Tag Archives: Victoria PEI

Atlantic Canada

Six Oysters Ahoy

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By Ed Staskus

   “I checked the weather report,” Frank Glass said.

   “What did you find out?” Vera Glass asked.

   “It’s going to be the same today as it was yesterday.”

   “Do you mean it’s going to rain all day?” 

   “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, or in this case, rain” Frank said, throwing a glance at the window.

   A steady rain was falling outside the front window of the cottage, down on the long sloping lawn of the Coastline Cottages, on the Gulf Shore Parkway, on the three houses on the other side of the road, and out to the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean as far as they could see. The sky was dark over Doyle’s Cove. Rhino size waves worked up the water. When Frank looked out the northwest-facing back window, the sky, where the weather was coming from, was even darker.

   “What should we do? It rained all day yesterday. I’m getting cabin fever.”

   “We could play cards and talk. Or how about dinner and a show?”

   “That sounds good, especially the part about dinner,” Vera said. “Where do you want to eat?”

   “There’s a show opening tonight at the Victoria Theatre.”

   “All right, but what about dinner?”

   “We could eat at the Landmark, it’s right there, and then go see the show.”

   “I’ve always liked the Landmark,” Vera said. “Eugene is a great cook. They have the best meat pies.”

   “You mean they had the best meat pies,” Frank said. “Somebody told me Eugene sold it and there are new owners.”

   “What? How can that be? Eugene is gone? Did he sell it to his kids, Oliver and Rachel.”

   “I heard they wanted it, but Eugene is all business when it comes to business. He got a better offer.”

   The Sauve family had repurposed an old grocery store in Victoria into a café restaurant in the late 1980s, adding a deck, digging a basement for storage and coolers, and expanding their dining space several times. They were a perennial ‘Best Place to Eat on Prince Edward Island’ in the magazine Canadian Living.

   “It’s now called the Landmark Oyster House,” Frank said.

   “I love oysters,” Vera said. “Let’s go.”

   It was still raining when Frank and Vera drove up Church Hill Road and swung onto Route 6, through North Rustico to Route 13, through Hunter River and Kelly’s Cross. It was still raining when they pulled into the small seaside town of Victoria on the other side of Prince Edward Island, on the Northumberland Straight side, after 45 minutes of wending their way. It rained on them as they hurried into the Landmark Oyster House. There wasn’t a table to be had, but there were two seats at the bar. They took the two seats.

   “Look, we’re right in front of the oysters,” Vera said, as they sat down at the closed end of the bar. “I love this spot.”

   Kieran Goodwin, the bartender, agreed. He was a burly man sporting a trim beard, standing on the other side of the bar, on the other side of a stainless steel bin full of raw oysters on ice. “Best seats in the house,” he said. “They were going to put the bar in the front room, but the dimensions didn’t work out.”

   “Who’s they?” Frank asked.

   Vera looked the chalkboard on the wall up and down. The names of the oysters on ice were written on the board. There were six of them, Valley Pearl, Sand Dune, Shipwreck, Blackberry Point, Lucky Limes, and Dukes. She looked down into the bin. She couldn’t make heads or tails of which were which. She knew raw oysters were alive, more-or-less. That’s all she knew.

   “They are Greg and Marly Anderson,” said Kieran. “They own a wedding venue up the road.” The venue is the Grand Victoria Wedding Events, in a restored former 19th century church. “When this opportunity came up, when Eugene was looking to tone it down a bit, they decided to purchase it.”

   “I worked at the Oyster House in Charlottetown shucking oysters for almost five years,” the new owner Marly said. “We heard that the family wanted to retire because they had been working at this restaurant for 29 years. We already felt a connection to this place and we are friends and neighbors with the family.”

   “They’ve put their roots down in the community, are making their stand here,” Kieran said.

   “It was important that whoever bought the Landmark be somebody who was going to be a part of the community,” Eugene said. “Who was going to open the place and run it and put some effort into it. Greg and Marly are the perfect people.”

   “I like what they’ve done in here, casual but upscale,” Vera said.

   “It looks like the kitchen is more enclosed than it was,” Frank observed.

   “Yeah, they put up a wall,” Kieran said. “Before that, when you used to walk in, you could see right in.”

