Apple orchards, blueberry fields, Christmas tree farms. The agricultural activities that a region is successful at very often become one of the iconic landscape images of that place. I could probably name a crop and you would be able to give me a state or province associated with it: Potatoes, corn, wheat? And yet, though these iconic agricultural landscapes may appear timeless, their continued existence is dependent on market forces. Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley is known for its apple orchards, but in the early 20th century, it had actually lost many of its orchards by the 1930s, cut down because they were no longer profitable. Historians have pointed out the irony that the tourism industry was making money off of Annapolis Valley orchards at a time when apple farmers were not.

I mention all this because I came across an article on the CBC today about market pressures currently facing our Christmas tree growers. The industry, according to the report, employees 4,000 people and generates $30 million a year.  In my opinion, the Christmas tree industry is an attractive aspect of our agricultural landscape (in short: I love the landscape of a Nova Scotia Christmas tree farm) and serves an additional leisure/tourism function. Nevertheless, it is just as vulnerable to market forces as any other agricultural activity, in this case, vulnerable to the move towards massive bulk purchases of trees by big box stores.

The loss of orchards usually does not mean the loss of productive agriculture, or at least of arable land (unless they get sold off for housing). The loss of Christmas tree farms would be a little different; they are usually located on land unsuitable for food-growing. Maybe they would be left to return to forest were they to become economically unfeasible.

Grey Jay at Christmas Tree Farm, 2006

References:

“Competition Fierce in Christmas Tree Market” CBC News Online. Dec 21, 2012 9:22 AM AT

Conrad, Margaret. “Apple Blossom Time in the Annapolis Valley 1880-1957″ Acadiensis Vol. 9, No. 2 SPRING/PRINTEMPS 1980), pp. 14-39.

This blog is inactive but not defunct, and I wanted to test out the WordPress Android app to see if it might help me create or post content. The first image is of Lawrencetown Beach from MacDonald Hill. The second is of the bottom of Porters Lake and Lawrencetown Hill, with the ocean just beyond. Two of my favourite ‘home sights.’

It’s a shame, I still have all my Google Alerts set up for this blog, and every week when the alert shows up in my email, I look it over, click on the links that interest me, and then leave those web pages open, waiting, for weeks, until I finally close them in defeat, knowing I will never get around to sharing them. The time and thought that I feel is necessary to make even a simple post of links “worthwhile” has been holding me back. But not today! Two links, with almost no comment, that are related to the Nova Scotia landscape:

• This one is about an urban planning association looking for the public to vote on the best public spaces in Canada. Nova Scotia has a few nominees. Here is the link to the cbc’s article, and the link to the competition website.

• This is a link to an article about the architecture firm MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, their recent awards, and the goals for one of the firm’s partners (Talbot Sweetapple). I like that it’s an interview with Sweetapple, since Brian McKay-Lyons is the higher profile partner. MacKay-Lyons formed his firm in 1985, and joined with Sweetapple in 2005. I may have talked about my appreciate for this firm’s Nova Scotia work before – they are celebrated for their modern designs that are built with a real appreciation of the surrounding landscape and sense of place.

So there you go! Finally, after all this time, I was able to get over myself just enough to share some links. If I can make a habit of it, we might be back in business.

*The image is a model of a MacKay-Lyons house that I built for a first-year landscape architecture class in 2009.

Frankly, I got so much Ian McKay exposure during my MA thesis that I haven’t been able to bring myself to borrow this book from the school library yet. Besides, based on the review, I’ve already seen firsthand most of the primary material the book draws from, and it doesn’t sound like McKay has really developed his previous work on the topic much further. That said, if you’d like to know what one of the few scholars who work(ed) in the field of Nova Scotia tourism history says about the subject, this review is an excellent summary. The reviewer, Dr. Paul W. Bennett, also raises some of the primary problems with McKay’s analysis, mainly McKay’s emphasis on Premier Angus L. Macdonald as being a primary instigator of the provincial mythos, as well as the idea that the tourism impulse resulted in a united sort of provincial image.

The article is here.

I was reading the Complete Works of poet Elizabeth Bishop last night, and was struck again with how perfect Bishop’s poem “Cape Breton” captures what I always thought construction season must have been like on the island during mid-century (and I thought about that quite a bit while I was writing my thesis). In the poem, the construction of the coastal road, abandoned on Sunday, serves to enhance the mystery of the interior. It’s all ocean and hill and mist and road and then a little bus rolls down the dusty road packed with people going about their Sunday business (including “today only two preachers extra, one carrying his frock coat on a
hanger”).

