Everything you ever wanted to know about Pomquet!

Everything you ever wanted to know about Pomquet!

We sat down with Colette Rennie and Charlie MacDonald to talk about Pomquet's past, present, and the salmon-supper-fille future! This episode marks something of a first: Justin and Anuj pack up the recording equipment and head out of town — fifteen minutes down the road, as it turns out — to chat with Colette and Charlie inside the Pomquet Community Centre. It’s a fitting location. The centre itself is part of the story they’ve come to tell. First, Some History Pomquet is a small, predominantly Acadian community of roughly a thousand people, nestled around two harbours — Monks Head Harbour and Pomquet Harbour — and St. George’s Bay. It was settled in 1774 by five founding Acadian families, though the Mi’kmaq were living there long before any of that. The name “Pomquet” is of Mi’kmaw origin and translates ‘hitting bumps in the water’, referring to the beginning of the formation of the dunes that form Pomquet Beach. The Acadian origin story requires a little untangling, and Colette does it clearly. The Acadians were not French. They were descended from the first French-speaking settlers to arrive in the Maritimes in the early 1600s — people who, over five generations, developed their own distinct culture, language, and identity entirely separate from France. Then came the British deportations between 1755 and around 1762, when they were expelled back to a country (and to other parts of the world) that was no longer theirs. After years of difficult resettlement in France, a group came back to what had been their home. They likely initially arrived in Arichat, Cape Breton and then travelled to Havre Boucher and Tracadie, before moving westward to settle in Pomquet. The Language Inside the Language Pomquet is still a French-speaking community, but the French spoken here is Acadian French — a distinct dialect that preserved old words and expressions long since lost in France, and absorbed some Mi’kmaq vocabulary along the way. Colette offers two examples: bitan or hardes, the Acadian word for clothes, which a standard French speaker would not recognize, and porc-épic — that’s the standard French for porcupine — which in Pomquet is still called madouesse, from the Mi’kmaq word, because the Acadians had never encountered the animal before arriving here and simply adopted whatever the Mi’kmaq called it. The dialect is, however, slowly changing. Surrounded by English-speaking communities and with decades of outmigration and intermarriage, the level of daily spoken Acadian French has diminished. Charlie is candid about it: Pomquet is not Chéticamp or Île Madame. The community holds its own Development Society meetings in English because some members don’t speak French. The language is still present, but it lives more with the older generations now, and the community has largely made peace with that — or at least, is finding a way to work with it rather than against it. The School Is the Anchor The most important institution for the language’s survival is École Acadienne de Pomquet, the Acadian school that operates under the CSAP — the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial — with schools scattered across Nova Scotia. This is not a French immersion school. It is a French school: everything happens in French, announcements included, with a single English course introduced after grade four. The school drew nine graduates in Charlie’s graduating class. This year’s graduating class numbers twenty-six — the largest in the school’s history. Families are coming from beyond the community to enrol their children here. Some have Acadian roots they want to reconnect with. Others are multicultural families who simply want their children to have a genuine French education in smaller classes with more individual attention. The emerging challenge, as Charlie notes, is that when parents don’t speak French, they can’t help a child with homework — a math problem explained in French is its own kind of puzzle for an English-speaking parent staring at it at the kitchen table. Chez DesLauriers and the Friday Lunches If the school is Pomquet’s anchor, Chez DesLauriers is its calling card to the outside world. The property — an old homestead belonging to one of the founding Acadian families was purchased by local journalist Kingsley Brown and then, in an act of considerable foresight, sold to the provincial government so that the entire coastline from Pomquet Beach to Antigonish Harbour is now permanently protected. The Pomquet Development Society leases an acre and the old farmhouse for a nominal fee, and over twenty years has turned it into a tea room, interpretive