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John Winslow was huffing and puffing as he made his way through the narrow streets and up the hill and then up the steep circular staircase past the floor of traders in the Province House in Boston. After almost two years back in civilization he was anxious to again get away from his plump but shrewish wife and leave it all behind.

He had managed to avoid the exotic diseases of the Caribbean when he had been there and had ignored the savage women in Nova Scotia when he had been posted in that primitive place. But the risks he had faced in Annapolis Royal were much less frightening and more pleasant than being again stuck here in the Colony. Between the boredom of trying to achieve legislative victories and finding ways of hiding from the eternal demands of his wife it was unbearable.

He shuddered.

Even his time in the northern part of the province, near the border of the wild country where the Mass Colony met Nova Scotia, even all the clouds of mosquitoes and teeming black flies, were preferred to being here among the slovenly whores, the bickering burghers and beggars of Boston.

He finally made it to the Governor’s floor, totally out of breath, and took a moment to compose himself. Governor Shirley’s attaché, seated at a desk and sorting papers, nodded to Winslow and toward a richly brocaded settee. Winslow nodded back and took advantage of the invitation for a respite. The aide brought over a pitcher of water and a glass on a tray and placed it on the side table.

Winslow took a healthy draught and was pleasantly surprised that it was well flavoured of gin.

“Welcome back, Major General, I hope the your trek up our mountain has not depleted you totally of energy.”

“No, thank you,” he raised his glass in salute, “this has made up for my travails, Ensign. Will the Governor be soon available?”

“Very shortly, Sir. Finish your glass of water. Have another if you wish. His agenda is reserved for you.”

“You are very kind, Ensign.”

Winslow finished his glass, set it on the tray and stood.

“I’ll arouse the Governor, one moment, Major General.” The aide opened the door, entered and closed it behind him.

Winslow straightened out his clothes and brushed back his hair and waited for only a moment before the ensign returned. “Major General, the Governor is ready to see you.”

Governor Shirley was standing and came forward when Winslow entered his private office.

“John, tired of all the peace are ye? Come in, come in.”

“Please, have a seat.”

“Will you have a cognac?”

“Of course, William. I looked over the bay before I came inside and the sun is over the yardarm, I noticed.”

The Governor poured a healthy portion and refilled his own crystal snifter and passed one to Winslow. He sat in a chair adjoining Winslow’s indicating the expected informality of their meeting.

“How can I serve you today, John.”

Winslow sipped. “Well, William, your know Mary is getting less comely as she ages and the boys are requesting less of my time as they conduct their schooling. And, Governor, I’m bored.”

“Ready to get back into the fray, are ye, John?”

“I wish to get out of this fray, William.”

“Consider it done. What do you have in mind.”

“Where the action is expected to be the most interesting, I expect.”

“Well we have something. Back in your old haunts.”

“Cuba?”

“No. Nova Scotia!”

“Of course.”

“I needn’t tell you why, but we’ve decided to clear the place of the French. Not only have they established themselves, in a manner, in the northerly part of our northern colony, but they seem to be spreading out. Led, of course, by their bastard of a priest. They’re close to finishing construction of one of their cathedrals, and are breeding like mice in a barn. We wish to end their encroachment and we need a good man to do it. Interested?”

 “I’d swear off gin to do it, William.”

“Well, we won’t ask you to do that. Put together a plan and bring it to me and I’ll see that it’s done.” The Governor offered a toast and they clinked glasses and finished their brandies.

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I was asked in I was a writer a week or two ago, and I responded, "I don't know if I'm a writer, but I have written."
It is easy to call oneself anything, to live inside one's ego and self define.
But it is hard to actuate.
It's bloody hard to write 100,000 words on one topic, especially when you're writing on historical events, because for every word written you have to read five.
Especially when you have other things to do, many of which are exhausting.
I mainly make my living writing: reports, analysis, speeches, briefings, articles, etc.
And I'm pretty bloody good at it, because people pay me.
But one only has so many words; eventually everyone (except James Patterson who hires people to write for him) runs out of words.
Heck Salllenger wrote what, two novels.
So my energies for the last couple of months have been writing a patent application, a feasibility study for a resort, a few economic impact analyses, and my fiction has suffered.
But I have to get back to it...
I'm at a stage in the Tintamarre which is called an "interbellum" - it's a period in history where my characters are living in relative peace. And to this point, I have just had to wrap my characters around what really happened. 
So, I've decided to put them in a time capsule, skip the two years of plain living, to the next crisis. And those events are even more dramatic and terrifying than what they had survived before.
The war and the expulsion.

Received this comment today:


The Mount Allison University Library would like to order a copy of this book for our collection.
Our Address is:
Acquisitions Department
Mount Allison University Library

Wow - I better get to work and finish it...

This from my niece Pamela (in a much warmer place):
(Pamela thank you for allowing me to share this)

"It is interesting to me, how the Arcadian heritage winds its way down the years, despite distance and discard. 
At my brother Tod's wedding, he asked me if I knew the words to "Ave Marie Stella" and would I sing it at the ceremony. I did of course.
Folks were surprised that I knew a song like that and wondered what it meant and where it had came from, for his wedding was not in a Catholic church and it was far away from Canada (in Tod's backyard of his home in Crestview, FL).
Tod himself was touched, as it brought his Mom, who had long since passed away, to the wedding ceremony, in a way...he said to me, "You sang it just like she always used to.""

--- It goes back to M. Burke's emotions that I wrote about on page one. Hundreds of years after one's ancestors leave a place, they still suffer from the loss.
Acadians left their homeland not willingly, but at the point of a musket (or many muskets).
They live for all time with a sense of lost connection and a yearning.
That's one reason I am writing Tintamarre, to allow people from now to understand or perhaps learn a little, about the people before them

Jean Louis Le Loutre, the Abbe of Acadia, needed a place to get holy water for his services at the church he built at Beausejour.
So they dug a well.
My Mom and Dad and sisters in the late forties / early fifties lived on the ridge very near Fort Beausejour.
I asked my Mom, before she passed away, if she remembered a well. Turns out, my sisters used to play around it and Mom, when she had a few too many kittens used to...
use the well.
Some kittens probably have a better afterlife than others, I think. 

About 2 miles from Fort Beausejour, the Missaguash (then the Mesagoueche) River narrows enough to allow crossing. It's a tidal river which means half the day it's kind of empty and half it's full to the brim.
The current path, however, is not the same as the path that the Acadians had to cross; some time since the river's route was changed.
But back then, where it narrowed, there was a little bridge across it built by a guy named Roger Buot. It became the only way to take the land route from Shebuktou (now Halifax) to Quebec. So it offered a terrific opportunity for an Irish guy named Joseph Casey to open a tavern.
Now his wife, Marie, went to a fortune teller who told her that her husband (who had become known as Joseph Caisse) would fool around on her. So he did.
Anyway, I digress.
The tavern lasted for decades under various proprietors, until the time when the English were on one side of the river and the French on the other. Both had garrisons of young thirsty men, and (the best I can figure) the owner at the time a Monsieur Cyr had two daughters.
So, it was a popular maybe even roaring hot spot.
There came a period, about 1952 to 1954 or so, when there wasn't a lot of military action. France and England weren't at war. In the summer, it was likely a great place to spend one's meagre earnings.
So, legend has it, the French and English soldiers would commonly convene there; tell stories as young men do.
Eventually the French built a little fort on their side.
I've walked around there, and chatted with Don Colpitts, Ron Trueman and Colin Mackinnon who have dug around and found bits and pieces of live from the time; pipe stems, buttons, musket balls, etc. 
Fascinating...

I traveled to Tintamarre three times in seven months in the past year. My mother's birthday just before Christmas, Mother's Day in May and, sadly, her funeral in July. No sadness, she lived for 98 years and for all but the last she was healthy, happy and smart as a whip.

An interesting fact on the area of old Acadia. Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island - areas populated widely by original Acadians - have more nongenarians (90+) per capita than any place in the world. Researchers have suggested that this is from a single Acadian common gene from hundreds of years ago. 

I think it's because they grew up with very little, had to work hard every day, lived through two wars and a depression and had to find joy whenever and wherever they could. But I digress. 

This post is about my discovery.

When I started writing Tintamarre I started digging around the area: Beaubassin (the old settlement), Fort Beausejour and Fort Lawrence. While I played in the fort when I was a child, it wasn't to search the history.

I wanted to feel the damp wind on my face the way the people of the time did. To walk across the fields in places they did (but in rubber boots not wooden shoes). Geoff Harding of Ducks Unlimited allowed me to wander around the old Villiers Island site and directed me to the old dykes.

The dykes blocking the bay from the marshes was built more than 350 years ago and they still hold the muddy water back. Pretty good engineers those Acadians. They developed a means of having tide water go out but not come back in.

The dykes are not within the boundary of the National Park.

I walked out to the very edge and felt the place. I wandered around a little, went out on a little promontory and noticed something stuck in the soil. I kneeled and picked around the items. They were reddish brown and smooth and I picked them out of the soil. 

They were shards of pottery.

Some 350 years ago an Acadian man had eaten his dejeuner on this barren wind blown spot and perhaps dropped his eating dish and it had broken. Looking closer I could see the smooth marks from being crafted on a potter's wheel and a light blue stripe around the rim.

My comment? Hmmm!

I put it in my pocket and left. Half of it is on my fireplace mantle, the other half I gave to Ronnie-Gilles Leblanc, the Acadian historian who was so incredibly helpful in researching Tintamarre. 

I had stood where they had stood and touched something that one of them had used to eat.

I had a connection.





 

More to come