Homeward Bound

January 1, 2026 Edward Staskus Leave a comment

By Ed Staskus

“How does it happen that you’re from Sudbury,” Kayleigh Jurgelaitis asked JT Markunas. He was sitting across from her at Junior’s Bar & Grill.

“World War Two,” JT said, giving the pint in front of him a break. “My father is from Lithuania. My grandmother Antonina was from Russia, a schoolteacher in Saransk. My grandfather Jonas met her during the first war.” The town and an army garrison were in the badlands, four hundred miles southeast of Moscow. “He was an officer in the Russian Imperial Army.”

“You’re part Russian, like Ivan the Terrible?”

“A part of me is, so watch your step.”

“Yes, sir,” Kayleigh said, mock saluting.

“He was conscripted and trained as an officer and sent to serve with an infantry regiment. Back then they said drinkers go to the navy and dimwits to the infantry. He had to keep the dimwits in order.” The Imperial Russian Army counted more than a million men in uniform, most of them conscripted, most of them peasants. There were a quarter million Cossacks, too. Only the Cossacks knew what they were doing.

“He swept my grandmother off her feet and they got married. They had a daughter in 1917. Another daughter was born the next year.” JT’s father was born six years later, in 1924. He was named after King Vytautas the Great. His mother called him Vytas. His sisters called him many things, including the Little Prince. They didn’t always mean it as a compliment.

They lived in Siauliai, which is home to the Hill of Crosses. The hill bristles with tens of thousands of crosses, crucifixes, and statues. It was after Czarist forces crushed the November Uprising of 1831 when the first crosses appeared. By 1918 Lithuania had been missing from the map for more than a hundred years, having been disappeared after the Partition of Poland. Since that time, it had been under the thumb of the Russian Empire.

In late 1919, when Russia was being torn apart by the Bolshevik revolution, Jonas and his family went home to a newly independent Lithuania. “The country didn’t have many officers when they formed their own army,” JT said. “Most of them were men who had been in the Imperial Army. My grandfather fought in the post-war battles around Klaipeda and after that served in the secret service in Kaunas, which was the capital then.”

“Was he a spy?”

“He was more like somebody who kept spies on their toes. After the fighting he got some land for serving his country. They had a house in town and a farm outside of town. Later on, he became the police chief.”

During the interwar years Lithuania was divided into twenty four districts and each district had its own governor and police chief. Farming was what mattered the most. Lithuania and Prince Edward Island are both mostly farm land. Potatoes are number one in both countries.

During the late 1930s the world was changing fast. The Lithuanian world was changing even faster, although it didn’t change so much as fall apart. “The Russians showed up in 1940” JT said. “All of the country’s officials were let go and they put in new people who they wanted to run the show, like the British did here on Prince Edward Island back in the day.”

He signaled Junior for more fried pickles. When Lithuanians go grocery shopping they buy pickles by the bushel. His mother in Sudbury had pickled cucumbers and served them at the dinner table all winter. He remembered sitting at the living room window with a bowl of them, watching snow fall until there wasn’t any place left for it to fall.

The annexation of Lithuania was completed by the autumn of 1940. Businesses were nationalized and collectivization of land began. As the Russian presence expanded the family talked about leaving the Baltics. “They had a chance to leave the country and go somewhere else, but didn’t.”

The stayed on their farm through the winter. Mass arrests and deportations of politicians, policemen, and dissidents began. “My grandfather was in his kitchen plot, wearing a shirt, old pants, and slippers when they drove up, a carload of Russians, and stopped, saying there was something wrong with their engine,” JT said. “He walked over to the car with them to help. They shoved him into the back and drove off.”

He remained under lock and key in the local lock-up until he was finally loaded into a boxcar with many others. Four days later, the 4^th Panzer Group, part of the first phase of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia, destroyed the Russian armored forces in Lithuania. Within a week Nazi Germany seized the whole of the country.

“It was too late for my grandfather. He was transported to a labor camp in Siberia. He was forced to work in a logging forest. He slept in an unheated barrack and starved to death during the winter of 1942.”

“That’s horrible,” Kayleigh said. “My father worked at logging when he first came to Canada, somewhere north of Sudbury,” Kayleigh said. “It wasn’t anything like Russia, though. Nobody starved to death. They didn’t lack for food or shelter. What happened to the rest of your family?”

“It was every man for himself, unless you were a Red,” JT said. “After the deportations they left the farm. It was too dangerous to stay. They went into the forest. But then my grandmother told my father, who was around 18 years old, to go to Vilnius, the capital, and tell his older sister their father had been arrested. She wanted her daughter to know to be careful. He took a train, but as soon as he got there, he got a phone call saying his mother had been arrested.”

“They were still living in the forest?” Kayleigh asked.

“They had built a lean-to near a stream and camouflaged it,” JT said. “His other sister stole food from nearby farms. They had a rifle. The gun didn’t do them any good, though.”

“Most of the Acadians around here were deported during the French and Indian War,” Kayleigh said. “They didn’t have many guns, not that it would have mattered. I’ve heard people call it the Great Expulsion.”

“The way I’ve heard it was that if you were Acadian, you were removed from your home and your land,” JT said. “Your house was burned and the land given to settlers loyal to Britain, mostly immigrants from Scotland and New England.”

The Great Expulsion was the forced removal of Acadians from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island during the French and Indian War. Most of the Acadians were deported, most of them ending up in France, Louisiana, and Massachusetts. Half of them died of disease, starvation, and shipwrecks.

“Was your grandmother sent to a prison camp even though she was Russian?” Kayleigh asked.

“Yes, she was sent to a prison camp. She was transported to the Gulag. She was released in 1956, after Stalin’s death, but not allowed to go back to her home. She was sent to live out her days in a one-room cinder block apartment near the Baltic Sea.”

“What did your father do?”

“After his mother’s arrest he stayed in Vilnius, with his sister and her husband,” JT said. “He stayed there for a month but went home when summer ended. The farm had to be taken care of. It had chickens, some pigs, and draft horses to do the heavy work. It was a dairy farm with more than twenty cows. “He started taking care of things, even though he didn’t know much. He had mostly been a schoolboy until then. He knew the cows had to be milked and the milk had to go to the dairy. But about the fields, he didn’t know anything. That fall he sent farmhands to till the ground. When his nearest neighbor saw them working, he ran across the road yelling and waving his arms.”

“What the hell are you doing?” the neighbor yelled.

“He told him they were preparing the ground for next year,” JT said.

“You’re ruining this year’s seed and you won’t have any grass next year,” the neighbor said.

“He stopped right away. He learned what to do.”

A year later he was on a horse-drawn mower cutting hay when he saw storm clouds gathering. He decided he would walk the horses, lightening the load so they could pull the mower faster, and jumped down from his seat. “As he hopped down, he stumbled and fell on the blades of the mower. The horses stopped. One of his hands was almost cut off. The boy who was helping him ran over. My father told me when the boy saw what happened, he passed out.”

As the war dragged on, JT’s father had problems keeping the farm going. He had only partial use of his injured hand and farmhands were deserting the countryside. He went to a nearby prisoner-of-war camp where he knew they loaned Russians out. They gave him some of them. They kept the farm going but one morning they were all gone. He had to go back to the Germans and ask for more. They were mad about it. One officer insisted he hadn’t looked after them, that he needed to lock them up at night, and that they weren’t going to give him anymore. “I need more,” he said. They eventually gave him more. He kept them locked up after that and they were still there when he fled Lithuania.

“My father had to do that, too,” Kayleigh said. “He had to get out fast in 1944.”

In 1944 the Red Army stormed back into Lithuania. JT’s father fled with a mechanized company of Wehrmacht, whisked up by them as they passed. They had been stationed near the prisoner-of-war camp. They told him he had five minutes to decide whether he was coming with them as they retreated. “They were in a big hurry. They said the Russians were on the other side of the Hill of Crosses. He only had time to fill a bag with a few clothes, a little money, and some photographs of his parents.”

In July the Red Army took Siauliai, inflicting heavy damage on the city. Two months after that the counterattacking German 3rd Panzer Army was destroyed and Lithuania became part of the Union of Socialist Republics. “My father ended up in Sudbury in the late 1940s with a duffel bag and enough loose change to get a sandwich,” JT said. “He got a job with Inco and that’s where he stayed. At first, he worked as a black powder blaster, one of the more dangerous jobs, but over the years the grind got easier.”

“After my father made it to Canada,” Kayleigh said, “he cut down trees to make a living. He moved to Sudbury after he got married. We later moved to Toronto, and from there to Buffalo. No matter, I still think of myself as a Sudbury girl.”

“Where did you live?”

“We lived on Pine Street, around where all the Eastern Europeans lived.”

JT grew up on Stanley Street where it dead-ended a few blocks from Pine Street.

“When were you born?”

“1961.”

JT had been born the same year. Kayleigh was the same age, from the same town, and they had grown up within walking distance of each other. The coincidences were piling up. He had never been sure if coincidence was a good thing or a bad thing. At the moment he thought it was a good thing.

“Do you remember the Canadian Pacific trains blowing their air horns when they curled around the cliff at the back of Stanley Street?”

“I sure do,” Kayleigh said. “Whenever they wailed, I wailed right back.”

“Me, too,” JT said.

They laughed loud enough so that Junior looked their way. They smiled at each other, seeing one another better than ever.

Excerpted from the book “Ebb Tide.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street at http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, out of the past, a double cross, and a fight to the finish.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Muscle from Montreal. JT Markunas, an RCMP constable working the back roads, stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Rolling Up the Oilcloth

December 1, 2025 Edward Staskus Leave a comment

By Ed Staskus

When Mary Smith picks up a fiddle, she’s got about twenty years of life with it behind her. When she picks up a guitar, she’s got about seventy years behind her. When she plays the mandolin, organ, or piano, it’s anybody’s guess.

“We always had music at home,” she said. “My dad played mouth organ and step danced. When I was growing up there was no TV, so the thing to do was have house parties.”

Home was the North Rustico lighthouse on the north-central shore of Prince Edward Island, and later a house her father, George Pineau, built up the road on Harbourview Drive. George and his wife Ruby rolled up the oilcloth on weekends. The kids were sent to bed.

“They would have three or four couples come over, cook up a big feed of salt fish and potatoes, and play music,” said Mary. Her father would dance jigs and play ‘George’s Tune’ on his harmonica.

“On winter nights it was the custom in villages for friends to collect in a kitchen and hold a ceilidh,” explained Joe Riley, who designs and installs kitchens in the surrounding area. “They sang old or new songs set to old music or new music composed in the manner of the old, and maybe a few lies would be shared among friends.”

“We used to sneak down the stairs. I always wanted to be a part of it,” Mary said. “I thought, if I can get a guitar, and learn to play it, I could stay up and play for them. My dad wanted me to play a fiddle, but I wouldn’t bother with it. I kept asking for a guitar and eventually he ordered one.”

It came from Sears, Roebuck & Co. It was a Gene Autry Round-up guitar. Gene Autry was a rodeo performer and crooner. He was “The Singing Cowboy” in the movies. His name was inscribed on the guitar. A cowboy riding herd and swinging a lariat above his head was stencil-painted on the front. She still has it, although it’s not part of her gear on the road.

“I learned how to play a few chords.”

