Page 63 - From Visits with John A. MacIsaac

ISSUE : Issue 54

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1990/6/1

finished. And then I came home, I and a Whiteley fellow--Raymond Whiteley. We left North Sydney. We couldn't get a snowshoe. We couldn't get a pair of coloured glass? es. So we went down to Bras d'Or, and then had to walk. And the tops of the poles-- there was the odd one out. But all the wire--the wire was under the snow. (The tops of the telegraph poles?) Yeah. We made Englishtown the first day. So we stayed there that night. So we left there the next morning. I believe we went across on the ice. Because we had to keep up from the channel. We were warned to keep up. Walked the ice. "What do you mean?" "Going along with the crowd. Getting talked into that last drink. Or did you forget you were driving?" "I wasn't going to finish it." "So why take it?" "Good question. Why did I?" "To impress the others." "Maybe. And to impress you, I guess." "Thanks, but no thanks. I like you better when you're your own man." "It was dumb of me. Do I get another chance?" "Okay, but hurry up and grow up, will you? I'm getting too old to be dating a kid." Seagram P.O. Box 847, Station H, Montreal, Quebec, H3G 2IV18 Then we were snowblind. Raymond was pretty bad. I wasn't quite so bad, but it was bad enough. We wanted to stay (at a place) on the North Shore. He used to run a lobster factory here some years ago. We stayed there that night. But they wouldn't keep us the next day. So we had to get out. So we got to--I think it's a MacLeod out there on Smokey. So we went in there, it was about half-past 11. The dinner was on, any? way. So poor Raymond, he was sitting in the chair and he went dead asleep. So when din? nertime came, I said, "I think it would be better for him to let him sleep." So that's what he did. Left him alone till 3 o'clock. 'I said, "Well, we've got to make Ingonish tonight. That's all there is to it." (The day before, when) we were coming down, down to Englishtown. Not a track. So. going up. differ? ent times. I had seen a little house off of the road, and there was a field. Then, there was someone living there sometime. So. when we were coming along. I said to Raymond. "That little house--it'11 be buried in the snow. But." I said. "I'm just noticing the very spot where it was at. It might show its form up through the snow." So before, when we were just getting to that, here we met some cattle tracks-- had come out to water. Okay. But you couldn't tell Englishtown. no. till you came right out. And when we came right out there, they wouldn't take us in. So. all right. We were nothing but chunk of snow. So we were brush? ing the snow off ourselves. And a

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