centre, outdoor stage, and wedding and events venue. The Friday Acadian lunches held there each summer are now something of a regional institution — traditional Acadian cuisine at reasonable prices, drawing people from across the province. They started with 35 people, which felt like an enormous success at the time. They now regularly serve over 200 each Friday. The problem became too many people rather than too few, and they stopped advertising. COVID took a significant toll on the volunteer base, so the lunches now run on four Fridays in late July and August rather than the full summer program they once had. The view from the site — looking out over St. George’s Bay toward Cape Breton — is worth the drive on its own. The Salmon Suppers Are Back The centrepiece of this summer’s news is the return of the Pomquet salmon suppers as part of Pomquet Come Home Days, running August 14th to 16th. The suppers were once a full community institution, run by the Pomquet Ladies Club for decades, drawing over 1,200 people on a single Thursday evening at their peak. The last one took place in 2006. The Ladies Club has since disbanded; many of the volunteers who made those suppers happen are no longer with us. Last summer, the Pomquet Development Society brought the supper back for the first time in nearly twenty years, not knowing quite what they were getting into. They served over 420 people. The surviving members of the Ladies Club, who had spent decades working those suppers, got to sit down and eat salmon themselves for once. Charlie describes it as one of the more meaningful moments of the whole initiative. This August, the supper returns on the Sunday (August 16th), with Saturday featuring a full day at Chez DesLauriers — live music, fireworks, bouncy castles, fricot, and barbecue as part of Acadian Day celebrations – le 15 aout. The Friday kicks off the weekend with the last Acadian lunch of the season. People from Halifax have already called to reserve spots for the supper. The Community Centre Justin admits he had no idea the community centre existed before today, which is probably true of a lot of Antigonish residents. It’s attached to the school and houses a large hall with a stage and full kitchen that seats up to 200, two meeting rooms, a gym with memberships available to the public, and a museum being opened this summer with the help of a hired summer student. The building came about through an $800,000 community capital campaign, supported by the federal and provincial governments and the CSAP. The CSAP covers the operational costs — heat, lights, plowing — which means the community organizations that use the space don’t have to fundraise just to keep the doors open. They can put their energy into culture instead. Crib tournaments run every two weeks in summer. Chase the Ace happens weekly. The winter carnival events are held here. Weddings, birthday parties, and community fundraisers fill the calendar. Where It’s All Going Asked about the future, Charlie and Colette are honest: assimilation is real, it’s ongoing, and it can’t be stopped by willing it not to happen. What the school has done is delay the process and give the community a generation of young people with roots in something. The goal now, as Charlie frames it — and as the museum project reflects — is to keep the stories alive for people who may never speak Acadian French but who are still part of this place. Colette points out that the definition of community in 2026 is different from what it was in 1726, and that might actually be a beautiful thing rather than something to mourn. The closing advice from both guests is simple: come for a Sunday drive. The lawns in Pomquet are notoriously well-kept. The harbours are beautiful. Stop and talk to whoever you see walking. Stop for an ice cream on your way to Pomquet Beach. Visit Chez Deslauriers and take in the breathtaking views. And if you want to get involved, you don’t need to be Acadian, or French-speaking, or even connected to the place by family. You just need to show up. For more information visit pomquetcommunity.ca [https://pomquetcommunity.ca] or find Société Saint-Croix and Centre historique acadien de Pomquet on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/sascpomquet/?locale=fr_CA]. Thanks to Whidden Park Campground [https://www.whiddens.com/], a Community Sponsor of the Let’s Talk Antigonish Podcast. Interested in becoming a sponsor? Email us at letstalkantigonish@gmail.com [letstalkantigonish@gmail.com] Get full access to Let's Talk Antigonish at letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe [https://letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

What do high school students think of Antigonish?