Square dancing was popular in her neck of the woods, and even though there were several good fiddlers, there were no guitar players. As she became more accomplished on her Round-up, she began accompanying fiddlers at local dances.

The North Rustico lighthouse was her home when she was a child. Although not many children are born at home, it was where she was born. She didn’t go far that first day, tired out by the move, and slept the rest of the day.

Only about 1% of babies today are delivered outside of a hospital. Until the 20^th century most women gave birth at home. When someone was ready to go, her friends and relatives and a midwife would help. As late as 1900 about half of all babies were still brought into the world by midwives. By the 1930s, however, after the advent of anesthesia, only one of ten were delivered by them.

Not many were delivered by a neighbor, like Mary. “There was nobody else around. If you stayed home to have a baby, somebody had to help out.”

The lighthouse was built in 1876 on the North Rustico beach, a pyramidal white wooden tower and attached living space. Eight years later it was moved to the entrance of the harbor. George Pineau was the keeper of the lighthouse from 1925 until 1960, when the beam was automated.

“My grandfather was lighthouse keeper for many years, and my father was the keeper for thirty four years. I lived in the lighthouse until I was eight years old.”

Mary grew up on the harbor road, where she has moved back to and lives to this day, as a child running the mile-or-so up and down the road from one end to the other with her brother and sister. Fish factories canned lobster and salt fish, shipping it to the United States and West Indies. Fish peddlers loaded horse-drawn wagons and small trucks, selling cod, herring, and mackerel door-to-door.

A three-story hotel stood on the rise across the street from the present-day Blue Mussel Café.

“My Aunt Angie bought it, tore it down, and built a house with the lumber. My dad was laid back, but his twin sister was a fiery person.” Her father was a fisherman, working hard, but enough of a go-with-the-flow man to be able to live to one hundred and three before he was laid to rest.

In the summer Mary fished for smelt and sold them for a penny a dozen to tourists. When she had a pocketful of pennies she ran to the grocery store on Route 6. “You could buy a lot of candy for three or four cents.”

There were two schools serving the community, one Protestant and one Catholic. “In them days the Protestant and Catholic relationship wasn’t great.” When the Stella Maris school in North Rustico burned down in the early 1950s, classes were organized in the church until the school was rebuilt.

“I was in grade ten when I quit. You can’t quit now, but we went to work early back then.”

Many secondary students dropped out of school. There were plenty of entry-level jobs in agriculture and the fisheries. As late as 1990 the dropout rate on Prince Edward Island was 20%. Today, it is 6%.

She moved to Ontario, worked, came back to Prince Edward Island, met her husband-to-be, Al Smith, a Nova Scotian who was seasonal fishing out of the town harbor, and they got married when she was eighteen years old.

When they had a son and made a home, at the far end of the harbor mouth, it was in North Rustico. “We had a deep-sea fishing business.” Fishing, along with farming and tourism, drive the economy on the island. Shellfish like mussels and lobsters are the mainstay. Mary kept house, raised their son, and lent a hand with the gear. She mended nets, repaired pots, and rafted trap muzzles. She mixed their own cement runners for weights to sink the pots.

“The twine in the traps, what we called the hedge, we used to knit all those by hand. Nowadays they buy all the stuff.”

She stayed on shore more often than not. She was prone to seasickness, a disturbance of the inner ear. It especially wreaks havoc with balance. Christopher Columbus and Lord Nelson both suffered from it.

One day, just as that year’s fishing season was about to start, Al Smith’s hired man told him he was moving west in search of better prospects. He would have to look for another helpmate right away. “Well, Mary would never go because she gets seasick,” said one of their neighbors. That evening she told her husband, “I guess I’m going fishing in the spring.”

“Oh, God, it’ll be too hard for you,” Al said.

“There’s no women fishing in Rustico, and they say I can’t do it, so I’m going to go,” said Mary said. She shortly became the fishing fleet’s first girl Friday.

There are several ways of battling motion sickness. Cast off well-rested, well-nourished, and sober. Insert an ear plug in one ear. Keep your eyes on the horizon. Riding it out is sometimes the only remedy.

“I couldn’t physically lift the traps, they were too heavy, but I could slide them. My husband would haul them up and push the trap to me. I would take the lobster out and rebait the trap, slide it down the washboard to the back with the movement of the boat, and kick it off. There was rope all over, so you had to watch where your feet were, because there’s fathoms of rope and it’s going over fast.

“On a nice morning, going out to work, the sun coming up, we would look back and see the green and red of Prince Edward Island. It was beautiful. It was good work.”

Al and Mary Smith fished together for four years. They fished for lobster, mackerel, cod, and tuna. “It took me four years to get over being seasick,” she said. A sure cure is sitting down under your own roof on dry land four years later.

When her work on the water was done, she cast about for another kind of work.

“I always loved to draw,” she said. “So, when I wasn’t fishing anymore, and our son was grown up, I talked to my husband about it.”

“Why don’t you take a course?” Al said.

“Someday I’ll do that,” Mary daid

Someday came sooner than later and she enrolled in a two-year commercial design course at Holland College in Charlottetown, the provincial capital. The community college is named after British Army surveyor Captain Samuel Holland, offers more than one hundred and fifty degree pathways, and more than 90% of its graduates find employment.

Two years later, art degree in hand, she decided she wanted to teach art. She thought, I’ll go to the University of Prince Edward Island and get a teacher’s license. She went to see the Dean of Education at UPEI.

“What education do you have?” asked Roy Campbell, who was the dean.

“I only have grade ten.”

“Well,” he said.

She had brought a long list of courses she was interested in taking. He looked at the list. “Well,” he said, “you should be realistic. I suggest you not take more than three courses at any one time.”

“That was kind of insulting. He thinks I probably can’t even do three. I’ll show him. I’ll take six. Oh, my God, that was a mistake. It was a hectic time.”

It got more hectic her second year, when she entered the world of higher level courses.

“I took a course on Dante, which was really crazy. I’m never going to make it through this. I thought about it for a while and thought the only way I’m going to be able to pass this course is if I draw it. So that’s what I did.”

She put her all into drawing the Circles of Hell. Her professor had never gotten a paper like that. “He was thrilled with it.” She got an A in the course.

“I got my teacher’s license. I proved that I could do it.”

She taught at a private art school in Summerside and lent a hand part-time at Rainbow Valley in nearby Cavendish during the summer season until, in 1990, her husband of thirty years tied an anchor around his neck and threw himself into the North Rustico Harbor waters.

“He was a great guy. I decided to do a three-dimensional sculpture of Al as he was, as a fisherman.”

At first, her plan was to make the commemorative sculpture in cement. “But then I thought, we had just gotten a new fiberglass boat, so I could do it in fiberglass.” It was an idea that would reinvent her from then until now.

The boat was a Provincial, built by Provincial Boat and Marine Limited in Kensington, less than twenty miles west on the north coast. “Earl Davison had a fiberglass plant in Kensington and was producing great fiberglass boats.” They are known for their speed and durability. They are sometimes called “lifetime boats.” Mary went to Kensington to see Earl, who also owned and operated Rainbow Valley.

“I went to see him, and I said, I’ve got something that I’d like to do in fiberglass, so he said, I’ll come down to look at it. He came down to the house this one day and looked at my plan. I got a call a few days later. He offered me a full-time job instead.”

“I need an artist,” Earl said.

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” she said.

The sculpture of Al Smith got made and Mary went to work full-time at Rainbow Valley in Cavendish, a hop, skip, and a jump away from her home.

She never left. She worked seven days a week, May through September, until the water safari adventure amusement park was purchased by Parks Canada in 2005. It has since been remade into Cavendish Grove and become conserved land with a network of walking trails.

Rainbow Valley, named after Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1919 book “Rainbow Valley,” was thirty six years’ worth of waterslides, animatronics, swan boats, a sea monster, a monorail, roller coaster, castles, suspension bridges, and a flying saucer gift shop. “We tried to add something new every year,” Earl said. “That was a rule.” The other rule-of-thumb was families with smiles plastered all over their faces.

“The most important thing you could do for somebody was to have them all together as a family and help make memories,” said John Davison, Earl’s son who grew up running around the park and as a grown man worked there. “Some of the memories you hear are from people whose parents aren’t with them anymore. But they remember their visits to Rainbow Valley with their parents and those experiences last a lifetime.”

Earl Davison had envisioned the park in 1965, buying and clearing an abandoned apple orchard and filling in a swamp, turning it into ponds. “We borrowed $7,500.00,” he said. “It seemed like an awful lot of money at the time.” When they opened in 1969 admission was fifty cents. Children under five got in free. In 1979 he bought his partners out and eventually expanded the park to sixteen hectares. Most of the attractions were designed and fabricated by him and his crew.

“Rainbow Valley was a unique place to work, because Earl was so creative,” Mary said.

“Mary had a talent,” Earl said. “She could see things, create things, draw, and she seemed to always be able to draw what I told her about.”

He told her about rum running on the island, where there had been a total ban on alcohol from 1901 until 1948. Smugglers laid low off Cavendish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, avoiding Coast Guard cutters, hiding kegs of hard liquor in the sand dunes and woods at night. When the kegs were empty fishermen often used them to salt mackerel in, the smells of rum and salt fish mixing it up.

She sketched out what became an animated simulated dark ride about booze and bootleggers.

“Mary designed it,” said Earl. “She did all the faces for the characters and helped dress them, too.”

At the end, an animatronic man coming home with a keg of rum in a handcart tells his protesting wife it’s molasses. “Don’t you lie to me,” she says. He takes a step between his wife and his handcart. “I would never lie to you, my smuckins, and if this here’s rum, may lightning strike me right here where I stand.” Every day, morning, noon, and night, a thunderous crack of lightning struck him where he stood.

In the early 1990s Mary approached Earl about mounting a music show. It became Fiddlers and Followers, which became the North Rustico Country Music Festival, which is still going strong. The music festival, staged over the course of a weekend every August at the town’s North Star Arena, concerts as well as workshops and jam sessions, brings together some of Atlantic Canada’s best-known down-home, old-time, country, bluegrass, island-fiddling, folk-inspired music makers.

“We’ve never missed a year. We’re getting older, but I still get really pumped up about it.”

Earl and the Rainbow Valley construction crew built a barn and a stage for Fiddlers and Followers, local talent was secured, and they fabricated a 24-foot fiddle to be a beacon at the front of the building.

“Earl provided the opportunity for it to start. I designed the big fiddle.”

“It was a giant fiddle,” Earl said. In the event, it might have been even more gigantic, given the chance. “We coulda gone higher. It was Mary’s fault. She drew it to be twenty four feet, so that’s what we did.” In 2017 the giant fiddle was moved to the New Brunswick front lawn of fiddle champions Ivan and Vivian Hicks.

“Burns MacDonald and I did shows every day,” Mary said.

When she began playing with Burns MacDonald it was the first time in more than thirty years she played anywhere outside of home or at a house party.

He was the piano player. “I would be in the shop painting, doing artwork, and somebody would say, you’ve got to go for the show.” She would drop everything, grab a guitar, and run to the stage. “I never got tired.” Pete Doiron was their fiddler at the evening shows. “He was one of the best on PEI.” They played together three times a day for twenty-minute stretches.

The first time she heard Burns playing the piano she was working with her boss one floor down.

“I have to go see who that is,” she told Earl.

