. He opens our artists’ eyes to the understated geography of rural settings. He creates something from what appears to be nothing.

In my travels across Canada it was the Prairies that struck me most as an artist. The smallest glimmer from a pond, the most subtle grouping of wild flowers, the flutter of startled ducks, the line of telephone pole after telephone pole, was magnified ten-fold in contrast to the expanse of fields and open sky. One notices more clearly the slightest shift in colour, line and form.

I have learned that, through artist’s eyes, when we focus we begin to see what may appear ordinary but in a new light. Bear River photographer and film maker, Tim Wilson, reminds me of that every time he posts another photo or video to his Facebook or website from rural Nova Scotia. Anyone see the film Maudie? Stricken with arthritis and almost stuck in a small house in rural Nova Scotia folk artist Maude Lewis managed to paint and paint and paint. There was always something to paint.

Look carefully and maybe stop awhile. There is always something to see (and do). To say that there’s “nothing there” is a rural myth.

 

Mind the Gap: between institutions and communities

This weekend the Ernest Buckler Learning Event Society (EBLES) hosted Reading where we live: a celebration of local writing at the Bridgetown Legion. The focus was on local. It included a panel discussion on the writing process, associated with Paul Colville’s book, The View from Delusion Road; a settler’s story. We invited two speakers from the academic community: Alex MacLeod, Professor of Canadian Literature and Atlantic Studies, Saint Mary’s University and Nick Mount, Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. It was a real treat that both of these professors willingly gave their time to be with the community in Annapolis County. Perhaps it is the legacy of Ernest Buckler.

The two presentations provided us with a rich context for ‘local’  at the ‘national’ and ‘global’ scale and within an interdisciplinary literary framework. They connected us to the post-secondary education community in the Valley – the work of Herb Wyile and Sandra Barry Elizabeth Bishop, Nova Scotia’s ‘Home-made’ Poet. Alex MacLeod referenced the conference at Acadia this July, Thoughts from the Eastern Edge, as well as Wyile book Anne of Tim Hortons: globalization and the reshaping of Atlantic Canadian literature. Nick Mount offered us an historical context and referenced his book When Canadian Literature moved to New York.

As a retired ‘academic’, it was a a delight to be immersed briefly in the richness of ideas and to recognize the importance of interdisciplinary studies: history, geography, economics, media studies. The event coincided with my finishing Paul Heyer’s book on Harold Innis, with such abstract chapter titles,  as ‘Time, Space and the Oral tradition’ and ‘Monopolies of Knowledge and the Critique of Culture’. And Darrell Varga’s Shooting from the East: filmmaking on the Canadian Atlantic.  I could ‘join the dots’ and see the connection between Varga’s writing about film, and MacLeod’s writing about books in the region.

Mind the gap is an expression familiar to anyone visiting London, UK who uses the underground. My concern is the ‘gap’ between our post-secondary education institutions and the communities. Both MacLeod and Mount responded to a need (request) from the community (EBLES). They showed us that we can ‘mind the gap’ and step carefully, from the platform onto a fast moving train. Ultimately, we are all ‘inside/outside’ a number of communities.

The full agenda of Reading where we live can be found in my previous blog.

In Praise of Libraries

In a recent email, John Montgomerie mentioned a letter written by Ernest Buckler in 1976 to the Halifax newspaper. It expressed concern about cut-backs to libraries in rural Nova Scotia. ” Buckler relied heavily on the bookmobile services to provide him with the necessary resources to aid his writing, for which he was so grateful”.

John and I are both Board members of the Ernest Buckler Literary Event Society (EBLES). It is hosting an event next Saturday, June 3rd. ‘Reading where we live, a celebration of local authors and literature’ (see The Reader, www.bridgetownreader.com)

If we go forward forty years, we still need to protect library services. After living in Nunavut for the last six weeks, it is a joy to return to the Lawrencetown branch of the Annapolis Valley regional library, the Dr. Frank W.Morse Memorial Library and to requests number of books through inter-library loans. These books allow me to write a regular blog for GoGeomatics and contribute to a conversation with Geomatics professionals and Geographers across the country (see latest blog, Atlantic Geography: through books and film).

Many thanks to Jaki Fraser and other librarians across the province. I can only echo Ernest Buckler. As we approach a provincial election, it is important to remind everyone that books and film allow us to tell our stories, about who we are, and where we are.

There are many examples. This weekend, there were four sold-out showings of Maudie at the King’s Theatre in Annapolis Royal. You could augment your understanding by reading Lance Woolaver’s book ‘Maud Lewis. The Heart on the Door ‘.

If you are a tourism operator, you must wonder about the relationship of the film, its setting in Newfoundland, and the cuts to the Nova Scotia Film Tax credit. For more insight, check out Darrell Varga ‘Shooting from the East. Filmmaking on the Canadian Atlantic’.

A Day in Nunavut (April 27)

The day started around 1:30 am.

Juniper, a female Eskimo sled dog started giving birth to puppies in our garage. Even though the mother is brown and white all nine pups were black and white; the same colour as the father, Niksik. The birthing process took until mid- afternoon.

