We love this bridge that goes over the sand dune and leads to the beach at Chockpish, New Brunswick, about 20 kilometers north of Bouctouche.

by Elaine Mandrona

There is a lobster processing plant here and this time of year the activity of canning lobster is in full swing. All of the workers have arrived, their cars cramming the parking lot. We drive past the red buildings, as red ad boiled lobster, and park near some sheds away from the activity .

A little gray weathered footbridge is the magical passage way to Chockpish beach. It’s open water, big waves, especially since it’s windy, and you can see the windmills on the PEI coast off in the distance. I imagine them spinning like crazy.

On our side there are upscale, widely spaced cottages perched on the shore. Windows facing the sea, like eyes looking out toward the pencil line blue horizon and cottony white clouds. Actually, our favorite cottage of all time is here, and I’ll tell you, we’ve done a lot of exploring and looking at cottages as we travel the Acadian Coast. We’ve been lusting for it for the past ten years. It’s gray shingle with a stone chimney, two stories, a filigree screen door lets in the sea breeze. Roses are climbing up the side. Some folks from Ontario own it, we think. Someday, we fantasize, it may have a “For Sale” sign on it. And we’ll have truckloads of cash after we win the Lotto to buy it.

Chockpish—what does it mean? Sounds native, but we’ve never been able to find any information about it. Chock full of fish is what I think about.

The sand on Chockpish beach is fine and warm this day, even though a stiff cool breeze is blowing, ruffling the grass and churning up whitecaps.

A formidable stone breakwater says “Danger No Trespassing on Rubble Mound Structure”. I wouldn’t dream of it.

Closer up the waves are ink blue with undertones of root beer brown—sand stirred up as the waves break on the shore. I study some subtle patterns in the sand close up. They’re fine line drawings made by hidden hands in the waves as they advance and recede.

This one lane bridge crosses the Chockpish River. Behind it you can see the lobster processing plant.

A seagull hangs in the air. Three cormorants dart from the other side of the rubble breakwater and skim the water, flying low. The gulls like the wind, they play with it, hovering and diving, letting it lift and drop them.The more agile terns use it to change direction like acrobats. One seagull perches on top of a pole, watching for a long time, like he owns the place.

The sea grass twitches like a horse’s flank. Like a horse that has been spooked.
I am praying that the Louisiana oil spill doesn’t make it up here. Chockpish is pristine, virginal and pure, up to this point, anyway. It’s a treasure. One of the nicest beaches around, it seems like not many people know about it. Even at the height of the summer, we never see many visitors here.Today it’s just us.

We walk back over the footbridge to the dock. There are interesting, colorful boats bobbing next to the wharf. A metal bridge spans the Chockpish river that widens here and empties into the ocean. The cars going over it make a muffled thunk thunk sound.

Today, Chockpish is all about motion. Motion and clarity, everything is in sharp focus.

by Archie Nadon

Chockpish. I keep coming back to the photo of the wooden walkway to the beach at Chockpish and I know it’s not the adult in me that’s is drawn to it.

The walkway goes up and over the dune before the breakwater and down to a short path through the grass leading to the beach proper. You can’t see the beach from the wharf side but you can from the platform at the top. You can turn around and see the beach on both sides of the wharf going north and south.

Of course, we love beach access. That’s what we’re about. So many times we ‘re disheartened to see signs reading, “Private rode”, or there are obstacles that make it impossible to get to the beach or you feel like you’re trespassing once you’re there. This walkway says, “Here’s the beach. It’s yours to enjoy.” Mind you, there are no toilet facilities and not many places to hide if the needs arises which means to truly Enjoy you should do your business at home first, but I like what that walkway says.

It was probably built by the Chockpish Harbour Authority that is made up, like all the other 550 some harbour authorities across Canada, of interested local parties, like commercial fishermen and business people. All of them volunteers. They made it for their own kids and anybody else that visits this little corner of Côte-Sainte-Anne, about 20 minutes north of Bouctouche.

I always forget about the walkway, though, probably because you can’t see it until you drive through the one lane bridge (if you’re northbound), turn right off the road and go between the red buildings of the lobster processing plant. You drive between the buildings and go to the end of the long storage shed to where the breakwater begins and you’ll find it. There are other paths to the beach, but we always use the walkway. It’s just more fun. A little more magic.

And it’s all there. The wonderful sand, the beach grass, the weathered snow fences, the driftwood, the shells, the diving terns, the cormorants and ducks as well as the seagull perched on top of the light on the pole at the end of the breakwater, facing into the wind. It would all be cliché if it weren’t so authentic.