“I run upstairs, and it was this Burns MacDonald. I went over, stood by him, and we started talking. He never stopped playing while he was talking.”

When she went back downstairs, she said to Earl, “You’ve got to hear this guy. He’s unreal.”

Burns MacDonald got hired on the spot and started playing during intermissions of the Roaring 20s show then on stage. The next year he came from his home in Nova Scotia for the whole season, living in a trailer in the park. “He was there fourteen years steady,” said Mary. “Everybody was just blown away by him.”

Shortly before his death Al Smith had gotten his wife a fiddle.

“We were at a show in Charlottetown and the entertainer was a fiddler. I thought, gee, someday I’m going to learn how to play a fiddle.” Her husband thought it was a good idea and bought her one. But when her husband passed away, Mary put the fiddle back in its case and put it away.

She took it out of its case after a bus tour she had organized to Cape Breton. Burns was the entertainer on the tour. “I said something about fiddles, and he said, you’ll never learn how to play the fiddle.” He might as well have thrown down the gauntlet as made a passing remark.

“That wasn’t the thing to say to me,” Mary said.

Since dusting off the fiddle, and learning how to play it, she’s done well enough to receive the Tera Lynne Touesnard Memorial Award at the 2017 Maritime Fiddle Contest. “It was a humbling experience and one I really don’t deserve,” she said. “It’s a great honor, however, and one I’ll always cherish.” She has also been made a lifetime member of the PEI Fiddle Association.

Mary came to the piano by misadventure.

She had agreed to be a co-host during an on-air fundraiser for Make-A-Wish. After finishing her stint at the station, she went home, but kept track of the auction. She noticed a keyboard valued at more than a thousand dollars wasn’t attracting many bids. She decided to prime the pump.

“I started bidding, figuring when it’s high enough, I’ll stop.” However, she got carried away. “I kept bidding. I thought, I can’t let them outbid me. Just as I put my last bid in, time ran out, and I ended up with the keyboard.” It cost her $800.00.

“I couldn’t afford it, but it was a for a good cause,” she said. “When I got it home, I took my guitar, and since I knew the chords on it, I just figured them out on the piano. I have my own style.” Being self-made means doing things your own way, no matter how much teamwork is involved.

When Mary Smith takes the stage at the North Star Arena, whether as one of the key organizers of the North Rustico Music Festival, or with guitar, fiddle, keyboards in hand, she is within sight of the lighthouse she was born in. There are sixty three lighthouses on Prince Edward Island. More than thirty of them are still active. The North Rustico harbor light is one of the operational ones, sending out five seconds of light every ten seconds.

Lighthouses, like music makers, aren’t narrow-minded about who sees their light. “When you play, never mind who listens to you,” said the pianist Robert Schumann. They shine for all to see. Without a guidepost, steaming into a dark harbor would be a mistake. Without music to brighten the day, getting up in the morning might be a mistake.

Music is in Mary’s bones. She plays with several groups, including Mary Smith and Friends, Touch of Country, and the Country Gentlemen. The North Rustico Choral Group, which performs for seniors, was her brainchild ten years ago.

“I see Mary’s performances at Sunday Night Shenanigans,” said Simona Neufeld, a local music buff and fun fan.

“Music has been a big part of my life,” Mary said. “I’ve met so many great people, some really great friendships.” She plays in living rooms, at outdoor venues, and on motor coach day tours. She often plays at community centers.

“Life would be pretty dull if you just sat at home and watched TV. I guess being born in a lighthouse, I have to be brighter. You have to keep going.”

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, out of the past, a double cross, and a fight to the finish.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Muscle from Montreal. JT Markunas, an RCMP constable working the back roads, stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Monster Hunters

Sea Change

November 1, 2025 Edward Staskus Leave a comment

By Ed Staskus

The Sandspit Amusement Park is in the town of Cavendish, on the north shore of Prince Edward Island, about a ten minute drive on the Gulf Shore Parkway from the Coastline Cottages in North Rustico where Oliver, Emma, and their parents were staying for two weeks. One of the rides is the Cyclone roller coaster, the longest coaster in Atlantic Canada. There is a 70-foot high Ferris wheel. There are the Paratrooper and the Tilt-a-Whirl. If you are feeling brave, strap into the Cliffhanger.

The fun is close to the Tourist Mart, where Oliver and Emma went to find a cold drink after racing go-karts in the hot sun all morning. Standing in the shade of the store’s overhang, downing their drinks, they noticed Grandpa’s Antique Photo Shop next door. They went inside.

There were costumes and full-scale sets. Some of the costumes were from the old west and others from the roaring 20s. Some of the sets were an RCMP jail and Klondike Kate’s School for Young Women. “Never mind that school thing,” Oliver said. It was a way to go back in time. There was even a pirate ship.

“Can we be pirates?” Emma asked.

“Of course.”

Once they were dressed as pirates and on the set, while the photographer was arranging their Kodachrome moment, he asked, “Do you know Captain Kidd left buried treasure on Holman Island back in the day?”

“No, where’s that?” Oliver asked.

“It’s an island off this island, tucked in the bay south of Summerside.”

“Who’s Captain Kidd?” Emma asked.

“Just the most fearsome pirate known to man, young lady.”

Emma didn’t like being called a young lady, but bit her tongue about it, although she said, “My brother is the Monster Hunter of Lake County and he could make any old pirate walk the plank.”

“Where is this Lake County?”

“That’s where we live.”

“I see.”

Pirates have been around for a long time. They raided the shipping lanes of ancient Rome. In the Dark Ages the Great Heathen Army, otherwise known as Vikings, were the number one pirates. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided the New World between Spain and Portugal. The English didn’t agree to the divide. They decided to do something about it. Queen Elizabeth allowed her sailors to attack Spanish and Portuguese ships, steal their cargo, and bring it back. The crown got a cut of the proceeds. Almost everybody called it piracy, but in England they called it privateering and it made you a hero, like Captain Kidd, until it didn’t make you a hero anymore. When it didn’t make you a hero anymore, it made you a villain, like Captain Kidd.

“How do you know there is buried treasure on Holman Island?” Oliver asked.

“When he was nearing the end, before the Royal Navy hauled him back to London where he was hung for his villainy, Captain Kidd let it be known some of his treasure was buried on a small island off the coast of a big island, He said the big island was long, narrow, and of a crescent shape. The soil was red, just like here.”

“Has anybody ever found it?”

“Not to this day, young man, although not for want of trying. Every spring for years, when the ice had melted, treasure hunters rowed out to Holman Island with picks and shovels. By the end of the summer, they were always bitter and disappointed. But one summer some children, who were messing around on the island, stumbled upon a handful of gold coins. They turned out to be Spanish pieces of eight.”

“Did they find the rest of the treasure?”

“God knows they plugged away. Horses and ploughs were transported to Holman Island. When a gang of workmen discovered a sea-chest buried twenty feet deep in the sand, they fastened a cable around it. A team of horses started to pull on the chest with a cable, but the cable had other ideas. The horses and workers were pulled down and swallowed up, never to be seen again!”

“Oh, my,” Emma said.

“Since then, the Curse of Captain Kidd has kept most folks away.”

Staying away became the watchword. “Double, double, toil and trouble.” Very little good ever comes about when a curse has been cast.

Oliver and Emma struck a pose, the photographer’s camera flashed, and the next instant the brother and sister found themselves on the deck of the Adventure Galley. It was Captain Kidd’s ship. When the pirate first got it in 1696, and was sailing it down the Thames River to the North Sea, he neglected to salute a Royal Navy ship at Greenwich, as was customary. The Royal Navy ship fired a shot over his bow to make him show respect. Captain Kidd’s crew lined up on the starboard side, turned around, leaned over, and slapped their bare backsides.

No sooner were Oliver and Emma on the Adventure Galley than three of its cannons boomed. The stench of gunpowder filled the air. It smelled like sulfur and charcoal. The cannonballs fell deliberately short. It was Captain Kidd’s way of saying “Put up or shut up.” The Adventure Galley was more than ready to do battle with the Quedagh Merchant, an Armenian merchant ship. A Jolly Roger flag was flying from the stern and another black flag that said “Surrender or Die” in white letters was flying from the bowsprit. The pirate ship was equipped with thirty four heavy cannons and crewed by one hundred and fifty men. It was fitted with oars, making it more maneuverable in battle when the wind had died down and other ships were dead in the water.

Oliver and Emma ran to the whipstaff where Captain Kidd was standing on the topmost deck above his helmsman. He directed the helmsman through a hatchway. He looked down at Oliver and Emms and snorted, “Get those wee ones the hell away from here.” A pirate with one hand and one eye stepped up. The missing hand was a hook and the missing eye was covered with a patch. He snagged Oliver with his hook, gave Emma the evil eye, and dragged both of them away. He tossed them onto the poop deck.

Pirates were jumping up and down at the gunwales, yelling their heads off, waving their pistols in the air, and firing them off. Some of them swung cutlasses. The captain of the Quedagh Merchant wasn’t intimidated. He had enough crew to put up a fight. He commanded them to bring their swivel guns to bear.

That was too much for Captain Kidd. He ordered his crew to aim for the sails, yards, and rigging. Within minutes the Armenian ship was dead in the water. The pirates launched two boats, covered by musket fire from the Adventure Galley, and boarded their pigeon at both the bow and stern. They knocked out the ship’s captain, even though he was an Englishman with a hard head. The battle was fearsome, but over in just minutes. They took the surgeons, carpenters, and coopers prisoner. Those who agreed to be pressed into service were spared. The rest got the consequences explained to them.

Oliver and Emma were appalled. The noise, confusion, and violence wasn’t like any pirate movie they had ever seen. Nobody looked like Jake and the Neverland Pirate. They didn’t look like Errol Flynn, who was the intrepid Captain Blood, or even like Johnny Depp, the cunning Pirate of the Caribbean.

Captain Kidd wore a feathered hat and a silk scarf tied around his neck, but the rest of the pirates looked like goons dressed in rags. Most of them were barefoot and bearded. They stank like they had never taken a bath. They all had bad teeth. Some of them had hardly any teeth at all. Oliver and Emma looked more like pirates than the real pirates did. No schoolbook had prepared them for the awful spectacle.

Before they knew it, they were being marched mid-ship. “We have no use for them,” Captain Kidd said. “Throw them over.” Hands reached for them, tied weights to their ankles, and in an instant they were thrown overboard.

They started to sink right away, but the next thing they knew they were back in Grandpa’s Antique Photo Shop. They were soaking wet. When they were getting out of their soggy costumes a gold coin fell of Oliver’s pocket and rolled under a table.

“Did you have an exciting time?’ their photographer asked, quietly reaching for the Spanish piece of eight.

“Too exciting!” Emma declared. “The past isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

When they got back to the Coastline Cottages their father grilled burgers while their mom steamed mussels. Bill and Michelle, the proprietors who lived in a blue house on the other side of the swimming pool, had brought them three pounds of the shellfish. They had dinner on the deck in the dusk. Their mother and father shared a bottle of white wine vinted on the southeast end of the island while they had soda water flavored with lemons. A flock of cormorants flew past on their way to bed.

“All right, let’s get everything cleaned up and get to bed,” their father said. “We’re going home tomorrow. We have a long drive and another long drive back to Ohio the day after that. Have you two enjoyed yourselves here?”