Later, around 4:30 pm, Julia (daughter-in-law) and the high school students arrived at the airport. They had been on a school trip to Costa Rica. Because of Spring blizzards, their return was delayed for two days in Ottawa.

After supper, we needed a break and so went to the free Thursday night movie at the Visitor Centre. The film was to be a documentary ‘Martha of the North‘ about Martha Flaherty. Unfortunately, the showing was cancelled because of ‘staffing issues’.

Instead, we hastened to the Frobisher Inn to enjoy a drink and dessert.

Hardly, a typical ‘birthday’ however it illustrates the uncertainties in a community which still has close ties to the land. Indeed, just by looking out of the kitchen window, it is very apparent where the land/sea meet the town boundary.

A day in rural Nova Scotia

Yesterday, the ‘Learn to Run’ club met in Bridgetown at 10 am. They meet three times per week. The program  goes from January to April each year. Afterwards, we went to Endless Shores Books. We were looking for second-hand children books to take to grandchildren in Iqaluit next week. We found a great selection. I also found a number of local, new books, including Geoff Butler ‘Our own Little World’. Geoff is from Granville Ferry. His books are a combination of paintings and poetry, with a sense of humour.

Home for lunch. Given the recent snow storm on Wednesday night, there was still good snow in the woods. Time to put on cross-country skis and go down through the property to the Annapolis River. On the way back up, via the old plantations at the defunct Lawrencetown nursery, there was ample opportunity to check the tracks of coyote, deer, squirrel and other mice and voles.

We stopped briefly at the orchard. The apple prunings remain encrusted in ice and snow. It will be at least another week, before burning can take place.

On Saturday evening, CARP hosted a movie night at the Paradise Community Hall on ‘Forest Schools’.It was a good turn out. We had the chance to watch documentary on experiential environmental education in Switzerland and to hear about a similar new initiative underway in the Greenwood area.

Resources

Endless Shores Books publishes a free weekly paper for communities and people in Annapolis County. It is available at the web site http://www.bridgetownreader.ca or you can receive it online, contact reader@endlessshoresbooks.com

Clean Annapolis River Project (CARP) have a web site http://www.annapolisriver.ca or you can email carp@annapolisriver.ca Their mission is to  ‘enhance the ecological health of the Annapolis River watershed through science, leadership and community engagement’.

Using online games to study what tourists find attractive here.

Imagine if we could, through games, explore the preferences of European, Asian, Middle Eastern, North American and other visitors to our region and cater our tourist destinations (and direct our dollars) to meet those preferences.

We THINK we know what attracts tourists to our area, but how can we measure that objectively?  How can we rank one destination over another? I propose we have tourists play games — online games. Apply game concepts to unearth the mindset of our potential visitors. Here I pilot a basic game called “ValleySeen”, the results of which can be used to evaluate what landscapes/streetscapes appeal to our visitors. Go ahead and play in my test area of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.

ValleySeen applies the urban “StreetSeen” project, created by students at Ohio State University and used in the MOOC, Technicity, to explore gaming in a rural setting. StreetScene is based on the work of Open Plans Beautiful Street Project and MIT’s Media Lab Place Pulse Project .

This is how it works …

Display pairs of images that are randomly selected from a library of Google Street View images within an area. Pose a planning question. Have the player vote on the image that best suits the question. Tabulate and analyse the responses to rank users’ preferences and even generate ‘heat maps’.

I applied StreetSeen to look at Annapolis Royal through the eyes of a tourist. I wanted to know what tourists found attractive. I focused on Annapolis Royal as a test area. I randomly selected twenty Google Street View images and generated results in spreadsheet and map form. I ranked the preferred images based on the question asked, and analysed results.

My pilot was limited in scope: geography, number of images, analyses. In future, I propose adding the geographic source of respondents in the analyses.

Furthermore, I propose that gaming concepts be used to study our tourism and tourists to better develop destination plans for Nova Scotia.

 

 

 

 

gtong len: taking and sending

Ken McLeod in his book ‘Reflections on Silver River’ translates and comments on Tokme Zongpo’s Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva. Zongpo was a fourteenth century Buddhist monk living in Ngulchu (Silver River), Tibet. McLeod describes the fundamental Buddhist concept of gtong len, or empathy, where one receives the emotions of another person and responds by sending back supportive feelings. This concept raised the idea in my mind whether we can take or receive from a landscape and return positive empathy back to it.

To explore the idea further, I looked at the literature of two geographies: England and Nova Scotia. My jumping off point for England was Alexandra Harris ‘Weatherland. Writers and Artists under English Skies’. She looks at English culture over a thousand years in terms of the story of changing ideas about the weather.

‘Weatherland is a celebration of English air and a life story of those who have lived in it. As we enter what may be the last decades of English weather as we know it, this is the history for our times.’

My starting point for Nova Scotia was Janice Kulyk Keefer ‘Under Eastern Eyes. A critical reading of Maritime fiction’. Keefer introduces chapters on Community, Nature, History, Politics and ‘Going and Staying’. The region was a stepping stone to the rest of Canada.

