The Blomidon Logs

by Dwyer, Deirdre

• ISBN13: 9781770413450
• ISBN10: 1770413456
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2016-10-11
• Publisher: ECW Press

Summary

Set in the small farming community of Blomidon on Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy, The Blomidon Logs starts with the stories of Glooscap and a leaky old cabin. Complete with the wild imagination of youth and rumours of a drowned artist, the book moves up the road to a new A-frame cottage and back in time to the generations who preceded the author at Blomidon, providing a rich heritage of farmland, beach, and stories. Taking its title from the logbooks kept by Dwyer’s parents, the collection is about childhood, family, and a time when summer meant freedom and outdoor play. The poems refer to the legends of First Nations chief/god who once made his home at Blomidon and celebrate the work of farmers, loggers, and their families and predecessors, who have made, and somehow still make, a living from the land.

Author Biography

Deirdre Dwyer is the author of two collections, The Breath that Lightens the Body and Going to the Eyestone. She has worked as an ESL instructor in Japan; travelled in Asia, Europe, and in an old Volkswagen van across Canada and the U.S.; taught at universities in Halifax; and helped found a farmers’ market in her hometown. She lives in Musquodoboit Harbour, on Nova Scotia’s eastern shore with her golden retriever Molly.

Table of Contents

vii/dramatis personae
the old cabin
3/Glooscap and His Magic
5/The First Logbook
6/Requested
8/The Other Child,
Going There
9/Another Landmark
on the Way
11/Century Farm
13/Invitation
15/Old Cabin Rain
17/Characters
19/Party Line
20/Saturday Nights
22/The House, so They Say
23/Summer’s Gone South
25/The Boy Who Fought Winter
27/Pink Snow
28/Winter Reading
30/Blomidon Rose
32/“She Slept Out”
33/The Bigelows’ Dog
34/The Summer of Pierre
36/The Long Flow
of the Morning
37/Picking Strawberries
39/First Entry
42/Community Picnic,
at the Lookoff
44/Games
46/Pageantry: The Red Barn
48/Three Queens, Five Jokers
50/Nancy’s Watermelon
51/Beach Notes
54/Indian Paintbrush
55/The Tight Weave
57/Desserts
58/By the Bigelows’ Barn
59/Awakening, Camping Trip
61/Mountain Walk
62/Halloween on the Cape
64/Don Forsythe’s Store
the new cottage
69/Moving Day
70/Glooscap’s Lodge
72/Loft
74/Heirlooms
76/Cottage Owls
78/After the Chores
80/Milk Agate
82/Translations from the Log
84/Not Mother, May I
86/Card Party, White Water’s Hall
88/The Story
90/Blomidon Dogs
91/Clothes for Blomidon
92/New Cabin Visitors
93/The Visiting Dog
95/A-frame Christmas
96/Stranded
98/From Log Entries, June ’86
99/The Last Entry
101/Blomidon Nights
102/The Core to Keep
104/A Gift of Cherries
106/North Mountain Fix
108/Every Elm and Story
110/Glooscap’s Fire
archives
113/Photograph with
Dutch Door Open
115/Great-Grandparents Saunders
116/Wharf
117/Think Evening
118/The Years Mapped Out
120/Haying, 1941
122/At Jordan River, 1950
124/Halo
126/Aunt Di Before Her Vows
127/To Name a Brook
129/Bride
130/His Words about the Brook
131/Bedtime Stories
133/The Soul of this Place
135/Rescue Before
the Cabin’s Torched
136/Before the Cabin’s Torched
137/The Verandah Steps
138/Hand-Drawn Maps
140/History in those Fields
142/In the Turning
143/She Speaks to
Her Drowned Mother
145/A Sacred Place
147/Blomidon Beach
148/Deliberations,
at a Craft Market
151/acknowledgements