“Yes, dad,” Emma said. “When are we coming back?”

“How about you, Ollie? Are you up for that?”

“You bet! Grandpa said we could get a ride in a gangster getaway car next summer. I can’t wait.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com.

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, out of the past, a double cross, and a fight to the finish.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Muscle from Montreal. JT Markunas, an RCMP constable working the back roads, stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Monster Hunters

Bye Bye Mr. Babadook

October 1, 2025 Edward Staskus Leave a comment

By Ed Staskus

Oliver and Emma were at MacKenzies Brook. The Shadow Man they had run into the night before was with them. Their parents were asleep at the Coastline Cottages in North Rustico, two miles away. Their father was snoring lightly. Their mother was dreaming. In her dream she was staring into a green fog and hoping nothing monstrous walked out of the sea fret. When something did she woke up in a cold sweat.

The Shadow Man was Rene Rossicot, long dead but somehow still alive. The Rustico lands were named after him. Oliver and his sister were the Monster Hunters of Lake County. He and Emma, who was his right hand man, were from Ohio. They were on Prince Edward Island on vacation for two weeks.

They had snuck out of their cottage and gotten on the all-purpose path. It was near dawn and quiet. The mice and rabbits were asleep. The foxes who hunted them were asleep, too. The path paralleled the Gulfshore Parkway on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. MacKenzies Brook was on a bluff with a dirt track down to a beach. Fishermen often cast for bass there. Oliver and Emma weren’t after fish. They were after Mr. Babadook. When they got there they looked for the Cactus Pot rock formation they had heard about, but it wasn’t there anymore. Hurricane Fiona had blown it down in 2022. It was the most intense storm to ever hit Prince Edward Island.

“You said this was the best place to find Mr. Babadook on this one day,” Oliver said to Shadow Man.

“Yes,” Shadow Man said.

“Why is that?”

“Once a month a new moon rises above the eastern horizon at sunrise. On that day the moon then travels across the daytime sky with the sun. At the moment when night and day are evenly spaced is the moment when Mr. Babadook stands on the beach and makes his plans for the coming month. It is a kind of ritual with him.”

Mr. Babadook lived rent free eighteen miles away in a damp corner in the basement of the Haunted Mansion in Kensington. He lived rent free because nobody was aware he was there. The Haunted Mansion had been a potato warehouse when trains used to run past its back door. When the railways on Prince Edward Island were abandoned it was sold and converted into the Kensington Tower and Water Gardens.

The new owners were anglophiles and rebuilt the potato warehouse into a Tudor-styled manor house. In the early 2000s it was sold to the owner of the Rainbow Valley Amusement Park. He converted it into a spook house. It was plenty scary.

Mr. Babadook is a thoughtform that comes from the collective unconscious. He has his own desires and free will. He is like a living being who lives inside another living being’s head. He haunts those who read his pop-up book, which is disguised as a children’s book. He is a shape shifter, taking the form of any person, animal, or insect. He has been known to take the form of a woman’s dead husband and convincing her to give him her son so he can destroy him. Moving about at night he often takes the form of a Norwegian rat.

“If Mr. Babadook has been on the island for a hundred years, like you said yesterday, how old is he?” Emma asked.

“As old as the bogeyman,” Shadow Man said.

Mr. Babadook was a bogeyman who wore a black coat and top hat. He had claw-like hands and a chalky face. He haunted those who read the pop-up book that he hid inside of. As they became more frightened he became more horrible.

“What are we going to do with him if he shows up?” Emma asked.

“I don’t know,” Shadow Man said.

“I know,” Oliver said. “Since he’s a thoughtform he can’t be overcome by ordinary means. But, since he’s an avatar of fear, Mr. Babadook can be defeated through acceptance.”

“What is an avatar?” Shadow Man asked, his 18^th century brain drawing a blank about the word.

“It’s sort of an impersonation created to manipulate others, like Mr. Babadook does,” Oliver said.

“What do you mean when you say defeated through acceptance?”

“I think I mean, if you stop being scared of him, and come to terms with those bulging eyes of his staring you in the face, he loses his power over you. He‘s a master of inciting fear, so I’m not saying it’s easy to do. It can be like trying to hold back a flood with toothpicks.”

Oliver, Emma, and Shadow Man were hiding inside a clump of Marram grass on the side of a dune when an Ambush Bug flew past them and landed on the beach. Ambush Bugs are part of the Assassin Bug family. They are yellowish, usually living among sunflowers. They are not picky eaters, but prefer other insects. Any other insect that gets too close is grabbed with strong front legs and held fast. The Ambush Bug jabs its sharp peak into the other bug and its insides are sucked out.

As soon as the bug landed there was a flash and in an instant Mr. Babadook was himself. He pulled a pair of sunglasses out of an inside pocket and stood facing the rising sun. The sky was clear as glass. Oliver, Emma, and Shadow Man walked down the dune and stopped behind Mr. Babadook. Nobody said anything, although Shadow Man knew their archenemy knew they were there.

When Mr. Babadook whirled around, lashing at them with his claw-like hands, Oliver and Emma jumped back. Shadow Man stood his ground, The claw-like hands went through him without leaving a scratch.

“If I had known it was you I wouldn’t have wasted my time,” Mr. Babadook said. “But I have other ways of dealing with you, as soon as I’m done with these children.”

“There isn’t going to be any dealing,” Oliver said. “You’ve overstayed your welcome on this island. It’s time for you to go.”

“I’m not going anywhere, my young boy, and that goes for your little sister, too.”

“Hey,” Emma said. “I’m the older one, mister.”

“Yes, you are going somewhere, because once we let everybody know there isn’t anything to fear but fear itself, your days here will be numbered,” Oliver said.

“Where have I heard that before?”

“I don’t know, but you’re going to hear a lot of it from today on.”

Without warning, Mr. Babadook shape shifted into a mean-looking wolf and snarled. He advanced on Oliver and Emma, who had a jackknife in her back pocket, but quickly realized it wasn’t going to do them any good.

A fisherman had pulled into the parking lot a few minutes earlier. He unpacked his gear from his pick-up truck. He had just started down the dirt path to the beach when he spied the wolf threatening Oliver and Emma. He cast his line and hooked the butt of the wolf, who barked in protest. There was a flash and the wolf shape shifted back into Mr. Babadook.

“Let me go if you know what’s good for you!” he roared.

The fisherman knew what was good for him. He reeled the black-clad fiend in, dragging him through the beach sand and up the dirt path. When he had him at the top of the bluff he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and tossed him into his wicker fish basket. Mr. Babadook raged inside the basket, trying to slash his way out of it, threatening doom to everyone seen or unseen, known or unknown. Before he could tear the bag apart the fisherman overturned it into a cooler and secured the lid.

“What are you going to do with him” Emma asked.

“He’s going back into the deep, from whence he came,” the fisherman said. He threw the cooler into the ocean. It floated up the Gulf of St Lawrence, past Red Bay and Port Hope Simpson, past Newfoundland and out into the Labrador Sea. It floated past Greenland and finally landed on the northwest coast of Iceland at Samuel Jonsson’s Art Farm at the tip of the Westfjords near the town of Selardalur.

Mr. Babadook spent the rest of his days there, having lost his pop-up book, fishing for herring, which he ate with caramelized potatoes, and painting portraits of himself. He sold the paintings to the occasional tourist who took the time and trouble of driving the hundreds of miles from Reykjavik.

The locals assumed he was a troll, come down from the mountains, since he only ate after it got dark. Everybody knew trolls had issues with sunlight. He told anybody who asked that his mother was Gryla, the most feared troll in Iceland, so nobody messed with him. Parents warned their children to be vigilant around the top-hatted creature, and that is what all the children of the Westfjords did from then on.

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, out of the past, a double cross, and a fight to the finish.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Muscle from Montreal. JT Markunas, an RCMP constable working the back roads, stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Monster Hunters

Crashing Into Shadows

September 1, 2025 Edward Staskus Leave a comment

By Ed Staskus

Emma was fast asleep in the back seat, her head slumped on her brother’s shoulder, the night they discovered the truth about Hat Man. Oliver had heard of him, but since they were leaving Prince Edward Island in a few days, going home to Ohio, he had almost given up hope of tracking him down. Even though he was only 10 years old, he was as a rule prepared for the worst when it came to monster hunting, but always hoped for the best.

Oliver was the Unofficial Monster Hunter of Lake County. His older sister Emma was his right hand man. Their parents were in the front seats, their father driving and their mother scrolling through her cell phone. It was nearing 11 o’clock. They had been in Charlottetown, at the Irish Hall, where they had seen the band Fiddler’s Sons They were returning to the Coastline Cottages in North Rustico, where the family had been staying for nearly two weeks.

They took a wrong turn leaving Charlottetown and ended up on Rt. 15 instead of Rt. 223. “No matter,” their father said. “We’ll drive up near Brackley Beach and from there all we have to do is go west to North Rustico.” Getting back to their cottage from there meant going through Rustico, Rusticoville, South Rustico, and Anglo Rustico, which were along the way.

North Rustico was founded around 1790. Nobody is sure exactly when. It is on a natural harbor on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The environs were home to a remnant Acadian population who fled British capture and deportation during the Seven Years War. René Rassicot, a French pioneer, was one of the first settlers in North Rustico. All the rest of the Rustico towns take their name from him.

They were driving down a dark stretch of Route 6 between Brackley Beach and Cymbria when the road was engulfed by green fog. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there was somebody in front of their car. He was a tall man wearing an old-fashioned flat brim hat and a long black coat. Their father slammed on the brakes but it was too late. Their car hit the man and sliced through him like he was a shadow.

“Stay here,” Oliver’s father said, coming to a stop and getting out of their Jeep Cherokee. He was shaken. He looked all over with a flashlight. Nobody was lying dead in the road or on the shoulder. Emma woke up. Oliver twisted around and peered through the rear window.

“What’s going on?” Emma asked.

Oliver climbed out of the back seat. His sister followed him. Their mother kept her hand on her cell phone, ready to call 911.

“He came out of nowhere,” their father said. “He was in the middle of the road but now he’s nowhere.”

“I have nowhere else to go,” a voice said. “This is all I have.”

Oliver, Emma, and their father jumped, looking for the voice. A man walked out of the night and fog towards them. He was still wearing his old-fashioned flat brim hat. He was more shadow than flesh and blood. He was carrying an aspergillum in his right hand. It is a liturgical implement used to sprinkle holy water. It looked like a mace.

“It’s my double-edged sword, in case my sacred water doesn’t work on the fiend,” he said. “In that case I will send him back to Hell by smashing him with God’s instrument.”

“We thought we hit you in the road. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I am all right,” the man said. His voice had an echo to it. He had a French accent.

“Who are you?”

“He’s the Hat Man,” Oliver said.

The Hat Man is a phantasm. He goes back to ancient times. He is a night-time vision that paralyses men and women with fear and sucks the breath out of them. He often appears next to one’s bed somewhere between sleep and consciousness. He is a silent nightmare. “I was utterly paralyzed with terror, as if fear had frozen me from the inside out,” said a woman who lived on Femanagh Rd. in Anglo Rustico. “I couldn’t sleep for trying all night.”