I’m sure Parlee Beach by Shediac is authentic, but it’s crowded. When I was young beach wasn’t beach unless it was standing room only, and mostly girls. Now, the only girl I want with me is Elaine and finding a beautiful beach we can have to ourselves is better than any resort.

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The ruins of an old wharf in Saint Thomas de Kent, NB. We’ve had a cottage in the area for almost 10 years and only just noticed these because we had never actually walked this beach.

We’d like to make a living from the sea. Not by fishing, of course. There are no fish left. We found that out when we decided that this year we would try every type of local fish, freshly caught and bought from those little markets you see along the coast. However, that project’s death knell was sounded by the door chime of the first market we tried. The only fish they had were some trout and salmon. From Halifax. No, we won’t be making a living fishing any time soon.

What we want to do is write about our explorations. We live 20 minutes from the coast, have a cottage within view of it. We’ve driven from Miscou to Florida, at one time or other. The Florida trip was a one-off deal and was made when Elaine and I were still just friends, but we know most of our Acadian Coast pretty damn well, at least that’s what we thought.

We've started stopping more often rather than just doing a lot of driving. It's amazing how much more we see when we just stop.

Time to start stopping

We’ve put a lot coastal miles on our various vehicles but we’ve just realized that we haven’t done much stopping. We joke that we almost never talk to anyone, but how do you talk to anyone when you’re cruising along at 80 to 100 KMH? So, now we’re stopping. No fisherman ever caught fish zooming out and then back from the fishing grounds and so we’ve make that every weekend we park the wheels and walk or just sit at mini-destinations, enjoying the air, taking pictures, or writing. We still haven’t talked to anyone, but that will come.

This weekend we dropped anchor (That’s the last fishing metaphor, I promise.) at Saint Thomas and we discovered the ruins of an old wharf. The wooden cribwork, looking like sets of rotten and broken teeth, is most easily seen at low tide, naturally, and makes for an interesting photograph or two.

Just an average wharf

We want to know more about it, though. Sure, we know no famous ship moored here. None of the survivors of the Titanic swam ashore and I doubt even one U-Boat snuck in under cover of dark to lay mines during WWII. I’m sure it was the average wharf where the local fishermen moored their boats at day’s end, unloaded their catch and went back out the next day. That’s the magic of it, though. People lived their lives around this wharf and much more so than of the wharves of today and that’s what gives these old centers their depth.

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Driving up and down the coast you see only the “today” of whatever you come by and that is two dimensional, there is almost no context. There is only foreground, no background. Stopping to delve into the local history provides depth the way shadows make a drawing look “real”. Stories, happy and sad, are the details that bring a place to life.

We don’t know any of the stories, yet. We know only that there was once a wharf at Saint Thomas, that it was abandoned and replaced by a solid around the bend to the north of it. The ruins are the only hint of this chapter of the community’s history, but we intend to find out about it and paint a better picture of it.

by ELAINE MANDRONA

Intuitively, feel yourself drawn to a particular spot—a place in the woods, a corner on a city street, a sandy inlet on the shore. Stop, look closely, look all around, 360 degrees.  Write down your experience in 100 words or less.  This is micro-tourism—appreciating an environment on a smaller scale, being in the moment, really looking at what is right before you, and seeing what is  special, unusual or beautiful about it, and then sharing that experience. Everything changes all the time, so no two micro-tourism events are the same. Time of day, time of year, weather, light, the presence or absence of people, sounds, smells, colors, textures, make each experience unique.

Micro-tourism destination Moncton, NB, Walking trail near Ida St.

We go down to the Petitcodiac River on a face-stinging, windy Spring morning right near the new bridge to Riverview and walk under it where a few graffiti artists have made their marks.  The sky is a bright, fresh spring blue, cyan.  We walk down to a rusty orange  footbridge that goes across a muddy brown tributary in an arc.  A study in shades of brown. Ric-rac rails. The ends are under construction–the boardwalk will connect here. We can`t go across. Tide’s in, gentle ripples in the water.  Some tentative bird calls. Sparkles in the distance.  Bent grasses in patterns with the last of the snow.  Footprint and  vehicle patterns in the frozen mud underfoot.  Birds making their songs heard above low pitched traffic noise.  Any day now the  sun’s heat will come.

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Elaine likes chores. She sits there thinking them up. That's not something we have in common.