   “I remember Eugene telling us once he learned all his cooking from his mom. Who does the cooking now?”

   “Kaela Barnett is our chef. She can shuck with the best of them.”

   “We couldn’t do this without her,” Greg said. Somebody has got to have a steady hand on the ladle that stirs the soup. Owners of eateries often spend more time with their chef, keeping the drumbeat rat-tat-tatting, than they do with their loved ones.

   “I’m thinking of doing oysters and a board,” Vera said.

   “That’s a good choice,” Kieran said. “I recommend the large board. You get a bit of everything. I personally like getting some cheese.”

   “Me, too.”

   “Are you oyster connoisseurs?” Kieran asked.

   “Not me,” Frank said. “I can’t remember the last time I ate an oyster, if I ever have.”

   “I wish I was, but I love them,” Vera said. “We were on the island two years ago and went to the Merchantman in Charlottetown with Rachel, Eugene’s daughter, and Doug, her boyfriend. I had oysters and she went through all the ones we ate, explaining them to me.”

   “You know what King James said.”

   “What was that?”

   “He was a very valiant man who first adventured on the eating of oysters.” 

   “Who’s King James?”

   “The guy who wrote the Bible.”

   “No, that was God.”

   “Whoever.”

    “Would you like something from the bar?” Kieran asked.

   “I’ll take the Gahan on tap, the 1772 Pale Ale,” Frank said.

   “What wine goes with oysters?” Vera asked.

   “We have a beautiful California chardonnay,” Kieran said. “It’s great with shellfish. I recommend it.”

   “This is good, fruity,” Vera said, tasting it.

   “We have six oysters,” Kieran said. “You could do one of each.”

   “That’s what I’ll do.”

   “I think I’ll have the seafood chowder and some of the board,” Frank said.

   “Oh, Frank, try one,” Vera said.

   “Lucky Limes are my favorite,” Kieran said. “It’s a good medium oyster.”

   “OK, I’ll try it,” Frank said, shrugging.

   Kieran handed him a Lucky Lime.

   “How do I eat this thing?” Frank asked Vera.

   “Sometimes I chew it, sometimes I don’t,” she said.

   “Some people like putting stuff on it, like horseradish, but it kills the taste,” Kieran said. “Straight up is best. That’s how islanders do it, just shuck it and suck it down.”

   Frank looked at the liquid-filled half shell.

   “From the wide end,” Kieran explained.

   Frank slurped the oyster into his mouth and swallowed it.

   “Now you’re a pro,” Vera said.

   “That wasn’t bad,” Frank said. “How could you tell it was a Lucky Lime? They all look the same to me.”

   “If you look at the chalkboard, it’s one through six. That’s one way.”

   “Can you tell by looking at them?” Vera asked.

   “I can tell by the shell,” Kieran said. “The ones that are more green, that means there’s more saltwater content. So, this is a Sand Dune, quite briny. That one is almost straight salt water.” He pointed to an even darker greener shell.

   “The Shipwreck made me nervous to have it, the name and all, but it was mild,” Vera said.

   “It would be farther up the estuary, closer to fresh water. The Blackberry ones are from Malpeque, which is near Cavendish. The Sand Dune is from Surrey, down east, and the Lucky Limes are from New London Bay. Valley Pearl is from Pine Valley and the Dukes are from Ten Mile Creek.”

   “I thought you were just making all this up,” Frank said.

   “No, it’s like wine,” Kieran said.

   “How did you get into the shellfish racket?” Frank asked.

   “I graduated in business, traveled, lived in New Zealand and Australia, and then came back here, back home, and worked in a bank as a financial advisor for six years, in Summerside and Charlottetown, but then I just got tired of working in a bank, and went back to school.”

   “How did you find your way here, behind the bar?”

   “I date Jamie, who is Marly’s sister.”

   “Are those pickled carrots?” Vera asked, pointing at the charcuterie board in front of her.

   “Yes, and you have raisin jam, too,” Kieran said.

   “Chutney, stop the madness!” Vera exclaimed, spying another glob. “Oh, it’s strawberry jam. It just looks like chutney. It’s delicious.”

   “We had raisin pie at a small diner in Hunter River the other day,” Frank said.