This episode came about almost by accident. Anuj, recruited by Dr. J’s principal to coach table tennis, found himself at the school’s awards night recently — a four-hour marathon event — watching two grade 11 students hold the room together from start to finish. Those two students, Austin Wabbi and Brooklyn Wasson, are the incoming co-presidents of the class of 2027, and Justin and Anuj invited them on the podcast to find out what high school life in Antigonish actually looks like from the inside. An Outsider’s Perspective Part of what makes this conversation interesting is the perspective both guests bring. Austin grew up primarily in Uganda, with stops in Egypt, Scotland, and Tanzania, and has been in Antigonish for a year and a half. Brooklyn was born in New York, then moved through Pittsburgh, Alberta, Ontario, and Newfoundland before landing here for what’s now her third year. Their first impression of the town is overwhelmingly positive. Austin points to the StFX connection specifically: open gym time and workouts with university basketball players, including informal mentorship from coach Doc Ryan, have meaningfully helped his own development as a player (he was on the U17 Nova Scotia Provincial Team and represented the province at the Canada Summer Games). Austin describes Antigonish as “small but full of life.” What’s Missing Asked what the town needs more of, the answer comes fast: a movie theatre. With the bowling alley having recently closed, Brooklyn notes there’s a real gap in things to do outside of school for students who aren’t into sports — something echoed, Justin points out, by university students in past episodes asking for the same kind of third spaces. Sports, IB, and Staying Busy Both students describe high school life as genuinely full — sports, in particular, dominate. Both credits the sports teams specifically with making the transition into a new school easy, since teammates become friends quickly. Austin is also in the IB program, which he says adds a real academic load on top of an already busy athletic schedule — but he says he prefers being busy to being idle. As co-presidents, their platform for next year includes bringing back intramurals (informal lunchtime sports and mini-tournaments that have been absent for a few years), more benches around the school, general cleanup, and — a personal project for the two sports-minded co-presidents — streaming live sports, including the school’s own teams (the girls’ hockey team recently won provincials), on the cafeteria projector during lunch. On AI: Not the Panic You’d Expect When asked about their feeling on AI, Brooklyn describes it as a genuinely useful tool — not for writing essays outright, but for generating practice tests, checking homework, and getting unstuck on a concept. Austin, who says English isn’t his strongest subject, uses it for help with sentence-level writing and editing. Neither frames it as something to fear or avoid; both frame it as something to use well. What Adults Get Wrong Asked what middle aged folks tend to misunderstand about their generation, Austin pushes back gently but firmly on the stereotype that teenagers are simply phone-obsessed and checked out. The more accurate picture, he suggests, is a generation trying to adapt to tools that didn’t exist for previous generations and use them to their advantage — AI included. On the social media bans for under-16s currently being legislated around the globe, both are skeptical they’ll accomplish much: kids who want access will get it regardless, parents will sign them up anyway, and — as Austin notes — tech-savvy teenagers are pretty good at finding their way around these sorts of bans. Both also push back, politely, on the idea that there’s a real generational gap in actually talking to older people. Austin says he finds conversations with older generations genuinely interesting — people have stories to tell — and Brooklyn agrees that once a conversation actually starts, people tend to find more common ground than expected. Looking Ahead On their post-high-school plans, neither has political ambitions beyond their current role as class co-presidents: Austin hopes to play university basketball while pursuing aerospace engineering, with Carleton as his first choice. Brooklyn hopes to play soccer in university and, beyond that, has one clear long-term goal: to live somewhere warm, ideally after travelling enough to find the right spot. For two globe-trotting young people, the search for the ideal place to live seems like a logical life goal. In the meantime, it’s clear that both are quite happy to live and study in Antigonish. Thanks to Whidden Park Campground [https://www.whiddens.com/], a Community Sponsor of the Let’s Talk Antigonish Podcast. Interested in becoming a sponsor? Email us at letstalkantigonish@gmail.com [letstalkantigonish@gmail.com] Get full access to Let's Talk Antigonish at letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe [https://letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Curtain Up: The 2026 Festival Antigonish Season and The Magic of Theatre

