From the Town Clerk’s office, he went directly over to the lot and stood on the dry part of the land for a long time staring downwards.
If Gibbo had to wait for eleven years and a stroke of good luck to get the land he wanted, there was nothing to delay the rest of his dream. He began immediately in the fall of 1944 by going to the churches of the northside, which were closest to his home. At first he felt a little funny if someone saw him in broad daylight walking up to a church, digging at the earth with his little garden spade, and putting the earth he had dug up into the bottle he carried with him.
He even tried to make these visits at a time when there was less chance of being seen, usually early in the morning around the hour he might be starting his shift on a regular working day. He made a point of trying to dig as close to the foundation of the church as possible. Whenever he noticed someone approaching, he paused and sized up the church as if he were a building inspector, or as if he had some special interest in the style of the structure. Then when he saw his chance, he quickly knelt down and scooped up the earth he was after. While he was at it, he squeezed in a short prayer for his nephews and whatever lost buddies he thought of at the moment.
These strange pilgrimages went on for years, because what Gibbo wanted to do was to dig up some earth from every church on Cape Breton Island and bury it in the ground above the boys on the little lot in Sydney Mines.
He planned to make that land a special area in his heart and in all of Cape Breton; to create a bond which would unite his nephews and all the victims of the mines with the places on the Island which were considered holy and important. Gibbo hoped to make up for the way his friends had been left aside; to show that the underground they worked in and died in could never be just ordinary any more.
Gibbo Marenelli knew for sure that it was special.
With the end of the war, gas became easier to get, and this enabled him to go farther away. He preferred Sundays, which gave him enough time to go where he wanted and return the same day. There were a lot of churches to cover, even if some of them weren’t used that much these days. Gibbo was in no rush, which was good, because the weather slowed down his progress quite a bit. When the frost was deep in the ground, or there was a lot of snow around, he couldn’t dig. Gibbo never cared to travel during the long, harsh, Cape Breton winters anyway, so he waited until spring came before resuming his visits.
In spite of these delays, by the end of 1944 he had covered all of Cape Breton County, and had made a good start on Victoria County. He kept his bottles of earth neatly lined up on shelves in a dry room in his basement. The room was securely locked at all times. Each bottle was identified with a paper label, from the African Orthodox in Whitney Pier to Zion United in Gabarus Lake, and everything in between. The date of his visit he placed under the name of the church. His nephew Arthur was the only other person allowed into the room, as he was entrusted with the job of writing out the labels and glueing them to the bottles under Gibbo’s careful direction.
Gibbo also gave Arthur a miner’s name to write on each bottle; someone he knew himself or someone his buddies spoke about who had perished at work. Other times, he had Arthur take a name out of the newspaper from accidents in Glace Bay or New Waterford.
Gibbo put Freddie and Anthony, the twins’ names, together on one bottle. The earth came from the church where they were baptized, Immaculate Conception, Sydney Mines. It was the first earth he had gathered.
The earth from the churches in mining towns, like St. Joseph’s, Reserve Mines or Calvin United in New Waterford — what Gibbo called the “miner’s own churches” — was kept in colored bottles. He wanted these to stand out more than earth taken from a country church in places like Marion Bridge or Baddeck.
Aside from this little privilege, which he never explained to Arthur, all the earth was treated the same. No denomination had larger bottles or a higher place on the shelves; the Seventh-Day Adventist earth was placed on the same shelf alongside St. Paul’s Anglican; Hebrew Temple Sons of Israel earth was sitting right by Sacred Heart, Sydney. Gibbo played no favorites, aside from the colored bottles for the “miner’s own churches.”
In 1950, Gibbo bought a new blue Ford car from L.A. Steele Ltd., in North Sydney. It was his first new vehicle. He wanted to be ready to go farther afield to places like Bay St. Lawrence and Cheticamp in the highlands of Cape Breton. The trips were more interesting and enjoyable than he ever expected. He found himself venturing to places he had never seen before and discovering things which surprised him about his adopted country.
He learned there were coal mines in country places like Inverness and St. Rose on the western side of the Island. He was greatly impressed one cool, overcast day with the sight of Marble Mountain when he first roamed through the gaping quarry which ate into the mountain overlooking the Bras d’Or Lakes. He couldn’t resist returning the following Sunday when it was sunny and staring over the lakes at the little islands in West Bay. He wondered what it must have been like to be a miner in such a beautiful place.
At Louisbourg, on the foggy rocky eastern edge of Cape Breton, he saw how the French had dug into the ground to construct their fortress, hundreds of years ago. He walked along the cliffs of Port Morien where the French soldiers had extracted coal for the same fortress. In Dingwall, near the northern tip of the island, he visited the gypsum deposits and the narrow harbour where the ore boats were loaded.
When Gibbo became caught up with the rest of the country in the suspense and tragedy of the Springhill mining disasters of the 1950s, he gave serious thought to visiting every church in Nova Scotia out of respect for the miners on the mainland. Reluctantly he had to admit that this was more than he could handle. Instead, one Sunday he headed out on the long trip to Springhill. There he hurriedly dug up some earth from near every church he could see, without bothering to find out their names.
Gibbo was uncomfortable so far from home, but when he saw the results on the shelf late that night, he was sure he had done the proper thing. This earth was put in colored bottles as well, on which he told Arthur to write: SPRINGHILL, N.S. ALL OF THEM.
As he went from place to place, Gibbo noticed how well-cared-for and cultivated the earth and fields looked in farming areas like Mabou and the Margaree Valley, compared to the stark, empty appearance of the mining towns. Each sign of people like himself digging into the hilly, watery face of Cape Breton held a personal meaning which convinced him about the worth of what he had set out to bring together. They spoke to him silently and effortlessly about how his life as a miner blended in with so many other different lives in Cape Breton, although they hardly realized what they shared.
By June of 1959 Gibbo had visited all the churches. In the process he had become an expert about distance and travel and was called upon to settle more than one argument about the fastest way to go hunting in Lower Washabuck from North Sydney; how long it would take to drive a one-ton truck loaded with a ball team from Brown St. Park in Sydney Mines to Port Hawkesbury; how much of the road was paved from St. Ann’s to Ingonish. Gibbo had the answers.
Occasionally he had to correspond with the Maritime Conference of the United Church of Canada, the Catholic Bishop’s Office in Antigonish or the headquarters of the Salvation Army to obtain information about their places of worship in Cape Breton. He was determined not to miss any, to do everything correctly.
Being next to illiterate himself, Gibbo had to rely upon a librarian in Sydney in these matters. She wondered why this coal miner needed such information, but went along like a good sport. Gibbo signed the letters himself, which he could do, and supplied the stamps.
He gave her a 1957 Italian travel calender for her trouble, even though Arthur claimed it was sort of part of her job to help out.
Gibbo decided to bury his earth on Dominion Day in July. He didn’t want a marker of any kind on the land. Too often he had seen monuments being abused as years went by an
d people forgot. This way he hoped to avoid disrespect and jealousy too. Gibbo was afraid of being called a show-off, or causing resentment if something too flashy were put up. He didn’t want bad feelings created.
An undisturbed, invisible presence suited him fine. A presence which reflected the unspoken, lasting bond between his own heart and the victims of the pits he could not abandon, even as he drew farther away from them with the passing of time. Gibbo wanted his tribute to be left unseen, the way a miner’s life underground is unseen; something hard to picture as was his own vision of a future Easter which he was sure was going to instill new life into this special ground of his and those beneath it, at the Creator’s chosen time.
That last evening Gibbo went down to the room and after lighting two candles, one for each of the twins, he put out the lights. Over the years he found it very peaceful to do this early in the morning before setting out for work. The way the flickering candles gleamed off the glass jars reminded him of a pit lamp glancing off a shiny seam of coal. He stared at the twins’ earth for a long time, waiting until their two candles disappeared before leaving the darkened room.
Gibbo started digging early in the morning. He made the hole in a rounded shape and at a bit of an angle like a tiny mine shaft, working steadily and effortlessly. The few passers-by showed no interest in what he was doing.
He ran into three good-sized boulders which delayed him a bit, but he hardly noticed the inconvenience they caused. Eventually when he crawled into the opening he had made, only his boots and ankles stuck above the ground. Gibbo was satisfied he had gone deeply enough.
It took eleven trips in his car to bring all the earth from his basement to the site. He refused to put the bottles in the trunk of the car. This didn’t strike him as a respectful way to carry them, so, although it took him more time, he set them on the car seats and off the floor.
He lifted the bottles out of the car two at a time, one in each hand, and walked carefully over to the hole. Beginning with the colored bottles which he wanted in the deepest part, he set each bottle down gently. As he did so Gibbo’s thoughts drifted back over many of the visits he had made in the past fifteen years to bring the earth to his monument.
He had chosen sturdy, thick bottles which would last a long time like the dishes and pottery uncovered after centuries in the old catacombs. He wanted the site to remain precious to him and to be as worthy of all the miners as any monument to any prince.
The whole process went slowly, not because he felt any reluctance to part with these unusual possessions, but because his movements that day had taken on a kind of solemnity of which he was totally unaware.
The sun had set when the last of the earth was safely in place. The remaining space at the top Gibbo covered with fill. He smoothed out the surface around the opening and raked the rest of the soil over the lot as evenly as he could in the darkness.
Then, long after Mr. Waddell and Malcie MacVicar had done so, Gibbo left the boys and went home too.
Claudia Gahlinger
Harvest
Scullerymaids
The morning was a beautiful bottomless bowl but empty. So empty it could make you forget you’d ever felt that sudden blooming, that sense of being on the verge — when you’d caught something miraculous — of knowing the ocean whole. This feeling, if it made a sound, would go wommm, as in woman, and womb. Like marsupials we could carry the sea in our bellies.
This morning might in truth have been full, teeming with timid, suspicious or aloof codfish and untold millions of mysteries. But I doubted it. For months now Ariel and I had been catching codfish, making a living at it. But it was easy to forget this. Slouched on the gunnel, yanking at the line, I examined my boots all morning for possible defects. Found none of those either.
Into the emptiness crept fishermen’s opinions. Two women together are two women alone. And women alone who venture out to sea in a twenty-foot open boat are a sly mocking at Potency. Women will wander cheerfully into squalls. Sit patient over schools of mud and sea urchins. Catch nothing but dogfish and then feel sorry for them.
We just don’t belong on the water. Some say alone, some say at all. Our flesh is too soft, our will too weak, our body cycles are embarrassing. Then there’s our need of a bucket and privacy to pee in instead of pissing manly over the side —.
It may be true about the peeing, but the rest is a private matter between ourselves and the sea, isn’t it?
Ariel held herself proud all this while. She gazed at the mountain-lines unperturbed, a professor interpreting emptiness her own way. “People think fish are our evolutionary inferiors,” she said. “But when you’re sitting in a boat like a lonely corner at a party you recognize them for what they are: guileless. Enviably simple. Such unity of purpose. It’s ironic,” she added, “to love the fish yet want to kill them.”
I didn’t want to kill them, of course. Just catch them. And sell them.
I was praying to the line again, Oh make this beautiful bowl full, when Ariel jerked forward, pouncing on something invisible. Then she relaxed and began to draw light and quick. “Oh,” she said, disappointed before even a first glimpse.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said, still drawing. “Something that wriggles. Flutters. Too light for a codfish.”
Sea cucumber. Sea urchin. Sea butterfly: that would be a change.
“Probably a pollock,” Ariel said.
Oh the little pollock. Mediocrity of the sea. Grey, soft and frivolous, forever ready to hop aboard unasked. Since they’re not worth a cent at the size we catch them we work pollock off our hooks and send them home. Mediocrity, damaged in transit. Must we mark this day with a small act of sadism?
But breaking free of water the silver rising on Ariel’s line proved to be something entirely different. A shimmying, rich-coloured jewel flew off her hook and hit the deck.
“Well . . . ” came Ariel’s stuttered laugh.
Wommm. It was a Persian fish. An Arabian Nights fish. A smooth bar of cobalt blue with emerald stripes, faint opal rainbows on its silvery underside. For a second it held still, as if shocked or amazed, then began to swim hard, drumming sidelong across the deck.
Curtains of myth and fairy tale fell sheer before my eyes. I thought, This must be the kind of fish that carries a ring in its belly. A golden ring, inscribed with a plea for help: there’s a queen, and she’s labouring under a curse that keeps her a scullerymaid. And rescuing the queen would in turn release us from catching fish. This happy, humble task with its hideous aspect: diverting creatures each from its own urgent message about life.
We dropped our lines again but no reply. Still. “They’ve started to come into the bay,” said Ariel happily. “Too bad we don’t have our mackerel jigs. We might as well head in.” She pulled at the outboard cord and pointed the Anicca’s bow at the channel mouth, three or so kilometres distant. “Here, you steer,” she said. Then, “Mackerel. Great. I’ll fillet it for lunch.’’
Which she did, tossing the guts to the gulls.
No sign of a ring. If there was a queen she would go on as a scullerymaid. And we would go on fishing.
Mackerelle
They began to swarm into the bay under cover of water. Sometimes when they rose up we’d see their schooling agitation from shore: dark patches of them, frittering near the surface. Close up from aboard the Anicca they appeared as a broad, sinister slashing like an arena of miniature sharks fighting.
We would venture out in the early dark. Motor over a calm sea. Pull on dayglo orange mackerel gloves made for men with immense fingers, the insides cool and clammy from the day before. Unwind lines strung with five hooks and a lead weight into the water. As it slithers down, drifts down, meanders, dawdles like a leaf from a tree, you give the line random yanks. Because, while codfish gravitate to the bottom, mackerel shift up and down as if they were adrift themselves.
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br /> “Nothing here,” Ariel would say. “We’ll try further out.”
Try again. This time the slithering line buckles to nothing, the lead weight has been stolen clean away — no, a sharp tug reveals that the knaves are caught.
“Here they are,” Ariel whispers.
This is surely a hair-raising business.
A blind quivering sense of them, like intuition or dream memory or words on the tip of the tongue, rises reluctant — surrendering — rebellious. Some stealthy hand-over-hand hauling and they appear at last: one or two shards of silver, spiralling. Draw against them, with them, against them until they break clear of their element. Hoist them in and flip them off the hooks. They bang against the deck — hold still for a second — then begin drumming, vigorous and uncanny.
Drop the line again quick. Hoist and drop, haul and shake, the fish spin across the deck five and one and three at a time. When we’ve let down our hooks again and again catching fish every time, “Here we are,” Ariel will say, meaning we’re not just transient over a random scatter of mackerel now but afloat over a school of them. I imagine them rippling in the current like a field of silvery oats in a breeze.
So we fish. And so we drift. And so we forget who or where we are. Until sometimes, looking up, we find ourselves among other boats like a parking lot of wobbling cars, all occupied by fishers bringing in mackerel. Families, all ages and sizes. Married couples jigging side by each. Great splinter-sided hulls holding crews of three or four men, all surly and shy. I steal glimpses of their labouring and try to learn.
Great Cape Breton Storytelling Page 20