Within the context of Nova Scotia, we can find the ‘nature’ writing of Silver Donald Cameron (beaches) and Harry Thurston (tidal wetlands). For ‘community’, we might look to Ernest Buckler or Thomas Raddall.

From the gtong len perspective, what do we receive from the local geography (land,sea and air) ? Depending on the scale, we can think in terms of the Gulf Stream, the Labrador current or the tides in the Bay of Fundy. What do we send back ? A detailed description of our interaction with the landscape and its history — from the Mic’maq, Acadien, New England Planters, Black Loyalists.

If we wish to practice gtong len, then we must relate our stories to the geography. Expanding Harris’s documentation of the relationship of the weather in England to the weather(air),land and sea (geography) in Nova Scotia.

It is the writers and artists who are ‘sending’ us back. It is the destruction of the ecological resources that we are ‘taking’.

Footnote

Keefer titled her book after the novel by Joseph Conrad ‘Under Western Eyes’.
In her words ‘Conrad wished, among other things, to present to his readers a unique way of seeing and being, to underscore the essential difference between the Russian and European traditions and temperaments.’

References

Ken McLeod. 2014. Reflections on Silver River. Tokme Zongpo’s Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva. Unfettered Mind Media. Sonoma, California.
Check web site unfetteredmind.org

Alexandra Harris. 2015. Weatherland. Writers and Artists under English Skies. Thames and Hudson. New York.

Janice Kulyk Keefer. 1987. Under Eastern Eyes. A critical reading of Maritime fiction. University of Toronto Press. Toronto.

Silver Donald Cameron. 1998. The Living Beach. MacMillan. Toronto.

Harry Thurston. 2004. A Place between the Tides. A Naturalist’s reflections on the salt marsh. Greystone Books. Vancouver.

Ernest Buckler.1952. The Mountain and the Valley.New Canadian Library Series 23. Toronto. McClelland and Stewart. 1968.

Thomas Raddall. 1950. The Nymph and the Lamp. New Canadian Library Series 38. Toronto. McClelland and Stewart. 1968.

Citizen Engagement and Virtual Reality

This week, we celebrated the availability of craft beer from Lunn’s Mill Beer Company in Lawrencetown. Their elegant growlers include a couple of messages, as well as a map of Nova Scotia. The beer company is an example of engaging citizens in a rural business venture.

Lunn’s Mill growlers 

‘In 1760, this beautiful part of the Annapolis Valley was known as Lunn’s Mill, named after the major industry in the area a bustling sawmill owned by John Lunn. Around this time, the Charming Molly set sail from New England carrying the first New England Planters. These intrepid people helped expand the community with farms and shops and in 1822 it was renamed Lawrencetown.’

‘Lunn’s Mill pays homage to our past and to tIhe people who choose to come to Nova Scotia and make their living from the land. We strive to keep up this tradition using top quality ingredients locally sourced wherever possible, and partnering with local businesses to put Lunn’s Mill back on the map as a proud brewer of Nova Scotia craft beer.’

Meanwhile, in the weekend newspaper (Chronicle Herald) the debate continues about the state of the forests in Southwest Nova. The Opinion section includes columns by Mike Parker, author and researcher, as well as Jeff Bishop, Forest Nova Scotia. In the Style section of the Globe and Mail, there was a discussion on the use of Virtual Reality as a tool for interior designers.

Here is my point, why not use the tool of Virtual Reality to help engage citizens in decisions related to our landscape. First, a simple example, Nova Scotia Power is consulting with property owners about expanding (doubling) the buffer around power lines. Rather than go house to house, we could organize community meetings, where citizens could look at the impact of this expanded buffer, on their property as well as on the South Mountain as a geographic unit.

The same form of citizen engagement could take place, in relation to the planning of forest harvesting. Indeed, when I was interviewing Tim Webster, Research Scientist at AGRG, they had recently received funding to establish a Virtual Reality laboratory in Middleton.

Citizen engagement is a key ingredient in the new craft beer venture.
Could we not apply the same philosophy of citizen engagement, in terms of using virtual reality technology to make collective decisions with regards power line easements and forest harvesting practices ? This tool would allow all parties to see the same geography.

Of course, right now, today, there are some limitations with regards line speed and access to the Internet in rural areas. But we do have some key institutions in the regions with high speed access e.g. NSCC.

One final note, on Tuesday, March 7th, at the Centrelea Community Centre there is a session on the mapping of historic buildings in the community. This is a collaboration between a group of citizens and Ed Symons, instructor and students at COGS.(http://bit.ly/centrelea).

References
Mike Parker ‘Don’t listen to industry reassurances’ Chronicle Herald, March 4/17 Page F2.
Jeff Bishop. ‘Confusing opinion with the facts’. Chronicle Herald, March 4/17 Page F2.
Matthew Hague. ‘Noticed: Digital Design’.Globe and Mail, March 4/17. Style section page 5.