“I am Rene Rassicot, after who these lands are named,” the man said, fog rolling off his shoulders. “Some call me the Hat Man but I am not. I am Shadow Man. I do not terrorize the living or the dead. I watch over those living on my lands, especially at night, when their dreams leave them exposed to danger.”

“You lived and died here hundreds of years ago,” Emma said. “Are you immortal?”

“All creatures, except for man, are immortal because they are ignorant of death. Being a man, I am not immortal, although I was once threatened with immortality, which is more terrible than being threatened with death.”

“Are you alive now?”

“Yes and no, young girl. My advanced age has resigned me to being Shadow Man. I miss my family. I miss the smell of coffee and tobacco.”

“If you’re not the Hat Man, who is?” Oliver asked, getting down to the business of monster hunting.

“The real Hat Man is Mr. Babadook, not me. He prowls these coastal lands from Brackley Beach to Stanley Bridge. He is furtive and cold-hearted. He strikes a pose in a beaver pelt top hat. He wears black mouth paint and his long spindly fingers are knife-like claws. He feeds on bowls of worms. He is my enemy.”

“Who is Mr. Babadook?” Emma asked.

“He is the fiend who has oppressed me these past one hundred years,” Shadow Man said. “I have been confused with him from the beginning, since 1925, when Mr. Babadook was brought to the island in a children’s book.”

“He came out of a book?” Oliver asked.

“Yes, a spectral pop-up book.”

The first pop-up book was “Little Red Riding Hood” published in 1855. It was called a scenic book. Seventy years later the big bad wolf had become Mr. Babadook. He and the wolf shared the same kind of teeth and appetite.

“What does he do?” Oliver asked.

“He knocks on the door and leaves his red pop-up book on children’s night stands.”

“What happens if children read the book?”

“When they open the book they read, ‘You can make friends with a special one.’ By the time they get to the middle of the book they read, ‘You cannot get rid of me!’ After that they can’t help turning page after page. When they finish the pop-up book Mr. Babadook moves into their basement and gains control of the house and the family. In the end what happens is madness.”

“That sounds terrible,” Emma said. “Why hasn’t anybody stopped him?”

Their father wanted to say there wasn’t any such thing as dream police, although he conceded there were dream monsters. Before he could, however, Oliver piped up.

‘Dad, can Shadow Man come with us? He could sleep in Cottage No.1 since it’s empty. We could search for Mr. Babadook tomorrow. Maybe if we put our heads together we could put a stop to what he has been doing. We don’t have anything planned, do we?”

His mother was all set to say they had plenty planned and Shadow Man should go back to where he cane from, but before she could get a word out her husband said, “Get in the back. My son and you can go look for Mr. Babadook tomorrow, although you should know we are going home to Ohio in a few days.”

“What about me?” Emma said, knowing she would be in on the hunt, no matter what.

“We will find him,” Shadow Man said.

What he didn’t say was Mr. Babadook might find them first. The top-hatted bogeyman was always on the prowl for children. Shadow Man looked at the two children in the car and began to make plans.

Emma was dozing in the back seat, her head slumped on her brother’s shoulder, the night they discovered the truth about Hat Man. Oliver had heard of him, but since they were leaving Prince Edward Island in a few days, going home to Ohio, he had almost given up hope of tracking him down. Even though he was only 10 years old, he was as a rule prepared for the worst when it came to monster hunting, but always hoped for the best.

Oliver was the Monster Hunter of Lake County. His older sister Emma was his right hand man. Their parents were in the front seats, their father driving and their mother scrolling through her cell phone. It was nearing 11 o’clock. They had been in Charlottetown, at the Irish Hall, where they had seen the band Fiddler’s Sons. They were returning to the Coastline Cottages in North Rustico, where the family had been staying for nearly two weeks.

They took a wrong turn leaving Charlottetown and ended up on Rt. 15 instead of Rt. 223. “No matter,” their father said. “We’ll drive up to Brackley Beach and from there all we have to do is go west to North Rustico.” Getting back to their cottage from there meant going through Rustico, Rusticoville, South Rustico, and Anglo Rustico, which were along the way.

They were driving down a dark stretch of Rt. 6 between Brackley Beach and Cymbria when the road was engulfed by green fog. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there was somebody in front of their car. He was a tall man wearing an old-fashioned flat brim hat and a long black coat. Their father slammed on the brakes but it was too late. Their car hit the man and sliced through him like he was a shadow.

“Stay here,” Oliver’s father said, coming to a stop and jumping out of their Jeep Cherokee. He was shaken. He looked all over with a flashlight. Nobody was lying dead in the road or on the shoulder. Emma woke up. Oliver twisted around and peered through the rear window.

“What’s going on?” Emma asked.

Oliver climbed out of the back seat. His sister followed him. Their mother kept her hand on her cell phone, ready to call 911.

“He came out of nowhere,” their father said. “He was in the middle of the road but now he’s nowhere.”

“I have nowhere else to go,” a voice said. “This is all I have.”

Oliver, Emma, and their father whirled, looking for the voice. A man walked out of the night and fog towards them. He was still wearing his old-fashioned flat brim hat. He was more shadow than flesh and blood. He was carrying an aspergillum in his right hand. It is a liturgical implement used to sprinkle holy water. It looked like a mace.

“It’s my double-edged sword, in case my sacred water doesn’t work on the fiend,” he said. “In that case I will send him back to Hell by smashing him with God’s instrument.”

“We thought we hit you in the road. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I am all right,” the man said. His voice had an echo to it. He had a French accent.

“Who are you?”

“He’s the Hat Man,” Oliver said.

The Hat Man is a phantasm. He goes back to ancient times. He is a night-time vision that paralyses men and women with fear and sucks the breath out of them. He often appears next to one’s bed somewhere between sleep and consciousness.. “I was utterly paralyzed with terror, as if fear had frozen me from the inside out,” said a woman who lived on Femanagh Rd. in Anglo Rustico. “I couldn’t sleep for trying all night.” He is a silent nightmare

“No, I am Rene Rassicot, after who these lands are named,” the man said, fog rolling off his shoulders. “Some call me the Hat Man but I am not. I am Shadow Man. I do not terrorize the living or the dead. I watch over those living on my lands, especially at night, when their dreams leave them exposed to danger.”

“You lived and died here hundreds of years ago,” Emma said. “Are you immortal?”

“Are you alive now?”

“Yes and no, young girl. My advanced age has resigned me to being Shadow Man. I miss my family. I miss the smell of coffee and tobacco.”

“If you’re not the Hat Man, who is?” Oliver asked, getting down to the business of monster hunting.

“I’ve never heard of Mr. Babadook?” Emma said.

“He came out of a book?” Oliver asked.

“Yes, a spectral pop-up book.”

“What does he do?” Oliver asked.

“He knocks on the door and leaves his red pop-up book on children’s night stands.”

“What happens if children read the book?”

“That sounds terrible,” Emma said. “Why hasn’t anybody stopped him?”

Their father wanted to say there isn’t any such thing as dream police, although he conceded there were dream monsters. Before he could speak, however, Oliver piped up.

“What about me?” Emma said, knowing she would be in on the hunt, no matter what.

“We will find him,” Shadow Man said.

What he didn’t say was Mr. Babadook might find them first. The top-hatted bogeyman was always on the prowl for children. Shadow Man looked at the two children in the car and began to make plans and precautions.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street at http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland at http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East at http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal at http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, out of the past, a double cross, and a fight to the finish.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Muscle from Montreal. A constable working the back roads stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Atlantic Canada

At the Blue Cat Cafe

August 1, 2025 Edward Staskus Leave a comment

By Ed Staskus

Some places are in the middle of nowhere. Other places are around the corner. The Bistro Le Chat Bleu is both in the middle of nowhere and around the corner. It is somewhere special. Locals in Baie Verte eat there. Others come down Route 16 from Sackville. Some drive from Nova Scotia, the province southeast of New Brunswick. Many call the place the Blue Cat.

“Fabulous food at the Blue Cat,” said Robert Thomas, front man of the New Brunswick roots band Robert Thomas and the Sessionmen. “Gisele has created an oasis off the beaten path not to be missed.” The band is on the road more often than not. They know where to get a home-cooked kind of meal when they are away from home.

“We pay homage to a classic bistro tradition,” said Gisele Landry. She is the owner and operator of the Blue Cat. She turns the lights on every morning. “We devote themselves to providing flavorful food in a cozy setting, using ingredients that, where possible, are sourced here. We buy from local farmers and friends including Bancroft Farm, Wysmykal Farm, and Portage Pork. We love growing our own food, too.” There is a garden outside the back door.

The back door and garden are on the banks of a creek, some wetlands, and the Northumberland Straight, the body of water that separates New Brunswick from Prince Edward Island. The nearby Baie Verte Nature Preserve helps support eel-grass beds, tidal creeks, and salt marshes. Migratory birds have come and gone from the timeless past.

The building that houses the eatery is nearly two hundred years old. It was built in the 1830s in a post and beam style. “It was built as a small church while a larger church was being built,” Gisele said. “When the larger church was finished the smaller church was moved across the street and became a store. The back of that church became the front of the store.”

Robert Goodwin bought the building in 1880 and renamed it Goodwin’s General Store. The town of Baie Verte was flourishing. There were several blacksmith shops, a hotel, and a train station. The general store was in business for generations. It became a community hub. Robert Goodwin’s grandson took up the task of providing necessities, from buttons to dry goods to farming implements, after World War Two.

In the 1980s another family acquired the building and made it into a variety store. When they went out of business a second family worked it as an antique shop, but quit after a few years. “They complained that when November rolled around it was too cold inside the building,” Gisele said. “They abandoned it.”

Gisele’s background is in contemporary dance and the arts. “But sometimes life tosses you an opportunity. I discovered this tiny village with it’s beautiful coastal landscape and its big old general store which I thought I could turn into a bistro. I like to say I created the place I was looking for but couldn’t find.”

She began trying to buy the building in the early 2000s. “By then it belonged to Mike Spence, who was the great grandson of the original owner. He was reluctant to sell because it had finally come back into his family. It took him two years to decide.” It eventually took meeting Mike’s mother. Gisele and her partner were invited to dinner. “She must have approved of us because before long Mike decided to sell.” By then it was 2006.

“My partner and I were both foodies but he had more experience. He had gotten through university by working in restaurants and had gotten to be a very good cook. The only cooking I had really done was on a 50-foot sailboat when I was working in eco-tourism in British Columbia.” She had moved from her hometown of Moncton, New Brunswick to the west coast in the 1980s. “I stayed for nearly 20 years but came back after a relationship I had there broke up and I was wanting to spend more time with my family, especially my folks.”

She and her partner started renovations in 2007. “It was freezing cold,” she said. “There was no insulation in the walls. The wiring was ancient.” They stripped the interior. “We exposed the beams and repurposed as much as we could.” They insulated the building and rewired everything. “There was no running water. We had to do plumbing, do a septic system, and dig a well.” They did most of the work themselves, nights and weekends and summers. Gisele had summers off, being a schoolteacher, although it meant no time off.

She had bought a house in Shediac, a 25 minute drive from Baie Verte, and was teaching French and French culture in an elementary school. When she finally had running water, indoor plumbing, and insulation, she sold her house and moved to Baie Verte.“ The renovations began to move more quickly then,” she said. “We lived in a small room in the back. We had a table, chairs, and a bed.” She has since moved upstairs where she maintains a bigger and more habitable loft apartment.