The question that launched this episode was a simple one, posed by Anuj after a conversation with Justin one day: why doesn’t the theatre put on more plays about harder-hitting social issues like racism, war, and other difficult topics? It’s a fair question, and it opens a door into a genuinely fascinating conversation about what it means to run a professional theatre company in a small Nova Scotia town. Andrea Boyd, Artistic Director of Festival Antigonish, has been answering versions of this question her entire career. She does so here with warmth, candor, and enthusiasm for the magic of theatre. The 2026 Summer Lineup But first, a rundown of the upcoming Festival Antigonish season. The 2026 Festival Antigonish season [https://www.festivalantigonish.ca/whats-on/upcoming-shows] opens with Murder at Ackerton Manor by Stephen Gallagher — a smart, funny spoof of Agatha Christie in which three actors play seven characters. Quick changes, physical comedy, and a genuinely clever mystery underneath the silliness. Boyd describes it as the kind of play that brings people together through pure shared laughter. The second production is The Greatest Play in the History of the World by Ian Kershaw — a one-woman show, a love story, described by Boyd as otherworldly and utterly charming. She travelled to Fredericton to see the Theatre New Brunswick production, cried through the final five minutes, and knew she had to bring it here. Kershaw, for context, was one of the writers behind Coronation Street. Performer Amanda Kellock carries the whole show. Third is Beyond the Sea by Kristen Da Silva, a two-hander — two actors, minimal staging, unfolding in real time. Boyd describes it as the kind of play where the relationship developing on stage becomes genuinely lovely, funny, and then surprisingly deep. Ian Sherwood and Stephanie McDonald are the cast; Sherwood is also performing a standalone concert while in town. The children’s production this year is The Biggest Little House in the Forest, a one-woman-with-puppets show that Boyd promises will delight even the very youngest audience members. On the music side: a June fundraiser concert by Carolyn Curry in support of the Bridge the Bauer capital campaign; a concert by Old Man Luedecke, whom Boyd first encountered years ago at the Edmonton Folk Festival and has never forgotten; and the Ian Sherwood and Friends show. The Theatre Itself: What’s Happening with the Bauer Longtime listeners will know there have been questions about the Bauer Theatre’s operational future given pending fire safety upgrades. The short version for this summer: the theatre has permission to operate, with renovations now scheduled to begin in the fall. For the past couple of years the stopgap has been what the company affectionately calls ghost watch — a dedicated person wandering the building during performances, checking every room, filling in a form to confirm nothing is on fire. They prefer to think of it as looking for Hector, the theatre’s resident ghost. Two Companies, One Building, One Mission A useful piece of context for anyone new to Antigonish’s theatre landscape: there are two separate organizations operating out of the Bauer. Theatre Antigonish is the community company — all-volunteer, a town and gown operation founded in 1974. Festival Antigonish, started in 1987, is the professional summer theatre company with a mandate to bring paid, professional artists to the stage. Both are registered non-profits; both operate under the shared principle, as Boyd frames it, of building community through the creation of excellent theatre. The community company, Boyd notes, actually gives her more flexibility to take artistic risks — it doesn’t depend on the same ticket sales to survive. For example, Theatre Antigonish produced Girls Like That by Evan Placey a few years back, a play about girls bullying each other in the digital age, so incendiary that a school that had booked it as a field trip cancelled at the last minute because, as they put it, it was too much like what was happening at their own school. Boyd still finds that heartbreaking. Those were exactly the kids who should have seen it. The Tension at the Heart of Every Season To answer Anuj’s question as to why the theatre can’t produce more risky plays along the lines of Girls Like That, Boyd is clear eyed: “If we don’t sell tickets we die.” A Canada Council jury once told her in the same breath to take more artistic risks but also to sell more tickets — two instructions that are, she points out with dry amusement, not always compatible. The shift away from the old repertory model, where three plays ran simultaneously