If I had a pressure gauge you’d see the needle dropping almost immediately upon arrival at the cottage. Being there is like a really good drug. When I had kidney stones a few years ago they gave me Demerol and within seconds the pain was easing. That’s what being at the cottage is like. We leave Moncton wound up and not knowing it and then we sit on the porch of the cottage and decompress. I’m surprised our eardrums don’t pop. We almost always say, with some surprise, “Wow, was I stressed.” Pressure tends to creep up.

Briefly we thought about moving there permanently but I think the real value of the cottage is about being somewhere else. A place isn’t somewhere else if you’re there all the time. Perspective is gained from seeing things from two slightly different directions. Slipping out to the coast always provides that perspective and when we come back to the world we see things as they are again. If we moved there, we’d just have to find another place to help us maintain our sanity. We need some other refuge.

Besides this year we have a bonus because the place will be paid off and then even the loan payments won’t be an added stressor.

An even bigger bonus this year is that the long haul of doing an internship at CFB Gagetown is over. I loved it, but it’s over and I’m home again and we can whip out to the cottage during the week and commute to Moncton, it’s so close. Eighteen months of seeing each other only on weekends is plenty. School’s over. Time to get on with life.

Exploring the chapel before my massage. If ever there was a setting for healing it's the Memramcook Institute. Our massage association had one of our general meetings here.

by ELAINE MANDRONA

The village of Memramcook, NB, may be known as Le Berceau de L’Acadie—the Cradle of Acadie—but I came for a massage. I’m at the Memramcook Institute, formerly the Collège Saint-Joseph, the first successful Acadian institution of higher education. That college laid the groundwork for the modern day Université de Moncton. Times changed and the college morphed into a resort, the resort has a spa and here I am.

For a really good massage that can transform stress and body blockages, a lot of elements have to come together. The physical environment, the ambiance and the therapist—you need to get a sense that all of these things are right for you.  Every massage is different, but if any of the basic elements are out of whack, the experience can be more frustrating than healing. I know all of this from both on and above the massage table because I’ve been a massage therapist for 18 years.  I work my body hard and it gets sore and distorted and tight and I need someone who really understands my body to get it all to release.

The Memramcook Spa is on the third floor of the Memramcook Institute. The lovely old building with high ceilings, old woodwork and large windows has an ambiance that lends itself to relaxation and introspection. I like the fact that both learning and worship—two of the more evolved human activities—once took place here. The atmosphere is quiet, soothing, contemplative.

I first came here with my daughter for a going-back-to-school treat last August. I booked a massage with the therapist available that day, Andrée Poirier. It turned out well. Better than well, it was the best massage that I have had for a long, long time. So I booked with her again. I never asked her if she was related to Pascal Poirier, the first Acadian chosen to serve as a senator by John A. MacDonald and educated at the Collège Saint-Joseph, now the Memramcook Institute.  Next time I will ask about her connection to the place.

She was very present while doing her work on me—she paid attention. She combined basic Swedish massage with myofascial release and energy work. In layman’s terms, she did some basic stroking and kneading, some deeper work on my stuck spots by stretching the fascia (connective tissue that surrounds muscles and bones) and by frictions.  But best of all, I could feel her attention and soothing, focused, healing energy. She was also trained in Reiki. We were both in a meditative state as she worked slowly, deliberately and with great compassion. I felt great afterward, like a new woman.

It’s curious the path things take sometimes, how everything can come together to structure a memorable experience.  This place of learning and spirituality for the Acadian people reinvented itself—metamorphosed into a place of healing and recreation.  My Acadian therapist is part of a new generation that has moved forward, competent, confident and generous. The cradle still rocks, although now to a different tempo.

The chapel. I came for a massage but the Memramcook Institute offers other places to feel healing.

Once a bustling point of departure, Cape Tormentine is now a quiet cottage and campground spot. Confederation Bridge made it redundant.

by ARCHIE NADON

Should the Canadian Government have replaced the Cape Tormentine ferry service with some other, viable business when it built Confederation Bridge? I think the bridge was a good idea, faster, cheaper, safer, more reliable than a ferry. It was good for Prince Edward Island and good for New Brunswick. My problem is what it did to Cape Tormentine.

I get anxious when communities get abandoned. It’s bad enough when the economy thumps an industry and mills go under, but when there is a conscious decision to eliminate a community’s sole support it seems there should be some compensation. The tourist stop at Cape Jourimain doesn’t qualify as adequate compensation because it can only support a few students and mainly in the summer.