In the end, renovating the general store took nearly nine years. “Plenty of people said we were crazy. They said you’re in the middle of nowhere, it will never work. When we finally opened I didn’t know what would happen, but it was the community and the cottagers who surround us who made it happen. The first day many folks showed up. I was serving, my partner was in the kitchen, and we had one helper. At the end of the evening a young man, a high school student, said he wanted to help. He came back with a resume. It was everybody around here who made it take off. Within a year we had ten full-time and part-time employees.”

The Blue Cat opened on June 21, 2015. “Ça été un coup de coeur” Gisele said. In other words, “Creating this place was a labor of love.” It was Father’s Day. “My dad always supported me but he passed away six months before we opened. I didn’t consciously open on Father’s Day, but maybe subconsciously it was meaningful for me.”

The bill of fare at the Blue Cat is eclectic. “We’ve got Greek items, Tuscan items, and Canadian items. We stress fresh, made in house, organic and local as much as possible. I love to travel and experience new flavors, but if I can’t I travel I go to cookbooks. I experiment with recipes, make them my own. I’m curious and like investigating other cultures.”

Early in the 2025 season she offered up Espagut de Marisco, brought back from Madeira, an archipelago west of Morocco. “After a long hike while we were there, a group of us found a simple place to tuck in for a bite to eat,” Gisele said. “A large cooking pot was placed on the table. Lifting the lid, we were met with the wonderful aroma of seafood. Clams and fish of all sorts in a delicious broth with pasta. It was heaven!”

A mid-summer 2025 addition to the chalk board behind the counter, which is the only menu, was a karaage crunch bowl. It is a Japanese dish, chicken marinated with soy sauce, ginger, and mirin, then coated in starch, and finally deep-fried until golden brown and crispy. “I didn’t know what it was until we made it.” She didn’t know until she did. “That kind of thing satisfies my curiosity and creativity.”

The creativity goes hand in hand with intention. Creativity is facing a blank page and taking a leap of faith. Intention is the first step in getting it done. The chalk board menu behind the front counter with its diverse offerings is the proof of the pudding.

“The Blue Cat is definitely a place to stay away from, that is, if you don’t appreciate gracious service with a smile, a charming and airy atmosphere, and delicious food,” said Carolyn Stampeen, a photographer from Nova Scotia. “And I do mean delicious food. They have a limited menu that changes frequently, but they manage to have options for meat and fish eaters as well as vegetarians. The food is unique and freshly prepared. The first bite of my fish cakes made it instantly apparent they really do make their own food and I appreciate that they don’t rely on salt and fat to make their food taste good.”

There are some dishes at the Blue Cat that have been on the menu since day one. One of them is the French Onion Soup. “I tried taking it off once, but I got so much feedback that it went back rather quickly,” Gisele said. “What’s comfortable for me is having a portion of the menu that stays and another portion that can change from year to year. I throw in occasional rotating features. We try to balance staying power with new culinary experiences.”

There is a Francis-Barnett motorcycle standing on its kickstand between the kitchen and the front counter. It is a lightweight bike nicknamed Fanny-B by enthusiasts. It was manufactured in England from 1919 to 1966. it was popular for its innovative design, two-stroke engine, and speediness.

“A pal’s father on the west coast had one,” Gisele said. “My former partner loved motorcycles. When he spotted one for sale in Montreal, he picked it up. We put it in the front window for a while. It attracted a lot of attention. Our thinking was to attract men. Women sometimes say they can’t get their husbands to come to the bistro because their husbands say there’s nothing for them to eat. They want their meat and potatoes. When they saw the motorcycle they became a little more willing to come in and give us a try.”

Gisele planned on restoring the motorcycle and riding it on the back roads. “But I haven’t had the time. The bistro takes most of my time and energy. I never say never, though. It’s light enough and small enough for me, so maybe it will happen.”

Across the street from the Blue Cat is a cairn. A weatherbeaten Monuments Board of Canada bronze tablet is set into the front of it. The tablet is engraved in English and French. “Prehistoric Indian Portage. This route from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Bay of Fundy was the chief means of communication between Quebec, Isle Royale and Chicnecto. The portage connected the Baie Verte and Missaquash rivers.”

There aren’t any Indians in canoes hunting game and trading up and down the riverways and coast anymore. But if there were and they happened to be riding motorcycles instead of paddling canoes, the Blue Cat would be a good place for them to stop for lunch. They wouldn’t be able to read the chalkboard menu, wouldn’t have any idea what coffee is, but the fresh local fare, like wild mushroom ravioli and salmon fish cakes, would be right up their alley.

Photograph by Vanessa Staskus.

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, out of the past, a double cross, and a fight to the finish.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Muscle from Montreal. A constable working the back roads stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Ebb Tide

Back in Action

July 1, 2025 Edward Staskus Leave a comment

By Ed Staskus

“Oy, where is that you are coming from?” Kieran Foyle asked the kitten going on tomcat at his feet. The half-pint was looking up at him. He had been on board the ferry when Prince Albert’s gunman shot Tom Spate dead. As the ferryman was spitting out his last breath, the kitten jumped off his perch and scurried to the side. He watched Kieran roll, push, and kick the dead Englishman into the Stanley River. He floated face down into the New London Bay. The Kulloo flying overhead didn’t bother glancing down at the end of Tom Spate.

That was the end of Queen Victoria’s would-be killer, at least until he sank. When he did bottom feeders like eels would eat whatever was left of his decomposing body. The kitten had seen plenty of eels in his short time on Prince Edward Island. He knew what they were up to. It was why he never snacked on them.

The kitten was striped and gray, still small but on the stocky side. “The only true animal is a cat, and the only true cat is a gray cat,” Lucy Maud Montgomery said. The Green Gables author had two of them. “When people ask me why I want to keep two cats I tell them I keep them to do my resting for me.”

Snapper was a Scottish half-breed from Rear Settlement, on the west side of Settlement Rd. beside a tributary of the Montague River. Everything had gone wrong a month before when Ann Beaton, the woman who had given him his name and kept him fed, dry, and warm, was murdered when somebody smashed the back of her head with a grubbing hoe.

Ann was 41 years old and a spinster. She was lonely but had a one-year-old daughter to keep her company. Nobody knew who had gotten Ann pregnant. She had a lot of explaining to do but kept it a secret. She had called the bun in the oven her snapper. When she found the kitten, who had wandered away from his litter, she called him Snapper. She lived with her brother Murdoch and his family. The night she was killed was the day she went visiting her neighbor who was weaving some cloth for her. They had tea and raisin pie after dinner and Ann started for home when it was near to sunset.

“What do you say, it’s getting awful dark, maybe you should stay overnight,” her neighbor suggested.

Ann said she knew the way back like the back of her hand and besides, she enjoyed walking in the dark. Her brother was away and one of his children was watching her girl. She wanted to get back to her young one. Ann was found dead the next day in a ditch at the back of her brother’s farm. She was lying in blood day-old dry and caked.

She was laid out in the barn. She had been stamped on and violated. Her body and dress were marked with the prints of a shod foot. Everybody from the community filing past the viewing laid a hand on her. There was a Scottish belief that if a murderer touched the body of his victim, blood would gush forth. At the end of the viewing everybody was in the clear. There had not been any gushers. The killer was never found.

Snapper stayed alert as Kieran walked back to North Rustico. He bounced up and down in the man’s coat pocket. The island’s pioneer days weren’t over, except where they were. Most still farmed and fished, but not all of them. Some made and sold farming implements while some worked in shipyards. Everybody needed lumber and many men worked at lumbering. There were sawmills and shingle mills. There were schools, churches, and post offices. There were some inns and hotels. There were plenty of distilleries.

Ann Beaton’s funeral was presided over by the Reverend Donald McDonald, a minister of the Church of Scotland. He had a large following of “kickers” and “jumpers.” They were known that way for the religious frenzy they fell into while being “under the works.” The clergyman had emigrated from Scotland to Cape Breton and finally to Prince Edward Island. Everybody knew he drank too much when he was still a Scotsman. When he became a Canadian, he tried to stay on the wagon. “Prince Edward Island is a dubious haven for a man fleeing demon rum,” one of his kinsmen said. There was plenty of strong drink on the island.

A year before her death Ann attended several prayer meetings and while under the works had knocked a Bible and a candle from Reverend McDonald’s hands. She invertedly kicked the Bible, too. She purposely blew out the candle. “They are both under her feet now and mark the end of that girl,” the clergyman said by way of a sour eulogy.

Snapper watched country folk going to Cavendish by horse and buggy to buy tea, salt, and sugar. If they had something extra in their pockets, they bought molasses and tobacco. They only bought clothes they couldn’t make themselves. They didn’t buy food as a rule. They grew and processed it themselves, picking and preserving berries, milking cows and churning cream for butter, and curing beef and pork after slaughtering the animals.

The grubbing hoe that killed Ann Beaton belonged to Archibald Matheson. He lived nearby on the Settlement Rd. with his wife and son. The three of them were arrested on suspicion of the crime. Some local women reported being molested by the farmer. But bad feelings among neighbors weren’t facts. He and his family were soon released. He may have had a bad reputation, but so did Ann. There were rumors she had been killed by a jealous wife. A smutty ballad was composed describing her as “light in her way.”

After the funeral she was buried in the Pioneer Graveyard. Her brother moved away nobody knew where. Nobody knew what happened to her baby, either. Nobody wanted to know. By the time Snapper was on his way to North Rustico everybody had done their best to forget all about it.

The kitten had been sleeping in the back of a wagon one day almost a month after Ann’s death. He was sick and tired of nobody feeding him. Before he knew it the wagon was on its way. When he looked back, he didn’t see anything worth going back to. He made himself comfortable and went with the flow. The flow went towards the northwest. The wagon stopped overnight at Saint Andrews and the next night at Covehead before getting to the Stanley River, where it rang for the ferry. Once they were across, and the wagoner was stretching his legs, Snapper stretched his legs, too. When he was done the wagon was long gone. Unlike wagoner’s hauling freight, the kitten wasn’t on a schedule. He was go-as-you-please footloose.

Tom Spate’s young wife took him in, poured him a bowl of milk, and fed him scraps of white fish. He bulked up and stayed agile by staying out of Tom Spate’s way. The ferryman had a bad temper and wasn’t above hitting his wife or trying to kick the kitten. Snapper was fast and none of the ferryman’s kicks ever landed. Tom Spate’s wife wasn’t fast enough and had the bruises to prove it.

Snapper wasn’t overly distressed to see the dead as a doornail Tom Spate floating away. Kieran was his kind of man, irascible but not mean-hearted. I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn’t irascible, the kitten thought. Snapper stayed where he was, not jumping ship. Besides, he had already spotted foxes along the coastline. He would deal with them once he was grown up and ready for bear, but for the moment he kept his eyes open and his nose on high alert.

He saw a lighthouse in the distance. It was weather-beaten. He was farsighted but saw well enough so long as it was a few feet past his nose. He made good use of his nose and ears for everything closer. They walked past a house where it was wash day. Behind the house was a field of sunlit rapeseed. A woman was raising water from a well with a bucket and washing clothes on a washboard with home-made laundry soap. She pressed what clothes needed to be pressed using an iron she heated on her kitchen stove. Snapper didn’t own or wear clothes and thought it was a lot of bother.

