If it's truth you are looking for, the back roads are best. It hides there, the way the real essence of a place does. That's certainly the case when you drive to the fishing village of Petit-de-Grat. It sits inside a sheltered harbour near the end of Isle Madame -- a tiny island tucked beneath the southern tip of Cape Breton Island. Leave the main highway in Arichat and you are there. Not in Petit-de-Grat yet, but in the real...
Mary Louise Orichefsky talks to Jesus. Every day. He's hard to miss in her Cole Harbour home. His enamel eyes survey her kitchen from the statue on top of the refrigerator. He sprawls in his mother's arms in a charcoal print on the counter. He's on the bookshelves, the tabletops and always on her mind. It's easy in these secular times to scoff at someone who runs rosary beads through her fingers daily. It's even trendy to dismiss that person...
The first time I rode with a Hells Angel it was a quirk of fate. We merged onto the same highway on a cool spring morning. We exchanged glances. I'd covered the outlaw biker scene for years by then, he knew me and I knew him. He nodded, accelerated with a loud throttle twist, moved to the left side of the lane and slowed again. An invitation. I tucked in slightly behind and to the right....
Faith is tangible here on the Woods Harbour wharf. You can see it in the rocks piled neatly in a row like sentries. The carefully placed guardians of the fleet stand locked against the sometimes unstoppable waves that lash this coast.A breakwater is - after all - an act of faith. You can feel it here too. In the cold, coarse fibres of the colourful lines that lash open backed boats to wooden pilings. Thin cords of hope that strain...
The tinkling of wine bottles and the lacka-lack of shopping cart wheels echo through the alley. It's 5am on Christmas Eve and John Gray is on his final run through North-End Halifax. The 46 year-old parks his cart and heads for the dumpsters at the back of the alley. His boots lose grip on the ice and he reaches up to grab the cold steel edge of the nearest one. He laughs it off and ducks his head inside. No...