So what can replace a money maker like the ferry? If government knew the answer to this no community would ever hit hard times. However, too many times artificially supported businesses collapses once the support is withdrawn. Industries, it seems, do best when they’re in a community for organic reasons, like where natural resources are abundant or it’s strategically placed, like Moncton is now. That was once the case with Cape Tormentine.

For a little over a century Cape Tormentine was ideally placed to connect PEI with the mainland. The cape stuck out far enough into the Northumberland Strait to make it a quick ferry ride over. Cape Tormentine thrived because those going over to the island had to stop and wait, sometimes for a couple of hours, depending on the season. With the bridge there is no wait, it’s just part of the highway, there is no need to stop and hang out for a couple of hours and spend money.

Things change, I guess. It seems a lame conclusion, but it’s all I’ve got. The new Trans-Canada did similar things to many communities in the province. Many communities that were in the center of things before are in the backwaters now. Motels closed, restaurants are boarded up. I love the new highway, but I always feel a little guilty using it. The next generation won’t feel that, but I always will. Still, I would like to see something new in Cape Tormentine.

More about Cape Tormentine and yet more…Terminal Tormentine

Acadians returning from the expusion that began in 1755 found their way back to the Memramcook River, 15 km inland, as the crow flies. Of course, they would not have been flying, they would have been following the winding course of this crooked, tidal river.

by ARCHIE NADON

“Why here? Of all the places returning Acadians could have chosen to begin again, why Memramcook?” Like most contemporary travelers, I stood in a historically significant spot and wondered why this community, built on either side of the Memramcook River, became significant. It certainly wasn’t obvious to someone driving in from Moncton on the new Trans-Canada Highway.

What I should have done, and who knows, maybe I’ll try it someday, was pack up my family —and Elaine’s—and make my way up the American Atlantic coast until I got near the original Acadie and head inland far enough not to be noticed and start looking for something familiar, like marshes, that could be turned into farms. Looked at from this perspective, Memramcook looks like an obvious choice to begin to recreate Acadie. In fact, it’s so obvious, one wonders how they got away with it and were not chased out by troops.

A quick look at the map reminds one of how close to the ocean Memramcook is, a mere 15 km, as the crow flies. But the returnees wouldn’t have been flying. They may have been sailing or rowing up or trudging alongside the Memramcook River, a meandering, tidal river that eventually empties into Chignecto Bay, the bay that borders the original Acadie.

This is the site of Village des LePlatte, the first Acadian village settled after the expulsion. The fact that it became a village in 1766, a mere 11 years after the expulsion began suggests the expulsion had already failed.

They did get away with it, though. The first post-deportation Acadian village, Village des LePlatte dates from 1766, 11 years after the deportation began. I say began, because it was a huge undertaking and took several years, some dating it from 1755-63. Given that the first new village dates from 1766, one can see that if the goal was to completely expel the Acadians, then it had failed before it was even over.

Of course, that’s my view, the view of someone sitting comfortably in a Canadian home in 2009 basking in the safety of a modern democracy where governments apologize for past wrongheadedness like the deportation. Still, it’s hard not to think that Acadie has succeeded after all.  The original Acadians were a people, not a country, distinct from their motherland and from the conquerors. They still are distinct. And they’re millions strong now.

Monument Lefebvre in Memramcook, NB, was part of the first Acadian university. My own Catholic education didn't get beyond elementary school. The Catholic high school was all boys, which wasn't for me.

by ARCHIE NADON

I didn’t go to the Catholic high school in our town, Scollard Hall, for two reasons: first, it cost money and we had none; and second, no girls. It was an all boys school and that was taking religion too far for me. Besides, a mile from my home and half the distance to Scollard Hall a brand new, ultra modern, mega school had just been built and we were to be the first full year class. There were 1,300 students which meant at least 650 girls which in turn meant my Catholic education came to an abrupt halt.

But that was in bustling, railroad center,  booming North Bay, ON, in a primarily anglophone community. That wasn’t in a fishing community like Cocagne or Escuminac, NB, where decent education wasn’t about choosing which of five high schools you wanted to attend, but about deciding to go to high school at all. And if you made the choice to be educated, you most certainly were going to be educated by priests or nuns within the Catholic religion.