The entire poem is after the jump:

Cape Breton

Out on the high “bird islands,” Ciboux and Hertford,
the razorbill auks and the silly-looking puffins all stand
with their backs to the mainland
in solemn, uneven lines along the cliff’s brown grass-frayed edge,
while the few sheep pastured there go “Baaa, baaa.”
(Sometimes, frightened by aeroplanes, they stampede
and fall over into the sea or onto the rocks.)
The silken water is weaving and weaving,
disappearing under the mist equally in all directions,
lifted and penetrated now and then
by one shag’s dripping serpent-neck,
and somewhere the mist incorporates the pulse,
rapid but unurgent, of a motor boat.

The same mist hangs in thin layers
among the valleys and gorges of the mainland
like rotting snow-ice sucked away
almost to spirit; the ghosts of glaciers drift
among those folds and folds of fir: spruce and hackmatack–
dull, dead, deep pea-cock colors,
each riser distinguished from the next
by an irregular nervous saw-tooth edge,
alike, but certain as a stereoscopic view.

The wild road clambers along the brink of the coast.
On it stand occasional small yellow bulldozers,
but without their drivers, because today is Sunday.
The little white churches have been dropped into the matted hills
like lost quartz arrowheads.
The road appears to have been abandoned.
Whatever the landscape had of meaning appears to have been abandoned,
unless the road is holding it back, in the interior,
where we cannot see,
where deep lakes are reputed to be,
and disused trails and mountains of rock
and miles of burnt forests, standing in gray scratches
like the admirable scriptures made on stones by stones–
and these regions now have little to say for themselves
except in thousands of light song-sparrow songs floating upward
freely, dispassionately, through the mist, and meshing
in brown-wet, fine torn fish-nets.

A small bus comes along, in up-and-down rushes,
packed with people, even to its step.
(On weekdays with groceries, spare automobile parts, and pump parts,
but today only two preachers extra, one carrying his frock coat on a
hanger.)
It passes the closed roadside stand, the closed schoolhouse,
where today no flag is flying
from the rough-adzed pole topped with a white china doorknob.
It stops, and a man carrying a bay gets off,
climbs over a stile, and goes down through a small steep meadow,
which establishes its poverty in a snowfall of daisies,
to his invisible house beside the water.

The birds keep on singing, a calf bawls, the bus starts.
The thin mist follows
the white mutations of its dream;
an ancient chill is rippling the dark brooks.

Wind Turbing in Pubnico, NS. Photo c. Andrew d'Entremont, used under Creative Commons license

One of the topics we addressed a few times over in my landscape architecture classes this year is the issue of our current landscape values and how new technologies may conflict with them. This was again brought to mind for me this week when I saw two news reports on the CBC – one announcing Nova Scotia’s latest commitment to renewable energy, and the other out of Lunenburg about the conflict between heritage planning values and energy conservation values.

A couple in Lunenburg want to put solar panels on their roof; this is against against Lunenburg’s heritage conservation bylaws, which are designed to preserve the town’s internationally recognized historical landscape.   It’s a conflict that we might see a lot more of in the coming years, particularly if the province’s new energy initiative has tangible results. Do solar panels work against the integrity of heritage landscapes? Are wind turbines an ugly blight on our landscape, a utilitarian sight that is merely acceptable, or an icon of sustainability and therefore, potentially, attractive? And if our landscape and coastline is transformed by these new energy endeavours, how are we going to reconcile it to our own vision of what Nova Scotia’s landscape looks like, as well as with our current tourism approach?

The tulips say "spring".

I guess it was rather (okay, extremely) optimistic of me to assume that a Masters of Landscape Architecture degree would provide absolutely any time for composing thoughtful blog posts on the Nova Scotia landscape during term. So here I am on a Saturday night at the end of term, a school year away from my most recent post. I finally have time to think about a topic that still occupies an inordinately prominent place in my thoughts (just ask my fellow students – I can’t shut up about Nova Scotia).

If this job search continues very long, I may just have time to get in a few posts this summer. And it will be more useful for the homesickness than before, as it is looking more and more likely that I will be spending my time here in Ontario. Is there a set of lyrics to “Farewell to Nova Scotia”  for Bluenosers who are landlocked?

In a bit of self-promotion, my thesis was listed on the NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment) website, probably thanks to my excellent thesis adviser. Neat!

Here’s an interesting article about Peter Gough, a landscape artist whose artistic imagination is captured by Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. A snippet:

Having roots in both is the best of two worlds, he says. While they are culturally and geographically close, the prevailing elements of their landscapes are quite different: Nova Scotia, practically surrounded by the sea, feels almost like an island to Gough, while, to him, the dominant feature of New Brunswick is its extensive, storied river systems.

I liked Gough’s emphasis on the full sensory experience of being in the landscape – I think the landscape should be more than what we see, even if the medium we will ultimately use (e.g. painting) is a visual medium.