and audiences could choose different shows on different nights, removed a useful buffer: one of those three could be a risk play, subsidized by the other two. With the current model, every production carries more weight. In short: the theatre must put on plays that draw a large audience, or risk losing the ability to function from a financial standpoint. It can’t all be hard-hitting plays with social commentary that only die-hard theatre fans would enjoy. And yet. The New Canadian Curling Club — a play about immigration and belonging — was one of Festival Antigonish’s bestselling productions ever. Boyd credits playwright Mark Crawford for writing work that somehow manages to be both genuinely funny and genuinely important. That sweet spot exists. Finding it consistently is the challenge. Why Theatre At the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres conference in Whitehorse, Boyd attended recently, she found herself stumped when asked to answer a simple question posed by the organizers: Why theatre? Her answer, when she found it, was a memory. She was twelve, didn’t fit in, wasn’t a sports kid, and didn’t have a lot of friends. She saw a sign advertising auditions, walked into a room, and ended up reading the famous Saint Joan monologue by George Bernard Shaw. One by one the drama teacher thanked each student and moved on. When he got to Boyd, he didn’t stop her. He said: keep going. That moment — being in a room where the fact that she was a little weird didn’t matter, where she was fully herself, where she knew what she was doing and where she belonged — is still what the rehearsal room is for her, decades later. Getting In the Door For anyone who’s curious but hasn’t made it to the Bauer yet, Boyd runs through the ways in: pay-what-you-can preview nights (the night before opening, when the show first meets an audience), a Pride night with a pre-show party, relaxed performances with slightly raised house lights and reduced sound cues for those who benefit from a gentler environment, and an arts and culture market happening through the season. Volunteers are welcome — summer ushering is entirely volunteer-run — and Theatre Antigonish year-round is always looking for actors, stage managers, designers, and light board operators. Tickets and full season information at festivalantigonish.ca [https://www.festivalantigonish.ca/]. More info on this summer’s shows at this link: https://www.festivalantigonish.ca/whats-on/upcoming-shows [https://www.festivalantigonish.ca/whats-on/upcoming-shows] Thanks to Whidden Park Campground [https://www.whiddens.com/], a Community Sponsor of the Let’s Talk Antigonish Podcast. Interested in becoming a sponsor? Email us at letstalkantigonish@gmail.com [letstalkantigonish@gmail.com] Get full access to Let's Talk Antigonish at letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe [https://letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Ticks!

Ticks are on everyone’s minds this summer, and also on everyone’s dogs (apparently). Justin and Anuj sat down with Jantina Toxopeus, a professor of biology at St. Francis Xavier University whose research focuses on what happens to insects and arachnids in extreme cold. As Justin puts it, her expertise is figuring out what happens “when you freeze a bug”. As it turns out, that expertise has a lot of practical relevance to this tick discussion. First, Some Basic Biology Ticks, Toxopeus is quick to clarify, are not insects. They are arachnids — eight legs, more closely related to spiders and mites than to mosquitoes or flies. Nova Scotia has two species you’re likely to encounter: the black-legged tick (also called the deer tick), which is the one capable of transmitting Lyme disease, and the dog tick, which can’t give you Lyme but will happily ride home on your golden retriever. Understanding which one you’re dealing with matters more than most people realize. The Lone Star Tick: Headlines vs. Reality No conversation about ticks in 2026 can avoid the Lone Star tick — the species currently generating alarm because its bite can trigger alpha-gal syndrome, a condition that causes a serious allergic reaction to red meat from mammals. The idea that a tick bite could eventually make you unable to eat a hamburger is, understandably, the kind of thing that lodges itself in people’s brains. Toxopeus offers a measured reality check. Lone Star ticks have been spotted in Nova Scotia — including by StFX biology students out in the field — but they are almost certainly not established here, meaning they don’t have a self-sustaining population. The reason is winter. To survive in Nova Scotia long-term, a species has to be able to get through our cold season, and there’s little evidence the Lone Star tick can do that yet. The ones showing up are likely hitchhiking in on migratory birds or travellers passing through, not overwintering and