Old stomping grounds, new foraging grounds.
It can be complicated to explain where I grew up.
I was raised in a village in Nova Scotia, called Pointe-de-l'Église. But it's also known as Church Point. You see, I grew up in a french-speaking community, in an anglophone province, hence the two names. The community is called Clare, which is also its municipal designation. It's also known as la Baie Sainte-Marie, or the french shore, which is the name given to the series of french-speaking Acadian villages that dot the shoreline in the area between Digby and Yarmouth.
Is that as clear as mud? Good. I'll just call it home for now.
Participants in the Tintamarre, an Acadian tradition where participants gather together to make as much noise as possible, to remind the rest of the world that Acadians are still here.
Suffice to say, I recently went home to visit my family, participate in the 60th anniversary of the Festival acadien de Clare, which is the oldest Acadian festival in the world. I had the chance to go picking fruit in my parents' orchard, and even go fishing for mackerel. You can see the best bits of the trip over on Steller.
A crab apple tree in my parent's orchard.
But I also went there to do some work for an upcoming project, an audio documentary that will be podcast in the next few months. I can't say much more than that, but stay tuned. I'll keep you posted.
I also had the chance to visit my old alma mater, Université Sainte-Anne, Nova Scotia's only francophone university. It was there that I ran into Sébastien Dol. Sébastien and I were both students at Ste-Anne, and his father was a professor in the science department at the time. When I ran into him, he suggested he take me out to go foraging for mushrooms on the campus, a habit he picked up from his father.