A traveling tailor was walking up the path to a nearby house. He was going to stay for several days, maybe even a week, making wool coats for everybody. The lady of the house had already spun, dyed, and woven the cloth. What Snapper didn’t know was winters on the island were long and cold. He was going to find out soon enough. When he did, he was every day going to sniff out wool so he could curl up into it.

When they got to North Rustico there was still plenty of daylight left in the day. Snapper ran behind the boarding house where Kieran was staying and started pawing at a beetle. He batted it one way and another way. The beetle looked for a tree to scurry up. The only beetles Snapper never messed with were lady bugs. He liked the way they went about their business as they hunted for aphids. They were deadly killers of the pests. Snapper never killed lady bugs. It would have brought bad luck. Everybody knew that.

Snapper slept on Kieran’s bed that night. He made himself small and pressed himself into the man’s ribs. The Irishman didn’t toss and turn, which suited the kitten. He didn’t have to catnap with one eye open, ready to jump at any minute. He slept better that night than he had in many nights. By the morning he had forgotten all about Tom Spate.

Excerpted from the book “Ebb Tide.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street at http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland at http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada at http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal at http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, out of the past, a double cross, and a fight to the finish.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Two hired guns from Montreal. A constable working the back roads stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Monster Hunters

Swamp Thing

June 1, 2025 Edward Staskus Leave a comment

By Ed Staskus

“There is no Bayfield,” Oliver’s father said as he, his wife, and two children stood next to a sign on the side of the road saying “Bayfield.” The four of them looked in all four directions. They looked at the sign again. It was a bright sunny day. There wasn’t a cross road and there were no buildings. There was no town. Oliver’s father looked at his son, who was looking at a road map.

“Are you sure this is where the Swamp Lady is supposed to be?”

Oliver was the Monster Hunter of Lake County. The county was in Ohio, just east of Cleveland. The family was on Prince Edward island enjoying a two week vacation. Emma was Oliver’s sister. She was 12 years old, two years older than Oliver. She was his right-hand man when it came to monster hunting.

“This is the place, dad,” Oliver said.

Bayfield is on the east end of Prince Edward Island, just west of North Lake. It is named after Admiral Henry Bayfield, who surveyed the coast of the island for the British Admiralty between 1842 and 1845. He spent long days tramping through woodlands to get to coastlines.

“What I’m trying to say, Ollie, is that when it comes to this place, there is no place here.”

Oliver was looking for the Swamp Lady. She roamed the road between Bayfield and Glencorradale. There is a large marsh along that stretch of road, hundreds of acres of it, mostly covered over by woods. The first sighting of the Swamp Lady was by Little Johnny MacDonald. It happened long ago. Little Johnny had a farmhouse and a plot of land near Bayfield. He was going home after a kitchen party one night in his horse and buggy, One minute he was looking at the rear end of his horse and the next minute he had a feeling that somebody was close by. He looked over his shoulder and saw a queer woman beside him.

She was sitting silently and staring straight ahead. Little Johhny didn’t know what to say and so stayed the course, letting the horse find its way. When he looked again the woman was no longer beside him. He stopped his horse and jumped out of the buggy. The Swamp Lady was nowhere to be seen.

“Why is she called the Swamp Lady?” Emma asked.

“Her clothes are always wet,” Oliver said. “Her eyes, lips, and hair are black. Her dress is in tatters. Her feet are bare and dark with mud. She carries a lantern, even though it’s always unlit. When she talks her voice sounds like bubbles. But mostly, she’s called that because she lives in a swamp.”

“All right, smarty pants,” Emma said.

When Josephine Miller was a girl living on Priest Pond northeast of Bayfield, one early spring day she and her family hitched up the horse and went to visit relations who lived on the edge of what she called “the big bog.” They were visiting because there had been a death in the family. On the way they saw the Swamp Lady behind a tree on one side of the road and then behind another tree on the other side of the road.

“Don’t mind that,” her father said. The closer they got to their relation’s farm the farther it appeared they had to go. They seemed to be moving but were stuck in the same place. The big horse pulling their wagon was walking, but no matter how much the horse walked it didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

The horse and wagon finally came to a standstill. Josephine’s mother reached into the basket beside her and pulled out one of the raisin pies in it. She hopped off her seat and put the pie on the side of the road. As soon as she was back in her seat the horse and wagon began to move for real. When they looked back the Swamp Lady had the pie in her hands and was walking back into the forest.

Raisin pie was often served in those days to family and friends at a wake following a funeral. It was commonplace to take a gift of food to pay your last respects. Most homes had dried raisins on hand. The pie was a favorite because the ingredients were always available and the pie kept well. That meant it could be made weeks before whatever funeral needed a pie.

Don MacGregor grew up in nearby East Baltic but lived in Bayfield. He married his wife Elaine in the late 1970’s. One summer night he decided to join his wife at a friend’s house in Rock Barra for a card game. The friend lived on the other side of the swamp. His wife had taken the car, so he started walking. The walk was going to be twenty-or-so minutes. Half way there he caught sight of a haggard woman standing on the road. She was wearing a white wet dress. She was the Swamp Lady. She watched him silently as he approached. He walked slowly past her, tipping his hat as he did. The woman’s face were blank as an owl’s eyes. As soon as he passed her he started running. He didn’t stop until he got to the front door of the house where the card game was going on.

“What’s the matter with you?” his wife asked. “You’re pale as a ghost”

“I think I’ve just seen one,” he said.

“It was probably the Swamp Lady,” his wife said, declaring the total value of her unmatched cards and saying “Knock.” They were playing Gin.

“The who and what did I see?” he asked.

“The Legend of the Northside,” one of the other card players said nonchalantly while handing Don a stiff drink.

“Come on, Ollie, it’s getting dark,” Oliver’s father said. ”It’s time we get back to North Rustico.” They were staying at the Coastline Cottages on the seashore just off the town’s harbor. Everybody piled into their Jeep Cherokee and they drove away.

The Swamp Lady watched them drive away. “I’ll have to talk to that wee boy if he ever comes back by himself” she said to herself before taking a bite of the slice of raisin pie she had in her hand. She only talked to those who believed in her existence. She never said a word to those who doubted her. She didn’t doubt that Oliver believed in her.

She would wait for the boy. She had all the time in the world. The swamp was here to stay. Neither it nor she were going anywhere.

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, magic realism, a double cross, and a memory.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Two hired guns from Montreal. A peace officer working the back roads stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Atlantic Canada

The Well Gone Dry

May 1, 2025 Edward Staskus Leave a comment

By Ed Staskus

Cavendish is an unincorporated community on the central north coast of Prince Edward Island, a half hour drive from Charlottetown, the capital of the province. The population is less than 200, although in the summer it swells to more than 8,000, who sleep in tents, campers, motels, cottages, and resorts. In the dead of winter it is a ghost-of-a-place with only a red fox or a white hare crossing Route 6.

The place was founded in 1790 and named after Lord Cavendish, Colonel of the 34^th Regiment of Foot. In 1893 the world-record holding clipper ship Marco Polo got caught in a storm, grounded, and broke apart on its coastline. Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of “Anne of Green Gables,” grew up there. She is buried in the Cavendish Community Cemetery. It was largely a quiet whistle-stop through the first half of the 20^th century

In the second half of the 20^th century campgrounds, amusement parks, restaurants, and bars were built. The PEI National Park was created along 40 miles of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Some of the province’s best beaches are in the park, including Cavendish Beach. There are four championship golf courses, each one only a few minutes from the others.

Cavendish caters to family vacations, romantic getaways, and golfers. It wasn’t always like that. It was once more like Dodge City and Thirsty’s Roadhouse was where to be and be seen. “Cavendish was the place to be on Prince Edward Island,” said Rob Gibson, who was the long-time general manager of the roadhouse. “And Thirsty’s was the place to be in Cavendish, bringing in up to seven hundred people on a Saturday.”

My wife and I first discovered Cavendish the second summer we went to Prince Edward Island. We had been on an improvised road trip around Nova Scotia three years earlier when somebody we met in Halifax suggested we take the ferry to Prince Edward Island for a look-see.

“What is Prince Edward Island?” I asked.

“It’s a big island on the other side of the Northumberland Strait. It’s one of Canada’s original provinces. Mapmakers sometimes forget to include it on their maps. I shouldn’t say so, I suppose, but it’s even nicer than Nova Scotia.”

“I’ve never heard of it and I’m from Canada.” I said.

I was born in Sudbury, Ontario. My parents were refugees from the Baltics, which they fled after World War Two and before the Iron Curtain came down. My father worked in the nickel mines of the Sudbury Basin for almost ten years. My mother worked as a nanny for thirteen children until she began having children of her own. They left for a better life in the United States once they had saved enough money to make the move. Even though I lived in the United States ever after, I had dual citizenship, which meant I could say I was a compatriot whenever I went to Canada. That and some loose change meant I could get a cup of coffee at Tim Horton’s.

We took the ferry to Prince Edward Island. We had a Rand McNally road atlas but no idea where to go. We ended up in Cornwall. When it started to get dark we started looking for a place to sleep. We found the Sunny King Motel, which was clean and affordable. We stayed there three nights. We spent two days roaming around the island. It was on the second day, the day before we had to go home and get back to work, that we stopped in North Rustico to get a bite to eat. It was late morning. There was an unassuming place called Lorne’s Snack Shop on the side of the road. They had a fisherman’s breakfast that amounted to an all-you-can-eat plate. The plate was full of fried eggs, a slab of bacon, sausage, grilled tomatoes, chunky home fries, and thick toast with jam. There was a side of baked beans. We took a pass on dinner that night.

A woman speaking a dialect of English we had to pay very close attention to suggested we take a drive along the coast on the Gulf Shore Parkway. We found out later she was from Newfoundland. We also found out later about poutine at Lorne’s Snack Shop. It wouldn’t be long before we started dashing in for the French fries topped with cheese curds and gravy. We took a drive along the coast and discovered the landscape was pretty as a postcard.

We decided to come back the next summer for a two week in one place vacation. There were several groupings of cottages on the Gulf Shore Parkway between North Rustico and Cavendish. One was across the street from MacNeills Brook, but it was too expensive. One was on a hillside overlooking North Rustico Beach, but it wasn’t to our liking. We stopped at the Coastline Cottages across from Doyle’s Cove. It was just right. We made a reservation for the next year.

Thirsty’s opened the summer of 1984, except it wasn’t Thirsty’s at first. It was G. J.’s North. Phil Manovilli, who was part owner of Gentleman Jim’s in Charlottetown, created the near-to-the-beach bar. He changed the name the next year. It became one of the two most popular watering holes in Cavendish. The other one was the Cavendish Arms, which later became Chevy’s. A sign behind the bar at Thirsty’s said “Hangovers Installed and Serviced Here.”

Loose-knit groups of the young trekked across the street from nearby campgrounds for drinking, dancing, local bands, high-spirited conversation, and Silly Olympics. The dancing was haphazard, but if you can dance you’ve got a chance. When the night was done there was no need for designated drivers. Everybody walked back to their campgrounds. There was plenty of grass to cushion face-first encounters.