breeding. So while alpha-gal syndrome is real and worth knowing about, it is not — for now — a reason for the average Antigonisher to panic. The operative phrase, Toxopeus notes, is “for now.” The black-legged tick has already expanded northward through Nova Scotia as winters have grown milder, and the same logic applies to the Lone Star tick. It’s something to keep an eye on, not something to lose sleep over today. For those wanting to track it: eTick.ca [https://etick.ca/] is a publicly accessible database where people can upload photos of ticks they’ve found and contribute to a real-time map of species sightings across the country. How Ticks Actually Work A tick’s life unfolds in three stages after hatching: larva, nymph, and adult. Between each transition, the tick must take a blood meal — feeding on a deer, a mouse, a bird, or, if the opportunity presents itself, a human. Here’s the crucial detail: ticks are not born carrying the Lyme pathogen. They acquire it from a host. That means a larval tick biting you is probably your lowest-risk scenario — it’s almost certainly on its first meal and hasn’t had a chance to pick anything up yet. A nymph, on the other hand, has already fed once, and if that first meal was a deer mouse carrying Lyme disease, the nymph is now a potential vector. In this region, slightly over half of black-legged ticks are carrying the Lyme pathogen — a sobering statistic that explains why being bitten by one is taken seriously. What to Actually Do If You Find a Tick Toxopeus’s advice is calm and practical. If a tick has bitten you and you can remove it, use tweezers — not your fingers — and grip as close to the skin as possible to pull out the mouthparts intact. Do not squish it. This is important both because squishing can push pathogen-laden fluid into the bite site, and because an intact tick is one that can be identified. Pop it in a small container, and bring it to a pharmacist. Nova Scotia pharmacists can assess, identify, and prescribe antibiotics for Lyme disease — meaning you don’t need to wait for a doctor’s appointment if you’ve been bitten by what looks like a black-legged tick. Earlier treatment is meaningfully better. The kill-it-in-a-hurry instinct is understandable but counterproductive. Alcohol — the 40% spirits kind, not rubbing alcohol — will eventually kill a tick without destroying it for identification purposes. Toxopeus’s preferred method, as anyone might predict from her research focus, is the freezer. If in doubt about any of this, 811 is the number to call — not 911. Nova Scotia’s health line can walk you through exactly what to do if you’ve got a tick on you, or recently pulled one off of yourself, or a family member, or (furry) friend. Note: Nova Scotia pharmacies can indeed provide immediate treatment for a tick bite! More info at this link [https://novascotia.ca/dhw/pharmacare/healthcare-services.asp] And more information on Lyme disease in general at this link [https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/lyme-disease/prevention-lyme-disease.html] Myths, Debunked Ticks do not fall from trees. They do not float on the wind. They are ground-level creatures, most comfortable in grass, that practice a behaviour called questing — holding their legs out, waiting for a warm-blooded animal to brush past so they can latch on. Walking on a gravel trail puts you at low risk; walking through long grass on a Cape George trail, or even through your own unmowed backyard, is a different calculation. They also do not die over winter — both the black-legged and dog tick overwinter comfortably under leaf litter and snow — and they do not always produce the famous bullseye rash when they transmit Lyme disease. Waiting for the rash before deciding to seek treatment is not a reliable strategy. If you have been bitten by a black-legged tick, there is a 50/50 chance you’ve been exposed to Lyme disease, so whether or not that rash appears, you should get treatment. The seasonal pattern is worth knowing: black-legged ticks peak in spring and fall, while dog ticks are more common in the height of summer. On the Lyme Vaccine A Pfizer Lyme vaccine [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lyme-disease-is-spreading-but-a-new-vaccine-could-curb-infections/]is in the final stages of human trials and may be available within the next year or two. This is unambiguously good news. Less well known is that an effective Lyme vaccine already existed in the late 1990s — it was pulled from the market [https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/lyme-vaccines-past-and-possibly-future] not because it was unsafe (the FDA was clear it was not), but because a wave of vaccine skepticism driven by false claims about a link to arthritis killed public demand for it. The Expert’s Own Approach Asked how nervous she is about Lyme disease given that she spends significant