This Island's Quiet

The last evening I spent in Mabou didn't end at one with the dance. I followed my a friend Laura back to her small, rented home, where talked until four in the morning. I didn't roll out of bed until close to noon the next day. The house was empty, and so I wandered next door to John's house, my friend's neighbor, who had all but adopted her since the beginning of her stay in the Cape Breton. I wasn't sure if Laura was there, but I followed my intuition to John's doorstep, trying to remember everything Laura had told me about the man the night before.

John, like so many others in the countryside of the island, has never married. He lives in the house he was born in, and is renowned locally for his step dancing. I paused at the front door when I heard the sound of a fiddle. From the front stoop I could see an elderly man puttering about in the kitchen, I assumed that was John, and that he'd invited one of the neighboring Chisholm's or Cameron's to join him for breakfast. When the music stopped, I strolled in to Laura at the table, going over some new tunes. Charmed, I told her she sounded, "like the real thing."

John's home was one of the oldest I'd seen in Cape Breton. All twelve of his brothers and sisters had been raised in the house, and that morning, they smiled down on our breakfast of toast, bacon, rolls, and eggs from a faded 70's photograph above the kitchen. Above the television, in infinitely richer color, Billie's beautiful young niece gazed confidently out from a newspaper headline announcing her success as a premiere female pilot. Over breakfast, John told us of the busy community that was once his home, of the families that lived down the street, the sound of pipes that announced the evening hours, and eventually, the emptying of the valley that began with the shutting down of the coal mines and continues into today. Later, we walked to a small neighboring valley, where rolled hay's haphazard tracks seemed to mimic a giant's game board, instead of some farmer's-out-of season blunder. The day was magic with possibility, and Cape Breton, small as it is, and often forgotten by the world, continues to be magic for me.

Later in the afternoon, we drove through Inverness village on the way to the Judique session. This is it, I thought, Frank MacDonald's setting to, A Forest for Calum. This is where so many of Alistair MacLeod's characters lived and loved, and where the author still resides every summer. Inverness, like so many other rural villages, was a coal mining town. While many of the company homes are still standing, they're run down, folding in on themselves in a visual representation of the livelihood that once sustained the town's population. The ocean still offers a close and brilliant backdrop for it all, and I can't imagine anything better than falling asleep to the sound of bell buoys on the wind, or waking up to a still dawn's reflection on the harbor.

Thanks to my fanaticism, we stop at Alistair MacLeod's summer home, where I snap a quick picture of Margaree Island...and maybe his house too. I can't see much of the island, but I know this is the setting for his short story, "Island," and that the bright dots of color are the fishing shacks where a lobster fisherman once spent his summers, and where one in particular fell in love with the light housekeepers daughter. Even before I came to Cape Breton, I'd written a song inspired by the story, a song I would record a few days later, and that I hope, is reflective of what sustains Cape Breton today, if nothing else does: the importance of calling a place your own, or, the importance of calling a place your home.

The Star Above Rankin's Point

This island's quiet. Winter's always dark and cold,
but I know, when summer rolls around again,
the fishing boats will line its shores.

I never had a care until the year,
I fell in love with a mainland boy who told me,
I'll take you far from here, from Rankin's shores,
we'll set our oars, and row away.

He died that winter, in the logging camps,
laid down in snow,
folks said you can't presume to know the will of God,
He called him home, left me...

Winter came in late that year,
still my father kept the lighthouse burning bright,
like a star above Rankin's point
he led the fishing boats home to port each night.

He told me count your blessings,
and hold on tight to what can't change.
Well here we've got the towers light, the season's turn,
and the seals to sing your lullabies.

And so the years went tripping by like springtime,
I watched my father slowly getting old.
And when he climbed the tower for the last time
I manned the light alone.

I learned to count my blessings,
to hold on tight, to what's my own.
I'll always have the towers light, the season's turn,
and the seals to sing my lullabies.

Yes, I'm the star above Rankin's point each night.