IT WAS BEFORE NOON when I entered Cape Breton Highlands National Park. For the next sixty miles the road would wind its way through the edge of the park as it circled the coast. Mary had suggested a short hike I might take at this end of the park. I was looking forward to getting out of the car, stretching my legs and eating my lunch.
I followed the signs for Le Chemin du Buttereau and eventually pulled into a small gravel parking lot. The sign at the foot of the trail said that the walk would take about ninety minutes. I looked around. It was a warm spring day, the sun high in an almost cloudless sky, but the parking lot was empty and there were no signs of anyone else about. Mary had warned me to be careful of coyotes. They usually didn’t come near people, but there had been a recent attack on a hiker. I decided that I would eat my lunch in the car after my hike. Mary had given me a heavy walking stick, just to be on the safe side. I brought only it and the water bottle with me.
The dirt path was narrow and twisted, and it started to climb almost immediately. At some points, as I stepped up to the next tree root or boulder, I felt like I was mounting shallow stairs. The pine trees on either side of me were dense and left the spicy scent of sap lingering in the damp air. Birds called all around me, but other than that, the woods were silent.
Mary had told me that I would climb about two hundred feet over the course of a mile and a quarter before hitting a loop that ran around the top of the hill. “The view is spectacular from there,” she said.
What she didn’t tell me was that I would come across history as well. About twenty minutes into my climb, a sign appeared at the side of the trail. It announced that on my left I would see the remains of one of the last five homes of Le Buttereau—a French-Canadian farming settlement. I peered down the side of the hill, and sure enough, there among the trees and thick vegetation was a rough stone square—the foundations of a tiny house.
I knew I was in French-Canadian territory—Mary had also suggested I stop in the small Acadian fishing village of Chéticamp before I entered the park to see it firsthand.
So an hour before I started this hike, I had pulled off the highway and parked my car next to a restaurant on the water side of the road. A few shops and other buildings were wedged within the narrow strip of land between the road and Chéticamp Bay. Mary thought I might want to check out the hooked rugs, which were an area specialty, or to sample some tchaude, the local fish stew, but I didn’t feel like being indoors. And I wasn’t hungry enough to want to stop for a meal. Instead, I walked down the wooden stairs that ran between the shops and followed a boardwalk to a series of small docks. Modest commercial fishing boats, not unlike the one that Ahmet owned, lined the jetty. One dock had a large sign announcing whale-watching cruises. Another small fishing vessel was secured below the sign, near a Zodiac boat. Mary had suggested I might take a whale-watching tour in one of the old boats—the Zodiacs made noise and vibrations that disturbed the marine life. But I had decided that I would spend my time later on a hike instead.
Before I returned to my car, I walked back along the highway, until the restaurants and stores gave way to a line of modest wood-frame houses. A small stretch of sidewalk ran in front of them as the highway traffic sped by on the other side—almost on their doorsteps. Behind them I could see a narrow ribbon of green grass and then the water of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
The Cabot Trail had once been a dirt road. It would have been a good deal narrower than it now was, and these homes would have perched precariously at its edge, the icy salt water lapping at their back doors. Mary had said that Chéticamp and the surrounding area was still French-speaking. The people were descendants of the Acadians who, in the mid-1700s, had been expelled by the British from the Annapolis Valley of mainland Nova Scotia. After the British seized the French settlement of Acadia in 1710, they demanded that the Acadians swear an oath of allegiance to Britain. Most of the Acadians, who had a thriving farming settlement, were not political—more than anything, they wanted to stay apart from the struggles between the French and British empires in North America. A few, however, helped supply the French military fortresses in present-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. So, although the vast majority of Acadians had lived peacefully under English rule for decades, the British decided that their presence posed a serious threat and began deporting the Acadians to Europe and to other British colonies. Many of the Acadians who were sent back to France later immigrated to French colonies in North America. The most sizable portion went to Louisiana, their descendants becoming known as Cajuns. I knew that, but Mary also told me that a small number made their way to Cape Breton Island and settled along its northwestern shore. Walking along in front of these small houses, I was struck by how isolated the Acadian settlers of Chéticamp must have been—probably just a few hundred souls clinging to the sea and the rocky expanses of this mountainous island. What would that have been like? Coming from a rural community of thousands, this handful of families would have depended on each other for everything. But if Chéticamp was isolated, what would Le Buttereau have been like?
AS I WALKED around the foundations of Le Buttereau, so crumbled and deteriorated that they looked like stone outcroppings, I tried to picture how the large families survived in such tiny structures. Below the houses were open areas—the remains of farm fields—that stretched down toward the Chéticamp River. It was hard to imagine farming in such a rugged terrain, spending days on the water in flimsy fishing boats, the way the men of these families did. The signs along the path told me that when the waters were open, the men spent Sunday at home in Le Buttereau but returned to fishing shacks in Chéticamp or La Bloque during the week. In winter, the families might cross the frozen river to reach the town in order to buy supplies or, in later years, to go to school. In the warmer months, they would follow a cart path, the remains of which I had been walking, to get to town.
