THE CENTRE ISLE
Storytelling on agenda at Cape Breton Regional Library.
Cape Bretoners love to hear a great story about as much as they love to tell a great story.
The Cape Breton Regional Library has begun a series of 12 community storytelling sessions, Our Community in Stories – Seniors Storytelling, around the Cape Breton Regional Municipality and Victoria County, to share and preserve these important parts of our culture.
This storytelling series is funded in part by the federal government’s New Horizons for Seniors program and managed through a partnership of the Cape Breton Regional Library, the Beaton Institute and various local community halls. The program also video records an in-depth interview with one community senior “storyteller” in a separate session.
Ronald LaBelle, the regional library’s current storyteller-inresidence, has already hosted three sessions in Glace Bay, Whitney Pier and Eskasoni and will lead most of the upcoming events, but, due to some scheduling conflicts, I was invited to lead the Port Morien session this past week.
About 50 Morien residents gathered with their tea and oatcakes in the volunteer fire hall and shared stories and reminisces of the community’s storied past.
Most of the stories were sparked by a collection of vintage photographs provided, in a powerpoint presentation, by the Cape Breton University’s Beaton Institute.
Did you know that Port Morien had the first Boy Scout troop in Canada? I didn’t until that evening.
We also heard stories about the Summer People — the gaudily costumed mannequins that appear around the village in a festival every few years (the next one is in 2020). Some of the creations have gone viral on the Internet like the one of a prop skull atop a dummy wearing a NHL jersey with the sign at its feet saying “Leafs fan waiting for their next Stanley Cup.”
Stories and pictures were also shared about the Archibald family who ran the Morien mining concerns. They left their names on all kinds of real estate around the Cape Breton Regional Municipality from Port Morien to the Northside. They also had a grand house in Port Morien complete with a governess for their children that, after the family left the island, tumbled into ruin and now nobody is quite sure where the house even stood.
Stories, especially oral storytelling, are like “earwig songs” — once they get into your brain it becomes almost impossible to dislodge.
I also did service as the regional library’s storyteller and took part in a similar series of community storytelling events. One of them took us to Grand Mira where I heard the community legend of the faerie lights on the Mira River and how they foretold an unexpected death that would visit the community. That particular story involved a car that fell through the ice on its way across the frozen river to a dance on the far bank. The accident took the life of two sisters and their grown sons.
This spring, I was invited to participate in the Highland Arts Theatre new production, “Kitchen Party.”
We were discussing ghost songs and I remembered the Grand Mira story and suggested I could make it into a song. I did just that and it’s in the show performed by a lovely female chorus singing a haunting arrangement by musical director Chris Mounteer and some beautiful choreography by Cynthia Vokey and Courtney Fiddis.
In case that isn’t enough of a plug, the show runs every Saturday night at 8 p.m. for the rest of the summer.
Without that initial storytelling session, I would have never heard of the faerie lights (and most people outside of Grand Mira have not) and it would not have inspired the song and found its place in a stage production.
As a further side note, another Highland Arts Theatre production, “Halo” on Sunday evenings, is based around the “appearance” of a divine figure on the side of a Northside Tim Hortons. In the play it’s Jesus that appears, and many people remember with great clarity it being Jesus, but when it actually happened it was Jesus’ mother, Mary, which people claimed to have seen.
Stories, especially in the retelling, have a tendency to do that.