What I’m getting at here is that as a teenager I had choices, lots of choices, as to how I wanted to be educated and in what language and I didn’t have to leave home to do it. The worst case scenario was a 20 minute bus ride uptown. However, if I had been born twenty years earlier and 1,500 km east, things might have been different. Anything like higher education—namely, high school—meant leaving home, leaving your family and friends, impoverishing your family twice, once by the tuition and board and once by your not being there to help fish or farm.

Lots has changed. Louis Robichaud, New Brunswick’s premier during the sixties, made basic education for Acadians a reality. It sounds third world, I know, but when Elaine and I chatted with a friend of hers, Jeannette Depres, who grew up near our cottage in Cocagne, she talked about the poverty of the Acadians in her time. When I asked what made the difference she blurted out, “Education.” I, with my five high schools to choose from, thought I was listening to a turn of the century story but that story would have been mine had I grown up in the Acadian peninsula.

Now, everywhere you drive in Acadie you find large, modern schools for k-12 and now there are remote campuses of the community colleges as well as the University of Moncton. I work with a young woman who learned 3D modeling  at the Campus de la Péninsule acadienne in Shippigan, traveling the 40 minutes from her home in Tracadie-Sheila every day. Incidentally, good roads was the second major factor Jeannette said improved the lives of Acadians in her time.

I wonder how many young Acadians understand how far their people have come in such a short time. When I hear Acadians of the generation before mine talk about what they had to do to get an education, I know I probably would have gone to work at the railroad, like my father did.

In Parisian French when it’s raining you say, il pleut, it’s raining. But il pleut can also mean he’s crying. In Acadie, when it rains you say, il viens mouille, it’s is becoming wet.

by ELAINE MANDRONA

I have been wanting to improve my French for a long time but have been stuck on a plateau. It’s hard to believe that I had two years of French in junior high, four years in high school and several university courses and still I cannot express myself in the language adequately. But they say that even some people who grew up speaking a language will lose it if they don’t use it enough.

Then there is the problem that I was taught Parisian French and the French in Acadie is different—an older, archaic form of the language, and some of the pronunciation is different, as well as some of the idioms—different enough to confuse me at times. In Parisian French when it’s raining you say, il pleut, it’s raining. But il pleut can also mean he’s crying. In Acadie, when it rains you say, il viens mouille, it’s is becoming wet.

What I need to work on most is grammar, verb tense and those pesky idioms. These are the areas where I fall back on my English-isms with some amusing and awkward results.

Most everyone has had the experience of hearing people who are learning English make cute mistakes—gramatically correct, maybe, but still wrong in terms of meaning. A new French friends from France emailed us and said, “I am impatient to meet you”; eager would have been better, of course. A Chinese co-worker said to my husband, “I was sick and was eating medicine all day.”

And one of my own, when I couldn’t think of the French word for toes I used les doits du pied—fingers of the feet. There were chuckles. I want to get beyond mistakes like that.

So how will I improve? I have no problem teaching myself things and I have planned a multi-pronged approach. I have a Learn French CD with an accompanying textbook, several books on Acadian history written in French, and an Acadian cookbook. I will try to use my French as much as possible in person-to-person, everyday conversation and rely on a few friends to correct my mistakes. This is my version of immersion.

I am reviewing the textbook this weekend to find the holes in my knowledge, things that I’m weak on or don’t know at all. For instance the negation of some. How I missed this in high school French I don’t know. It’s the rule that after all verbs in the negative form, the articles un, une, des, du, de la and d’l are all replaced by de or (d’ if followed by a word beginning with a vowel or silent h).

For instance : “Je bois du vin.” (positive)

“Je ne bois pas de vin.” (negative)

Then there are the object direct pronouns that answer the question of what or whom in a sentence. A direct object is not preceeded by a preposition such as to, for, at, or in. A direct object can be a thing, person, pronoun or even an entire phrase. The direct object pronoun is used as a shortcut to replace a person or thing that is a direct object.

“We brought our computers to the library”. Computers is the direct object.

“We brought them to the library.” Them is the direct object pronoun.

In French je, tu, il, elle, nous, vous, ils, elles are subjects.

Direct object pronouns are me, te, le, la, nous, vous, les, les.

“Regarde le petits chiens.” “See the little dogs.”

“Je les adore.” “I adore them.”

That’s how they’re used.

Now that I’ve written all of this it’s firmly in my mind. Plus from my Acadian cookbook I’ve learned poele for frying pan , fayots for dried beans, mijouter for simmer and lard for bacon .

J’ai ecrit surele sujet de la langue francais. Je la comprend un peu plus meilleur.

C’est correct? Dites moi.