There could never have been many families on this tip of land. In 1936, there were two families named LeBlanc, along with the Chiassons, the LeBruns and the Deveaus. Each had between nine and eleven children. Fifty people then.
How different my world was. Hundreds of coworkers, hundreds of friends, a neighborhood that stretched unbroken for miles and miles. There were eighty first-grade students at Adam’s school. So many people. I thought of Julian’s note: Choose the people in your life well. I could choose. So many people in the past wouldn’t have had that luxury. No real choice, yet so much would have depended on that handful of people they lived among.
The view from the top of Le Chemin du Buttereau was indeed beautiful—the beach and shores curving down below, the blue waters stretching into the distance. But the stunning scenery was only beginning.
An hour later, as I climbed into the highlands in my rental car, the hairpin turns, the plummeting descents and the harrowing rises made me wonder how anyone without a modern six-cylinder vehicle could have made their way around this terrain. It was clear why this part of the world had stayed so sparsely populated. I stopped at numerous lookouts, gazing out across the ocean or looking back at the deep green mountains. I passed the whale museum in Pleasant Bay, making a mental note that I should come back to this place with Adam. I stopped to take a look at Alexander Graham Bell’s summer house near Ingonish Centre. I sat for a long time on the beach at Wreck Cove, watching the waves crash against the pebbly shore. It was late afternoon by the time I pulled into Mary and Angus’s driveway.
MARY’S DINNER PARTY PROVED TO BE an extraordinary evening. There were mountains of fresh lobster, and after the table had been cleared, the air filled with the sounds of fiddles and harmonicas. Mary and Angus’s friends were energetic, engaged, funny, passionate. They talked about everything from politics to art, from world affairs to music. But perhaps my favorite conversation was a quiet one I had with Angus’s father before all the guests arrived.
I had offered to help Mary and Angus in the kitchen, but Mary shuffled me out into the living room. “Have a beer with Don,” she said. “Angus and I
work faster if it’s just the two of us.”
Don was not a tall man, but he had the solid burliness of someone who spent his life doing physical labor. His hands were veined and calloused, his shoulders slightly stooped, but there was still a sparkle in his green eyes.
I got us each a bottle of beer from the kitchen. (Don’s only word was “tch” when I asked him if he wanted a glass.) Then we both retired to the deep living-room chairs and gazed out at the trees before us. Angus had already told me that his father had been a miner, but I was curious to know what that life had been like.
Don seemed delighted to provide the details.
He had gone down into the mines at thirteen.
“My dad, my uncles, those fellas went down when they was ten. By the time I come along they’d raised the age to fourteen. But we needed the money, eh? I wasn’t after waiting. I lied about my age, and my dad and his buddies backed me up.”
The boys weren’t allowed to dig coal. Instead, young Don sat for twelve hours a day, in the pitch black, waiting for a knock on the huge wooden doors that separated the digging areas from the shafts. “I let the miners in. Let them back out with their full carts.”
Don said that once you were old enough to dig and haul coal, the days weren’t so lonely. Together the men found ways to make the time pass more quickly. They told jokes and stories. They sang together, folk songs and ballads. But the days were still long. In the winter, the miners went down in the dark and came up in the dark.
“Saw the sun only on Sundays, for months and months,” Don said with a laugh.
And then there were the “bumps.”
“I came through sixteen of them,” said Don, running his hand across his forehead. The explosions of coal dust and gases trapped in the mines had taken the lives of many, many of his friends and relatives.
“How did you do it?” I was shaking my head, baffled by the horror of working in the mines.
“Don’t get me wrong, b’ye,” said Don. Traces of his Gaelic heritage textured his voice. “It was hard work. But it was a good life.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “How can you say that?”
Don was silent for a few seconds. Then he tapped his other hand on the arm of the chair and said, “I don’t know that you’d be able to understand it. There’s just something about working with a group of fellas, fellas who hold your life in their hands every day. You come through that first explosion, you bring your buddies to the top, you bury others. Someone digs through the coal to find you, to pull you out. Or you sit trapped down there for hours. Maybe ten of you huddled together. When you go back down after the bump, you never look at these guys the same again. You know you have a bond that will never break. You feel lucky. Blessed.”
“Wow,” I said, still in disbelief. “Even so, I think I’d rather have been a fisherman.”
“Blessed Mary and Joseph!” Don burst out. “You wouldn’t get me on one of those boats for love or money. You wanna talk about dangerous work. You talk to Joe, Mary’s dad.”
Don was shaking his head. “Now that’s a brave bunch of fellas, I’ll tell you that.”
ALL DAY I HAD DRIVEN through tiny fishing villages. Mining and fishing—those were essentially the only career choices for generations of men in this corner of the world. And they were communal activities, risky work undertaken by small clusters of souls. In Japan, on one of the most crowded islands in the world, I had been reminded about the importance of treating others well. Here I could see the preciousness of human relationships. Here the people you lived and worked with mattered. Here it could mean life and death.
At first blush, this seemed very different from my life. Other than Adam, who depended on me the way Don had depended on the men in the mines? But then I thought of Juan. Maybe my world wasn’t so different after all. There was a moment, maybe more than one, when I had held Juan’s life in my hands. And I had not brought him up to the surface.