time in tick-heavy environments collecting the creatures for research, Toxopeus is refreshingly unbothered. She tucks her pants into her socks, stays aware, flicks ticks off when she sees them crawling up her leg, and does tick checks after outdoor excursions. She hasn’t been bitten as an adult. She does not, notably, spray herself with DEET before heading into long grass — though she acknowledges it offers a layer of protection for those who want it. The message she’d like people to take away is essentially the same: be sensible, not scared. Don’t let the ticks keep you indoors. Do check yourself when you come back. This jives with the Government of Canada’s public health advice [https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/ticks-tick-borne-diseases/prevent-tick-bites.html] on preventing ticks bites, which is as follows: Before you go in areas where ticks can be found: * wear closed-toe shoes * tuck your shirt into your pants, and your pants into your socks * wear permethrin-treated clothing (always follow label directions) * wear light coloured, long-sleeved shirts and pants to spot ticks easily * apply insect repellent containing DEET or Icaridin to clothing and exposed skin (always follow label directions) Before you return indoors: * check yourself and your clothing * check your outdoor gear, such as backpacks * inspect your pets as they can bring ticks into your home When you’re indoors: * do a full-body tick check on yourself, children, and persons in your care * shower as soon as possible, as it can help wash off unattached ticks * if you find an attached tick, remove it as soon as possible * you may not notice ticks on your clothes, so either: * put dry clothes in a dryer on high heat for at least 10 minutes * If your clothes are damp, you will need to dry them for longer. * wash your clothes in hot water and dry on high heat * Ticks can survive a cold-warm wash cycle. As the episode wraps up, Justin reveals his favourite bug is the dung beetle, Anuj diplomatically states that he loves all creatures equally on Jain principles, and Toxopeus nominates the springtail cricket — a species that survives extreme freezing — as her favourite. Naturally. Thanks to Whidden Park Campground [https://www.whiddens.com/], a Community Sponsor of the Let’s Talk Antigonish Podcast. Interested in becoming a sponsor? Email us at letstalkantigonish@gmail.com [letstalkantigonish@gmail.com] Get full access to Let's Talk Antigonish at letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe [https://letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The origins and future of the Ships of 1801

If you’ve lived in Antigonish for any length of time, chances are someone has told you to go see the Ships of 1801. And if you’ve been, you already know why. And if you haven’t, this episode is your entry point. Justin and Anuj sat down with Duncan MacDonald, the writer and producer behind one of the most beloved annual events in Antigonish, for a wide-ranging conversation about the show’s origins, its evolution over twelve years, what’s coming this summer, and why a community theatre production about 19th century Highland immigrants keeps selling out to crowds of 1,200 people year after year. Where It All Started: A Shore in Scotland and a Good Idea The Ships of 1801 began, as the best things often do, with two unrelated experiences colliding at exactly the right moment. About twelve years ago, Duncan MacDonald and his wife were standing on the shore near Fort William in Scotland, early in the morning, when the image struck him; ships leaving the harbour, filled with people. Around the same time, he’d seen a local production by Hector McIsaac called the Black Donnellys, in which performers dressed as their characters and the songs took on new meaning because of it. Put those two things together, add a conversation with Irene MacLeod of the Antigonish Highland Society about wanting a local concert, and the idea took shape. In 1801, roughly five ships arrived at Pictou carrying Gaelic-speaking Highland Scots (many of them MacDonald’s own ancestors) who were fleeing desperate conditions and making for the promise of land in the new world. That journey—the courage, grief, music, and hope it contained—became the subject of the first three shows. From the Ships to the Keppoch: Twelve Years of Stories The first three shows told the immigration story directly, set aboard the ships themselves. The Highland Society agreed to include the show as part of the Highland Games, and 1,200 people showed up for that first production at the Millennium Centre. After the ship trilogy, MacDonald shifted the setting to the Keppoch—the rural Antigonish County community where many of those settlers eventually made their homes—and the tone shifted with it. Less drama, more comedy, more celebration. The format became a ceilidh house: neighbours gathering in a community home, the way people actually gathered in those years, sharing songs and stories and the particular comedy of community life. The Keppoch shows have run for roughly nine years now, each one built around a real historical moment from the area’s past. The range of subjects covered across those years is remarkable. The closure of one-room rural schools. The mass exodus to the “Boston States”. The Fall Fair, when Keppoch neighbours faced off against the people of Eigg Mountain in a rivalry over who got to entertain. This year, the show brings Moses Coady and the Sisters of St. Martha to the Keppoch — dramatizing the movement that came out of StFX and changed the economic lives of rural Nova Scotians — a show requiring careful research and consultation with people who still remember Coady personally, including two sisters whose fathers were pallbearers at his funeral. The show features many returning cast members and musicians, and brand new music. A song called Buttermilk Blues—written by the show’s longtime songwriter Kevin Gilfoy—features three frustrated young women forced to churn cream in the kitchen. “Giants of Men,” another Gilfoy composition, celebrates the extraordinary courage of the settlers who walked into the Keppoch with an axe and a saw and built a life from nothing. How the Show Actually Works The Ships of 1801 is roughly half music and half dialogue. It is not a musical in the conventional theatre sense; it’s closer to a ceilidh with a story running through it. The cast is a cooperative: everyone who participates gets a share of the ticket revenue. Performers include musicians of serious calibre some professional, many highly accomplished—alongside local actors and children who are taking fiddle or step-dancing lessons and don’t often get a chance to demonstrate what they know in front of a proper audience. That last point is one MacDonald returns to with obvious feeling. Giving young performers a stage in front of 1,200 people is one of the show’s founding purposes. It reinforces the tradition from the inside, showing kids that what they’re learning has a living community around it. Rehearsals run through the spring and the script, by MacDonald’s own admission, keeps getting adjusted until the last possible moment. The show has toured to the Gaelic College, to the Strathspey Performing Arts Centre in Mabou, to audiences beyond Antigonish — but the logistics of moving thirty-plus community members with full-time jobs are genuinely difficult. The Upcoming Book Alongside the show, MacDonald has been working on something that will outlast any single production: a book, commissioned through the Highland Society and currently at the printer, covering the customs and traditions of the Highland Scottish community in Antigonish. Individual chapters cover fiddling, step dancing, bagpiping, the ceilidh house, food, and more, each written by someone with deep knowledge of that tradition. The idea started as a primer for new members of the Highland Society—something to give people the background they’d need to understand what they were stewarding—and grew from there. The Highland Society is sponsoring it; copies should be available for sale in July. A Future Show: Lochaber No More MacDonald is already thinking about the next ship show — a return to the ships themselves, this time set around 1812. It would tell the story of Highland people who had already been forced off their inland farms to the coast, who tried to survive by fishing and harvesting kelp, and who found themselves destitute again when the Napoleonic wars ended and the kelp market collapsed. MacDonald wants to call it Lochaber No More, after the song of the same name, and to use real documented characters from the ships—people whose names and histories are actually recoverable—to tell the story of what it meant to make that choice. To go, or to stay in a place that had nothing left to offer. Why It Works The answer to why it works is simpler than it might seem: people like to see their own story. The one-room school. The family members who went to Boston and wrote home. The Fall Fair. Moses Coady showing up at someone’s kitchen table and telling them the way they’d always done things wasn’t going to get them anywhere. These aren’t abstract history lessons. They’re memories—direct or inherited—that people in this community still carry. The show puts those memories on a stage and celebrates them with music and comedy and a cast of neighbours, and the audience recognizes itself. The shows run July 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th at Schwartz Auditorium. Maximum capacity is 312 per show. Tickets are $40 for adults. Get them soon. Get full access to Let's Talk Antigonish at letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe [https://letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]