The next summer, after miscalculating our ability to drive 1,236 miles from Cleveland, Ohio to North Rustico in one-and-a-half days, we got to the intersection of Cavendish Lane and Route 6 at two o’clock in the morning. When we did we realized we had little idea of where the Coastline Cottages actually was. Everything looked different in the dark a year later. We pulled off onto the shoulder of the road in front of Shining Waters. We were standing outside of our car looking at everything with no lights on anywhere when we heard talking and laughing. Four men were sitting by the light of an electric lantern on the front deck of one of the Shining Waters cottages drinking beer. We explained out predicament.

“From the States, are you?” one of them asked.

“Yes, but I’m originally from Canada.”

“Ah, then,” he said. “Just go that way to the ocean, follow the road to the right, and you’ll come to the Coastline Cottages soon enough. If you get to North Rustico, you’ve gone too far.”

We found our beds without any trouble and fell into them without unpacking. We woke up to a bad-tempered rainstorm that cleared up by noon and became a sunny day. We were at the top on a long gradually sloping lawn that ended at the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Every so often a flock of cormorants flew past.

Now and then Thirsty’s was cited for something or other. Overcrowding was one of the things they were cited for. “The Prince Edward Island Liquor Control Commission has suspended the lounge operation as well as the liquor service in the dining-room of the licensed premises known as ‘Thirsty’s Roadhouse’ located in Cavendish, PEI, for a three day period. The violations of the Liquor Control Act Regulations are ‘A Licensee shall not admit more persons in his licensed premise than the capacity established and posted by the Fire Marshal’s Office’ and ‘A licensed premise shall comply with the Fire Prevention Act.’”

We stopped in a few times, although we never stopped in on happening weekend nights when there was barely enough room to stand or turn around, much less find a table or a bar stool. The drinks were abundant, the food was fair, redeemed by its agricultural island roots, but the music was mostly unremarkable, cover bands skilled at a few chords and not much else. We did see Mis-B-Haven there, who were three guys and two gals who knew what they about and were fine to listen to.

“I still have the note my mother wrote allowing me to perform at Thirsty’s when I was under age,” said Janet Boulter, who was one of the gals. “Man, did we have fun!”

We discovered the roots music of the Maritimes and started going to a Women’s Institute in Stanley Bridge, a Lion’s Club in Cymbria, and a community hall in Brackley Beach to hear it. The music is based on Scottish and Irish and Acadian traditions. We especially liked Acadian fiddle music. We went to the Agricultural Fair in Abram-Village to hear Eddie Arsenault and to Charlottetown to hear Barachois. We went to the Piping College in Summerside to hear everything else, including a bagpipe marching band.

Somebody once said a gentleman is a man who knows how to play the bagpipes but doesn’t. There were no gentlemen in the marching band. You could hear them a mile away.

Thirsty’s closed at the end of the Labor Day weekend in 2010. “The 1980s and after the bridge opened in 2000 were good to Thirsty’s but the downward spiral began in 2005,” Phil Manovilli said. “Part of it is my fault, our fault. I’m 52 years old now. When I started I was 28. I’m out of that loop,” He was sitting at a table near the dance floor. “Successful bars need to be in touch with their age groups. I’m just so far removed from that now. Kids here now could be my kids.” He watched his two growing children playing on top of a pool table.

“Cavendish has been changing over the last 10 or 12 years,” said Donald McKearney, the Chairman of the Cavendish Resort Municipality. He said it wasn’t going after the party crowd any longer. “We don’t want the party people. They bring some money to the economy but basically they’ll pitch a tent, 25 people will be there, and they just drink, fight among themselves, and generally carry on. That’s not what we’re looking for.” He said the Victoria Day weekend in Cavendish had gotten to be nothing but a boisterous party weekend on the north shore.

All good things come to an end. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It usually means something else is about to begin. The goal of a song isn’t to get to the end but if it doesn’t get there it doesn’t reach its goal. “Thirsty’s holds a special place in people’s hearts and I think they’ll remember it fondly,” Rob Gibson said after the roadhouse’s closing day, standing behind the bar in front of shopworn signs for Alpine and Moosehead beer.

Yesterday is always just a memory. It’s what is left when the past doesn’t completely unhappen.

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, magic realism, a double cross, and a memory.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Two hired guns from Montreal. A peace officer working the back roads stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Monster Hunters

Beyond the Haunted Motel

April 1, 2025 Edward Staskus Leave a comment

By Ed Staskus

The Adventure Zone in Cavendish on Prince Edward Island’s north coast is three attractions. One of them is the River of Adventure Mini Golf Course. The second one is the Hangar Laser Tag Arena. The last one is the Route 6 Haunted Motel. Neither Oliver nor Emma planned on playing golf until they were senior citizens. They couldn’t play laser tag because their parents didn’t want their children playing with guns, even if the gunplay was called laser tag. What Oliver and Emma were mainly interested in was the Haunted Motel.

They had a professional interest in it. Oliver was the Monster Hunter of Lake County and Emma was his right- hand man They were from Ohio. They were on the island with their parents on a two-week vacation.

They were standing in front of the Haunted Motel, sizing it up, when two children walked out of the Hangar Laser Tag Arena. One of them was a big boy wearing a pink sweatshirt. The other one was a black-haired girl wearing baggy Sinbad pants.

“When we went one-on-one, I totally destroyed you,” Big Pink said.

“Sure, but when we played that family, I dominated,” Baggy Pants said.

“You were super good at sneaking around, getting behind them, and shooting, shooting, shooting,” Big Pink said. “You would just surprise run up and shoot them in the back the whole time.”

“Sneak attacks are the best,” Baggy Pants said.

A pack of tweens came out of the Haunted Motel while Oliver and Emma were wondering whether to try it out.

“That was twice as scary as the Haunted Mansion in Kensington,” one of them declared.

“I know why they say ‘No Money Back’ if you leave early,” another one said.

“Did you see that moon faced boy crying?”

“Yeah, he looked all freaked out.”

“How about that mom who ran out? She went in with six kids and she was the only one who bailed.”

That sealed it for Oliver and Emma. They paid the admission charge. They stepped into the Haunted Motel.

Afterwards, even though it had been loud and claustrophobic, and they thought it was fun, they wondered what was so scary about it. In their time they had gone up against Destoroyah, the Green Goblin, and Long Tall Sally, the Loch Ness Monster’s sister. They weren’t babes in the woods when it came to scary.

They spent most of their time in the Haunted Motel in total darkness. There were small red lights that were markers signaling when and where to turn. The floors were uneven and they had to bend and twist to make their way. They found out later every third or fourth person, young and old, didn’t make it through from beginning to end.

“That boy behind you, who kept clutching at you, he was scared out of his wits,” Emma said.

“I finally held his hand and he made it all the way through,” Oliver said.

“What about that girl, who as soon as the lights went out, she curled up into a ball on the floor and wouldn’t get up?”

“If that want scary, you should visit the Midgell River Motel in St. Peters Bay, which may or may not still be there,” a voice behind them said.

When they turned around to find out more, the voice wasn’t there anymore. There wasn’t anything other than a shadow behind them, which shape-shifted into smoke that the wind blew away. They looked down at the gravel at their feet and saw hobnail boot footprints.

As it happened, their father had planned a day trip to St. Peters Bay and two days later, early in the morning, they were on the way there the 40-some miles along the north coast. When they got there they drove just beyond it to the Greenwich Interpretation Centre. They studied the Time Line exhibit, which depicts 10,000 years of life on Prince Edward Island, and tested their naturalist skills with the Shell Game, Shorebird Challenge, and the Dune Plant Quiz. Being city folk, they came in last place.

They went for a walk on a boardwalk through the biggest sand dunes on the island, including parabolic dunes, which are unusually large and mobile dunes with rare counter ridges called Gegenwälle. Some people call them blowouts because their center sometimes blows out leaving just a rim. When they drove back to St. Peters Bay they stopped at Rick’s Fish ‘N’ Chips and had fish and chips.

They had just started on their way back to the Coastline Cottages when Oliver spotted a sign for Midgell River.

“Dad, can you turn up that way?” he asked.

They turned that way. When Oliver saw the Midgell River Motel he asked his father to stop. Emma and he jumped out of the Jeep Cherokee and surveyed the dilapidated house that had once been a boarding house and later a motel. It looked deserted and unhappy.

“What are you up to Ollie?”

“We heard a story about it, so we want to look around.”

“Was it a spooky story?”

“Yes.”

“All right then, but your mother and I are going to tilt the seats back and take a nap here in the car. Wake us up when you’re done.”

“OK, dad.”

They surveyed the house, which looked like it was at the tail end of one hundred years of solitude. It had been built in three parts, each part higher than the other. The first room they went into was a front bedroom. A door creaked and a young girl walked in. She made eye contact with them even though she didn’t have eyes. She started opening the drawers of a dresser and throwing out clothes that vanished in thin air before hitting the floor.

When they heard somebody clomping up and down the stairs they went into the lobby and looked, but there wasn’t anybody on the stairs, even though they continued hearing the clomping. A hangman’s noose was neatly coiled on the landing, its fibers bristling with menace.

“This is creepy,” Emma said.

When they went upstairs they saw a man in a bathroom combing his hair in the mirror and the reflection of another man standing behind him. Every time the man combing his hair looked behind him, the other man wasn’t there anymore. A flock of blackbirds flew through the hallway and out an open window. Oliver and Emma went downstairs.

“This is getting creepier,” Oliver said.

A card game was going on in the parlor. Four men were playing five-card draw. One of them slapped down a dead man’s hand, a pair of black aces and black eights, and swept the pot off the table. One of the other men reached for a gun, convinced there had been cheating, but a third man slapped it away

“Not here, not now,” he said. “We’ll settle this later.”

The fourth man, unnoticed, slipped all the jacks up his sleeve.

Stepping into the kitchen they saw a man wearing hobnailed boots. Dishes flew out of the cupboard and smashed themselves to pieces at his feet. Three Norwegian rats peeked out from the rust-stained sink.

“Don’t mind the dishes,” Hobnail Man said. “It happens all the time.”

“Who are you?” Oliver asked.

“I’m the caretaker,” Hobnail Man said. “Can’t you tell? After all, you’re the monster hunter.”

“I was just double-checking,” Olver said. He knew full well who Hobnail Man was and what he was up to.

“Do you know, this place was burned down years ago by order of the local priest, who said Satan’s work was being done here.”

“I was wondering what that smell was,” Oliver said.

“Now I burn it down every night.”

“I thought you might,” Oliver said.

Hobnail Man raised his hand and said, “I’ve got to lock all the doors now and do my work.”

“Before you do, we have got to go,” Oliver said.

“You can’t go anywhere,” Hobnail Man said. “There must be an offering.”

But before he could take a step, Oliver dug into his pockets which he had stuffed with packets of salt from Rick’s Fish ‘N’ Chips, and ripping them open sprinkled Emma and himself with salt. Evil spirits hate salt. He threw a handful of it in Hobnail Man’s face, who stumbled backwards, trying to get a grip on the floorboards with his boots.

He cried out, “I can’t see, I can’t see!”

Oliver and Emma ran out of the Midgell River Motel fast as jack rabbits and back to where their parents were napping. They woke them up, piled into the Jeep Cherokee, and a minute later were on their way.

When Oliver looked over back his shoulder he saw the Midgell River Motel going up in flames.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com.

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, magic realism, a double cross, and a memory.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Two hired guns from Montreal. A peace officer working the back roads stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication