Newsletter 1: August 19 to September 14

Hello friends. I've just finished the Maritime leg of my tour and am getting sorted for the rest of the way.

Montreal:

I started in Montreal, where I saw college friends Eddy and Martine, and did some fiddling and sightseeing. The highlight was a day spent in the always adorable Ste. Anne de Bellevue, where my former landlords, Lord and Lady Jones, were having a 50th anniversary party. I sang them a song I wrote for the occasion, and met many of the Jones' extraordinarily cool friends, who all seem to practice unique professions then trek around the North Pole for vacations. I jammed with a psychic woman who channels messages from plants (that is, I jammed to her piano playing, not her channeling).

Besides the party and open house, I wandered around the college and house, where each location held many memories. (For the Chateau insiders: although I still regret losing track of my Barbie, I was thrilled to find that my signs are still up in the bathroom, as well as someone else's sign saying "It's true! Listen to this person!"). Boris, another Macdonald guy, was also there; just a few days into my trip and already an unanticipated reunion. Hopefully there will be more to come.

It also seemed appropriate that I was beginning my trip by returning to the spot where I discovered folk music. I thought about the day that Will gave me his spare guitar and Navin taught me to play a couple of Dylan songs on it, and I was hooked for life. And in the past few weeks I've paid the favour back, twice actually: I gave introductory guitar lessons to a Japanese girl in my hostel in Charlottetown, and to a girl at L'Arche Cape Breton.

Rest of Quebec:

I spent a few cold and windy days in Quebec City where the busking was fine, the grownups danced and the cops looked the either way despite a very complicated licence system another busker tried to explain to me and I elected to ignore. I then took a bus-window tour of the Gaspe Peninsula, which was very pretty and makes up a bit for the conspicuous lack of the Cabot Trail on this trip - though there were times I sure wished I could pull the bus over for a while.

Prince Edward Island:

You know how you always hear that geography affects personality: Cape Bretoners are friendly, Torontonians are stressed-out, Quebecers are fun-loving and so on? I've never really believed that; people everywhere generally seem more or less the same to me. But now I know that Prince Edward Island is an exception. People really are nicer there.

I stayed a few days in Charlottetown fiddling and chatting with people. There's a theatre downtown where they show the Anne of Green Gables musical twice a day, and there's excellent busking to be done in front of it as tourists arrive for the show. Next time I'm going to have to wear an Anne costume. I slept at a home hostel run by an elderly couple who kept a guitar, fiddle, and banjo around for any guests who could play, and the wife knew how to play piano accompaniment for fiddling. So one of the evenings we had a kitchen party. Maybe that's what I should do when I get old.

I then went to visit a friend of the Jones' who has a cottage by the northern shore, and she put me up in the sparest of spare rooms. It was a short walk to a gorgeous, solitary red sand beach, and I got up early to go for a swim while the sun was rising. Very, very beautiful, as was a drive around the countryside to see Green Gables and the PEI National Park. My hostess, Pat Stanyer, has a small publishing company, and I bought a book of PEI folklore and am working on a song about one of the stories in it.

New Brunswick:

I went to the new house of college friend Lindsey and her husband Matt. It's interesting to see all their work and plans for renovating, gardening, goatherding etc. I'm sure it's nice to have a little empire that you can make the way you want it... but it must be hard to feel tied to a location. I know it's a cliche for a single woman of a certain age to feel angst about friends getting married and having children... but I get that same feeling that "they've moved away from me into a different world" whenever one of my friends buys a house.

Matt works at Fundy National Park and I went in with him for the day and went hiking. I also had a day in Moncton, where I met Gary, an internet pen pal, and did a little busking. I met another wandering street artist from Toronto who made coat hanger sculptures, and he made me a little fiddler.

Nova Scotia:

I went to see my sister Sondra and her husband and kids in the Annapolis Valley. The kids liked playing with my fiddle and we played lots of road hockey too. Sondra took me to a "Pampered Chef" party on the Greenwood base, and I was surprised to learn that all the other women there seemed to host or attend this kind of thing all the time. I'd heard of Tupperware parties, and other kinds of selling parties, but had never been to one before, and my enjoyment of it stayed firmly on the ironic level. It's a bored air force wife thing, I guess.

Cape Breton:

Although I only spent a year at L'Arche Cape Breton, it was a very intensive year and I think about my housemates there all the time. So going back was a big deal for me, as was having the chance to walk, sing, cook, go to chapel, and discuss shoes with my gang. I also got back in conctact with John Macdougall, my fiddle teacher. He's retired from teaching but has a daily gig at a pub during tourist season. I went to the pub with him and played about fifteen minutes while he took a break.

Onward and upward:

I'm now on a pit stop in Perth. At first I thought that living in the middle of a country is a pain if you want to do a cross-country trip, but now I realize that starting with a short trip is a most excellent way to organize a long trip. Now I know what I should take out of my backpack, and what I should add to it. Tomorrow morning it's westward ho.

Thanks for reading, talk to you next time, love,

Marianne of Green Gables.