CHAPTER NINE
AFTER MY TIME with Mary and Angus, I flew from Sydney to Halifax, where I spent the night in a hotel. I needed to be at the airport early in the morning for the flight to my next destination—Shanghai. It looked, from the note that Julian had sent, like I would have less than a full day there. My pre-trip self would have thought it an extravagant waste of airfare—flying halfway around the world only to turn around and come back—but I was becoming positively nonchalant about this business of international travel. From my connection in Newark to Shanghai I was able to sleep for a while. I arrived in Shanghai at two in the afternoon (three in the morning Halifax time) and was met by Yu Feng, an earnest young man who announced that he would be my interpreter and guide. He took my bags and hustled me outside the terminal, where a shiny black Bentley was waiting for us. After stowing my luggage, Yu Feng got in the backseat with me.
“Mr. Gao sends his sincerest apologies, but he is in a meeting he could not reschedule. He is hoping that you will meet him at his office at six p.m. He will then take you to his home for dinner. In the meantime, I can show you whatever you would like to see of Shanghai.”
I looked at my watch. It had taken me a while to get my luggage and work my way through customs and immigration. I had a few hours I could use to see the city, but the thought of a hot shower and short nap was the most appealing thing I could think of. I thanked Yu Feng for his offer and asked if I could just check into my hotel.
Yu Feng exchanged a few words with our driver, and before I knew it we were speeding into the dense urban landscape of Shanghai.
“Would you care for drink?” Yu Feng asked, pulling on a small door at the back of the seat in front of him. It swung out to reveal a compartment kitted out with a small bar. He then pulled down a tiny table from the leather seat between us.
“Just water,” I said. “Thanks.” It seemed a pity not to take advantage of this luxury, but I wasn’t in the mood for a mixed drink.
We climbed a bridge that stretched across an expanse of dark water. “Huangpu River,” said Yu Feng. Then he said, “Mr. Gao’s office is downtown, but we have booked you a hotel just a few blocks from the Bund.”
I looked at Yu Feng blankly.
Yu Feng explained that the Bund was a broad avenue that ran along the western bank of the Huangpu River. It was an area where European ex-pats had built many grand buildings during the twenties and thirties.
“Very popular with American and European tourists. Very beautiful at night also,” Mr. Yu concluded.
I nodded but didn’t say anything. I was thinking about that cascade of hot water and sudsy shampoo.
WHEN I WALKED THROUGH the door of my room, I stopped short and wondered if there had been some sort of mistake. As soon as we had pulled up at the hotel, I knew this would be the most splendid of my accommodations. The lobby, its roof three or four stories high, had black marble floors that gleamed like glass, elegant furnishings and towering palm trees. But hotel lobbies can be a bit deceptive. I’ve been to places where the lobby looks like a five-star resort, while the rooms remind me of those roadside motels my parents used to pull into on family car trips. So I was expecting a nice room but really wasn’t sure.
But this! This was so far beyond “nice” that it left me gasping. I turned to look at Yu Feng, who had insisted on escorting me up. He was frowning and speaking in rapid and angry Mandarin to the bellhop.
“Please accept my humblest apologies,” he said to me after he had finished with the unfortunate fellow. “I was just letting him know that there was supposed to be fruit, champagne, a small buffet set out for you in the room. He promises it will all be sent up immediately.”
I stood in the foyer of my room, gazing at a space that was substantially bigger than my apartment. I was faced with floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the length of the room. As I moved in, I could see that I not only had a spacious living room, but also a formal dining room. I wandered down the hall to a bedroom that was as big as any hotel room I had ever stayed in. It had its own seating area as well a
s a study alcove with a desk. The bathroom was a bright, marble-clad wonderland. I walked back into the living room in a daze. Feng looked at me curiously.
“You want to rest. I will leave you now,” he said with a little bow of his head. “I shall return at five-thirty to take you to Mr. Gao.”
AFTER YU FENG LEFT, I began to explore the suite a little more. In the bathroom, I found a cabinet directly across from the tub. I slid the mahogany door to the side, revealing an enormous television screen. I immediately moved to the bath, turned on the taps and then retreated to the dining room, which had now been set up with the buffet. There I filled a plate with Venezuelan chocolate, Brie cheese, crackers and grapes. Then I uncorked a small bottle of cabernet sauvignon and poured myself a glass. I brought everything into the bathroom on a tray and set the whole business down on the marble ledge that surrounded the huge tub. I located the remote in a small drawer beneath the TV cabinet. I flipped through the movie selections and found one of my favorite action thrillers.
With the Jacuzzi jets pulsing against my body, fine wine and good food filling me with warmth, I soon lost interest in the movie. I used the remote to turn off the television and turn on the sound system. An hour later, I emerged from the tub relaxed, refreshed and marveling at my good fortune. I slipped into a plush cotton robe. As music drifted through the suite, I retrieved my journal and headed into the living room. I stretched out on the deep, soft sectional sofa and opened the journal to a fresh page. What a great way to live, I wrote. I could get used to this! Then I snapped the book shut.