Destination: Meat Cove

ver since I arrived in Cape Breton, I've wanted to go to Meat Cove. One might wonder why. The name leaves little to the imagination, and rumors abound concerning the local color. I ask you to simply pull out a map of Cape Breton, locate Meat Cove, and there you'll have your answer. The fishing village is the northern most outpost on the island, it's a reels cast from Newfoundland, completely isolated, nearly impossible to get to, and undeniably dangerous. So there you have it. I had to go.

I started hearing Meat Cove rumors the first week I was in Glace Bay. Only one family lives at the outpost, they guard their village, and their traditional fishing grounds with an insane jealousy. They bicker amongst themselves, murder is an annual event, and incest and excessive drug aren't just the norm, but encouraged. The rumors only piqued my interest more, how could a small fishing community harbor such extreme violence and dysfunction?

On Wednesday of last week, my friend Laura, a fiddler from Maine, called me and asked if I wanted to camp in meat Cove, one of the few folks from "away" who was still floating around the island like flotsam after the wake of Celtic Colours, Laura was hoping to see the northern end of the island before she returned to the states. I didn't hesitate to agree to go, and the next day, my host parents waved me goodbye from the front door of my home in Glace Bay...

"Good-bye, have fun, call if you have any problems. If my daughters told me they were going to Meat Cove, I'd tie them up in the basement."

Two hours later, halfway to our final destination, I read a satirical Wikipedia article out loud to Laura that my host-father, Adrian, had found on-line. Alongside the signs that you're in Meat Cove (ex: you have one set of grandparents, you go to a family reunion to pick up women), Oscar Wilde was quoted extensively, and seems to have been a regular visitor to outpost, among various other below-the-belt comments, the Irish play-write is quoted in saying of the people of Meat Cove: "If you can't keep it in your pants, keep it in your family." Halfway through the article an invisible third party seizes the pen, and this un-biased eavesdropper reports a questionable comment made during this now-infamous Wilde family outing: "'You're looking pretty hot'...Oscar Wilde to his brother on a visit to Meat Cove."

"Maybe we should camp in Aspy Bay instead." Laura suggests.

Outside Aspy Bay, we pass through the isolated fishing village of Neil's Harbor. Like many of the rural towns of Cape Breton, Neil's Harbor looks sad. The houses are peeling, the lobster traps are hauled in and stacked by doorsteps like forgotten Sunday papers, while the fishing vessels themselves, noble on the water, tilt at odd angles on their concrete pilings. I think of some of the off-season fishermen I'd met in Kerry, disoriented and bored during the winter months, they cannot think of what to do with bodies that are used to the sway of the sea and the pull of the lines, and so they collapse on barstools, defeated, and wait for spring to come around again.

We rent a Cabin at the Aspy Bay Campground, build a fire and wait for our recently-purchased mussels to pop open and reveal their savory treasure. I can hear the waves complaining at the base of the cliffs, the human lights wink out along the shorelines far below, as the milky-way gains in brilliancy, seeming to lay a mantle down to the brightly-lit Newfoundland ferry that balances on the edge of the sea-line, and appears to be preparing for a departure upon the skies celestial route.

We wake early and drive the extra hour into Meat Cove. Passing the small general store that advertises, ice-cream and candy, but displays no hopeful signs of commerce. As soon as we see the Meat Cove campsite, we thank our lucky stars we decided not to camp there last night. The restless sleeper might have rolled out of their tent and off the cliff, and even worse: the campsite is in plain view of the village. The Meat Covians, would have known we were there...and we would have been the only campers.

Enter Sean, Meat Cove's friendly campsite volunteer.

"You guys don't have to pay." He told us, gesturing to a sign that announces, "$2.00 for the use of picnic tables. "We're pretty much done for the season."

Aside from the absence of a few teeth, Sean seems completely normal. He's articulate, polite, and surprisingly attractive. A one-piece, blue work suit comes to an end at his rubber fishing boots, and his hands are rough and strong from hauling traps. He's guarded and hesitant to speak about the people in his village. I can't blame him, he knows the rumors as well as anyone else in Cape Breton, and it's his family that end as the butt of these jokes. He eventually concedes that fifty people live in the village year-round, that the easiest way to get down to the beach is a path from the far-end of the campsite, and that the outpost is, "great" in the winter.

He encourages us to check out the mural some creative tourists painted on the boathouse a few years back (see picture below) and hands us a brochure that advertises the campground and provides a brief history of the cove's inhabitants: "The MacLellan family has been fishing in Meat Cove for six generations. Come experience the wonder of Cape Breton's most northerly village."

Sean tells Laura the general store has been closed for three years, I miss that tidbit of information and make the trek down to the building, only to discover a dimly-lit room filled with ripped mattresses, beer cans, and cigarette butts. Eventually, we wave Sean goodbye, and make our way back down the island, just in time for the Saturday night dance in West Mabou.

In between sets, I tell a local beef-farmer, Gerald, that I'm staying for the winter. His glazed look of horror stops the conversation dead.

"Do you know...WHAT IT'S LIKE HERE...IN THE WINTER!?!"

Thinking back on this exchange today, I'm reminded of the Cape Breton author, Alistair MacLeod's, shorty story, "Island," set on the lighthouse dwelling of Margaree Island off the coast of Inverness county. The heroine of the story, whose family has run the lighthouse and lived on the islands for generations, when faced with her death, laments not her own mortality, but the end of her people's mark upon the landscape. She cannot fathom that someday, unknowing visitors might not know the nicknames for the rocks and coves, the places where people met and loved, waited, and mourned. I have to think that it's this phenomenon that keeps folks in a place like Cape Breton. It's what keeps Gerald, who knows the fierceness of the winter wind, on the island year round, it's what makes me "tough" for sticking the year out here, and maybe...it's what keeps the MacLellans fishing the angry black rocks around Meat Cove for yet another generation.