When things take a left turn

When we first looked at this property three-and-a-half years ago, Steph, the former owner, the realtor and I found ourselves on the other side of the slate quarry. From that vantage point it was possible to look back and see the house. In the other direction the Grimm Meadow (the name for the marsh) spread out before us. It was a lot of land, certainly more than we’d ever owned. And we were embarking on a different lifestyle.

The realtor pulled me aside. “Charles,” she said. “Have you thought about what might happen if you get sick and you can’t look after all of this?” A fair question, but one that I easily dismissed. True, I didn’t run much those days, but I still ran, and could still easily do 10 km. I practiced some yoga, again not as much as I used to; the point is both of us were active and ate well. I couldn’t imagine not being able to care for the place. I loved splitting and stacking wood, helping in the garden, doing work on the road, and all the other physical requirements the property entailed. It was part and parcel of the whole thing.

For the first three years I split and stacked five and six cords of wood, a work out in and of itself. I took down deadwood around the property, hauled it back from the woods, split and stacked it. I filled buckets of gravel, took them out in the car, dumped them, filling potholes in the lane, and raked them out. I cut the paths out with the hedge trimmer. There was always something to do.

Well, three and a half years later here we are.

I never once anticipated becoming sick with cancer, nor what it would do to me. My red blood cell counts at points have plummeted leaving me gasping for breath when I do the most simple activities. Bringing wood into the house is a bit like labouring over the infamous Hilary Step on Mount Everest. Supplemental oxygen? Yes please!

Thanks to chemo I’ve had weight drops as much as 11 pounds in a week. Those same weeks I’ve pretty much done nothing but sleep all week as well. Comatose is how I’ve been described.

Obviously, this is a lot less than ideal. But what can I do but forge ahead? Carpe diem! Such as it is. I need to keep my sunny-side up. It helps that I have a strong partner, but it gives me pause to think what a spot we might find ourselves in if something else should happen. It helps that I have kind friends, but you can only ask so much of them.

Sell the place? Unimaginable!

We have become so used to the beauty and solitude of the place, the bird calls ringing out in the morning and at dusk. The coyote’s mournful howls, and the scornful chatter of the squirrels. The fog burning off in the morning.

I fight back. I have good doctors who help direct me to the best options available. I believe that I still have one year, two years, five, 10 left. When I begin to slide I hold that like a shiny promise in the front of my mind. I am not going anywhere. Trees rustle in the wind. The bird sings. The sun shines.

And the brook runs. And it runs. And runs.

Local love: What’s changing on the South Shore for food and drink

After trying out life as a pop-up restaurant in the old Moe’s Grill space in Western Shore, Bahama Mama Delicacies has reverted back to a food truck. The restaurant lasted about about six months.

That general area hasn’t been kind to retailers. Just down the road, it appears the Tipping Point Distilleries has pulled the plug. After a couple of years, the building now appears vacant.

In Lunenburg proper, Tin Roof Distillery moved further down along Lincoln Street and is, among other things, offering a flight of five spirits for $12.

Could this vehicle have something to do with the Reflux Capacitor to create the whiskey profiles?

Apparently, this tipple goes back to the future to arrive at its flavour profiles. “We use an accelerated aging process that utilizes ultrasonic vibrations generated by our custom Reflux Capacitor to create whiskeys with flavour profiles that rival those aged in oak.”

The retired couple who owns Tin Roof have a summer cottage on Heckmans Island, but hail from Dartmouth.

What I’m reading

Taking a chance: The first 25 years of Fishers’ Loft Inn

By John & Peggy Fisher and Roger Pickavance

Port Rexton Publishing Company; 260 pages; $59.95

The New York Times recently had a feature about a tiny hotel in County Donegal, Ireland that it warned sounded like a “cautionary tale.” The Times recounted how two “city-slickers, accountants from Dublin…decide to open a custom-built, designer property on a remote windswept peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean.” But, the Times writes, they made a success of the place by “staying resolutely Donegal…selecting materials, products, craftspeople and foodstuffs” from Donegal, and working with local chefs, chandlers, farmers, designers, weavers, potters and soapmakers.”

If it sounds remarkable, consider it’s already been done, 25 years earlier in rural Newfoundland, if under slightly different circumstances. John and Peggy Fisher and Roger Pickavance are celebrating their success in a sumptuous new volume aptly titled Taking A Chance: The First 25 years of Fishers’ Loft Inn. The book is deserving enough of a second subtitle: An urban to rural journey + 80 inn recipes (Port Rexton Publishing Company) .

Recollects John Fisher in the introduction to the book, he and Peggy bought a house overlooking the ocean in the Newfoundland outport of Port Rexton, Trinity Bay in 1989, moving from Ontario. It wasn’t like today where come-from-aways in recent times have snapped up Newfoundland properties, including around Bonavista. Theirs was one of the first Port Rexton homes to sell to an outsider.

Fisher owned a consulting company and while travelling the country as a consultant he encountered the house for sale in Port Rexton and, falling in love with Newfoundland, bought it initially as a summer house. As it turned out, Newfoundland called to them, and they decided to move to the home. But work was in short supply until the owner of a nearby bed and breakfast asked if they could accommodate extra guests. To do so, and maintain their privacy they decided to convert their two bedroom home into four. “Years later, the lawyer who’d worked on our loan agreement for the bank revealed he’d reckoned we’d be insolvent within two years.” Instead, that was far from the case.

By their second year they were unable to accommodate the 300 requests for rooms, so they would either have to quit or scale up. They chose the latter. At that point they began building the inn proper. Local craftspeople began introducing themselves and the Fishers found an incredible amount of talent on their doorstep (although it is true many came from elsewhere first). Frank Lapointe was born in the house, graduated with honours from the Ontario College of Art, and returned to Newfoundland where he became curator of what is now the Rooms Provincial Art Gallery. He also designed houses.

As the inn grew, it employed more and more people, and began to branch off into intriguing art, design and cultural projects. Early on, the Fishers decided they would serve from garden and sea to plate, following a locavore road map for dining. Roger Pickavance, whom they describe as a polymath biologist, professor, cook, and food writer tested and created the recipes for the kitchen.

Nearby, on the Bonavista Peninsula is a UNESCO Global Geo Park, as is Rising Tide Theatre. Artist Barbara Houston occupied the Inn’s conference space and art gallery in 2021 for an exhibition of her works. Two Whales Coffee Shop opened in Rexton as did the Port Rexton Brewing Company. The latter first scouted a location in Nova Scotia, but found that the craft brewery scene there was already saturated.

In the foreword to the book, Dame Judi Dench writes of the Fishers and their inn, that when they built, “They adopted a singular approach to inn keeping - one that values place and people.” To be sure, The inn has always kept a commitment not only to craftspeople, but to the arts, exhibiting artworks and photos, and launching a literary magazine title Riddle Fence that has published Yann Martel and Michael Crummey, among others.

Newfoundland filmmaker Barbara Doran was attracted to the Bonavista area, where she convinced the CBC to commit $14 million to produce and broadcast Bernice Morgan’s book, Random Passage. A year later the Shipping News followed. “The filming of the Random Passage was pivotal in bringing The Shipping News to the area. Barbara had demonstrated that movies could be filmed in rural Newfoundland. She and others followed with production budgets totalling more than $60 million, providing work for local residents hard hit by the cod moratorium.”

At the book’s end, the Fishers ask, was it timing or was it luck? In either end, does it matter? They pulled it off and in doing so lay out a road map for others to follow: value place and people and surely you will succeed. You won’t be so much as taking a chance as going for a sure thing.