The Chronicle Herald published an article on the architect Brian McKay-Lyons, his annual architectural project/retreat called Ghost, and this year’s project to reassemble a historic octagonal barn from Annapolis County on his own property on the South Shore. I find McKay-Lyons’ work interesting for his attempt to bring modern yet place-specific architecture to his projects, and I respect his commitment to live in Nova Scotia even when it may not always be professionally advantageous.

However, so far as our cultural/historic landscape goes, I’m not really sure how much value this gesture holds. Taking a building away from its original place turns it into more of an artifact than an object in the landscape – however the cumulation of all these preserved built “artifacts” can still be useful in picturing historic and/or vernacular architecture. While I cringe at the assumption that “saving” an old building by moving it is by definition virtuous and right – and the collecting impulse that accompanies it – I do like the idea that re-using old buildings if worthwhile if only for the purpose of reducing waste. What do you think? Are any of you as conflicted as I am?

I’ll be blogging about Nova Scotia from Ontario for the next two or three years at least. I hoped when I started this blog that it would serve as a way for me to stay connected to Nova Scotia while I bide my time doing this latest degree (which I am taking with hopes of being able to return to Nova Scotia as soon as possible with good career prospects). I hope this blog will help alleviate the homesickness and keep me tuned in to Nova Scotia’s landscape and environmental issues while I am 1,900 km away.

And of course, I am writing this post from Guelph because I finally finished, defended, and formally submitted my MA history thesis! It’s called The Road to Yesterday: Nova Scotia’s Tourism Landscape and the Automobile Age, 1920-1940. You can take a look at it in the Killam Library at Dalhousie University some time after October.

Perhaps the best example of the prominence of automobile tourism in Nova Scotia by the 1930s was the creation of the Nova Scotia Relief Map at the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick Border. Although the relief map was an attraction, it was also a tour guide, put out as a private publication  with an introduction provided by the Minister of Highways, Percy Black. Both the built relief map and the tour guide were owned by the eponymously named company, Nova Scotia Relief Map of Amherst, N.S. (which was owned by two local entrepreneurs). Like most tourism development of the time, it was both entrepreneurial and state-dependent, as it was the initiative of a private citizen, J.T. Rudderham, although it did occasionally receive funds from the provincial government. Although featured conventional advertisements, much of the description was also “advertorial” in tone; it is unclear whether the authors were paid for the in-text advertising (for instance, a recommendation to buy ice cream at a particular drug store during a tour of a town), or were merely healthy boosters for local businesses (in fact providing a tourist service, because how else would they know where to find ice cream?). The Relief Map tour guide was free, and provided highway and town maps, together with descriptions of the possible motor routes, attractions, and tourist amenities.

The Nova Scotia Relief Map and tourist bureau at the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick border, 1931. Courtesy NSARM F91 N85 G94 no. 18

The relief map-as-object was built across the road from the provincial government’s Tourist Information Booth. It was 45 meters long (150 ft) and 18 meters wide (60 ft). It resembled bleachers, but instead of seating, featured a map of Nova Scotia, “built up to show the configuration and topography of the province,” including towns and cities, which were constructed out of blocks of wood meant to represent buildings. In addition to the physical geography of the province, the relief map featured main highways painted in red and secondary roads in yellow, with all the numbering and names corresponding to the Department of Highways’ official system. Apparently like moths, “the visiting motorists crossing the border are attracted by the map, and stopping their cars look it over, and from it secure an unusually informative and complete idea of Nova Scotia,” and at nighttime the map was lit by floodlights.[1]

In a number of ways, the Relief Map epitomized the province’s new tourism culture. It was exclusively for the automobile tourist, since it was only accessible to them, situated directly adjacent to the main highway entry point to the province, and intended to be a road map that would help tourists visualize the journey ahead. The map presented the main attractions of Nova Scotia as twofold:  on one hand, the province had scenery and climate, and on the other, it had a good road system. Tourists were encouraged to visit the province for “its bold headlands and rolling intervals; its ideal Summer climate; roadways that cannot be excelled anywhere; courteous traffic officers who are on duty to aid and protect the tourist; roadways winding along the rivers and lakes for miles and miles.”[2] Nova Scotia’s roads were sure to provide safety and scenery for the motoring family.  It embodied one key landscape definition that was suggested in the introduction to this thesis – the idea that landscape is a capitalist construct that turns both the view and the land into an object to be consumed. Tourists were supposed to be able to use the Relief Map to “secure an unusually informative and complete idea of Nova Scotia.”[3] The rich man’s landscape painting which cemented, to him, his “right” to the land, had been replaced by a goliath diorama for the masses. By making the new terrain to come a landscape already laid out and familiar to them, the Relief Map allowed tourists to feel a sort of ownership over the land that they would soon be exploring. It had the secondary effect of taking away any possible threat tourists might feel in facing the unknown – making Nova Scotia “undiscovered” and yet altogether safe.

[1] Nova Scotia Relief Map, 1930, 9.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.