For those of you who are regulars, you will know
I am now in Nova Scotia, spraining my ankles on shoreline rocks,
slipping on the seaweed,
walking the beaches, disappearing in the fog,
dodging lobsters (I’m allergic), promising my daughter I’ll get
that volleyball net up (like every year), and
generally hiding from the world as best I can.
I’ve been doing this off and on all my life.
 |
| name="valign" top > MICHAEL ATKINS |
Although I can’t entirely ditch the national
newspapers, I just skim them to see what I’m missing, rather than
searching for something to read. It is more brutish out there than
usual, and I am ignoring the world with more determination than
usual.
A strange thing happened en route the other day a
few miles south of Edmonston, N.B. I felt this irresistible urge to
stop in Fredericton. I never used to bypass Fredericton. In fact I
was an investor in a company there for many years and enjoyed my
business visits there immensely, including the opportunity to write
off the expense of getting there, which was close to
you-know-where.
No more. Of late, the new highway around
Fredericton has allowed me to shave hours off the trip to Nova
Scotia and the business was sold years ago.
The Saint John River Valley is a wonderful place
to think on the road to redemption. It is the first introduction to
the Maritimes. The radio is bad, the vistas are wonderful, you’ve
been through your music at least twice since Cornwall, you and the
wife are talked out, the volume on the GameBoy in
the back seat is off, the pets are asleep or
dead, and at last you know a bagpipe is within sight.
It’s the bagpipe thing and the salt air that get
me.
When I hear a bagpipe, or think “bagpipe,” I want
to immediately do something courageous and honourable, or lament
something or someone.
Historically, of course, this generally involves
war and death and, if examined too carefully, isn’t very honourable
at all, particularly these days when war is getting a very bad name
indeed.
I should say at this point that my wife does not
buy into “bagpipe” mythology. She is generally anti-bagpipe on the
grounds of the noise they make,
which is certainly a legitimate position to take
if you don’t want to go to war or lament anything. It takes a
particularly tortured soul to be seduced by the siren song of the
bagpipe. In any event, as I was thinking “bagpipe” I realized I was
thinking about Dalton Camp.
If you don’t know of Dalton, I can’t help you. It
takes a book and it has been written by Geoffrey Stevens, entitled
The Player. Dalton died in 2002. He was one of those disappearing
breeds of larger-than-life Canadian men (like, say, Pierre Berton
and Peter Gzowski) who helped shape this country.
Dalton was well-loved and well-hated in his
time.
Down at P. J. Purdy’s bar at the Delta
Fredericton Inn, there is a small plaque on the wall and an empty
chair, commemorating the spot where Dalton held court for years,
regaling young writers and political operatives about his time
electing Conservative governments across the country and, of
course, his role in bringing down John Diefenbaker, the former
prime minister.
Dalton wrote a column for The Toronto Star until
the week he died and he did most of it from Jemseg, a speck on the
map a few miles south of Fredericton.
And so with bagpipes in my head, I took my
daughter Jackie (she’s seven) to Purdy’s and read her the following
poem, which is posted in what is called Camp’s Corner.
Welcome friend, this the place that Dalton Camp
once used to grace
With cheerful greeting, twinkling eye, a man both
eloquent and wise
He told of struggles fought and won, always with
a sense of fun
And loved to listen when among acquaintances both
old and young
He helped students on their way, encouraged them
to have their say
Advice and wisdom freely shared he was a man who
clearly cared
Upon our lives he left his stamp, we sorely miss
you Dalton Camp.
My lament, I realized as we returned to the
highway, was not so much for Dalton whom I had met no more than
half a dozen times and who lived his life with considerable gusto.
It was for a country that is not producing these men anymore and is
much the poorer for it.
Michael Atkins is the president of Laurentian
Publishing. He can be reached at[email protected]
.