   “The one by the side of the road, up from the Irving gas station?” Kieran asked.

   “That’s the one,” Frank said. “The waitress told us she always thinks of raisin pie as funeral pie, because back in the day, if there was a funeral in the winter, women always had raisin pies for the reception after the memorial service, because raisins keep all year round.”

   “Can I take my oyster shells with me?” Vera asked.

   “Sure,” Kieran said. ”We can get a little bag for you.”

   “You can really taste the sea eating oysters,” Vera said. “Blackberry Point was a little thin and too salty, but once you eat one, and you don’t like it, whoa, what are you going to do? Valley Pearl didn’t have a lot of flavor, but there was some good texture to it. Lucky Lime was very good. My favorite was Sand Dune. It had a strong ocean flavor, briny.”

   “I’ve heard people say oysters are slimy, but the one I had, it didn’t seem that way,” Frank said. “I can see having oysters again.”

   “Don’t people sometimes say the world is your oyster?” Vera said.

   “Do you want dessert?” Kieran asked.

   “Do you have carrot cake?”

   “It’s made here.”

   “We’ll split a slice of that, and two coffees, thanks.”

   As Vera and Frank dug into their carrot cake, there was a bustle at the other end of the bar. Kieran, Jamie, and Marly were huddling over a glowing screen. They looked concerned.

   “Did your electronics go haywire?” Frank asked when Kieran brought them coffee.

   “The microwave in the basement tripped the breaker and knocked out our internet. We hardly ever use the microwave, except to melt butter sometimes. It’s weird, it’s been working until now. We have a thing that magnifies our wi-fi signal. We just found out it’s on the same circuit.”

   “My mother was a pastry chef,” Vera said.” She didn’t use microwaves much, but whenever she did, she always said, ‘Stand back, I’m going to nuke it now!’”

   Frank and Vera used their forks on the last crumbs of their cake and finished their coffee. Frank checked the time on his iPhone. “Time to go, sweetheart,” he said. They paid the bill and stood up to go.

   “Enjoy the show, hope to see you again,” Kieran said as Frank and Vera walked out of the Landmark Oyster House.

   “It’s rainy and sunny at the same time,” Frank said as they darted across the street to the Victoria Theatre, yellow slanting sunlight leading the way through drizzle.

   “That’s Prince Edward Island for you,” Vera said. “By the way, what are we seeing?”

   “Where You Are.”

   “I know where we are,” Vera said.

   “That’s the name of the show,” Frank said.

   “Oh, I see.”

   “Hustle it up, we’re almost late.”

   They went up the steps into the theater, handed over their tickets, got their programs, and sat down. Vera tucked the bag of oyster shells under her seat. “Wherever you are, there you are, boys and girls,” she whispered, making sure they were safe and sound as the lights went down and the show started.

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 big story in a small town.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books

“Foul play in the Maritimes, wildlife and all.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVDP8B58

Atlantic Canada, 1989. A town on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A satchel of stolen counterfeit money. Two contract killers from Montreal. A gravel road cop stands in their way.

Atlantic Canada

Near and Far

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By Ed Staskus

Prince Edward Island, the smallest Canadian province, is off the Atlantic Canada coast in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, east of New Brunswick and north of Nova Scotia. Its land mass is less than 2200 square miles. Victoria, a village on the southern edge of the island on the Northumberland Straight, isn’t measured in square miles. It is measured in square feet.

Six months of the year, from about the middle of spring to the about the middle of autumn, Olivier Sauve, who was born and bred and lives and works in Victoria, spends almost all of his time inside those square feet.

“I don’t go far,” he said. “I might go to the liquor store once a week, do a pick-up, and if Doug and Rachel need a day off, I’ll do the food run.” Rachel is his sister and Doug is her boyfriend. The pick-ups and runs for food and drink are for the family business.

“I’m working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. I go from the house to the restaurant and from there back to the house. Sometimes I go to the post office.”

Olivier’s parents, Julia, a Manhattanite, and Eugene, a Quebecois, met and married on PEI, opening the Landmark Café catty-corner to the Victoria Theatre 28 years ago, when he was six.

“I grew up in Victoria, played ball hockey, jumped off the wharf, ate dirt all summer. We’ve got everything here, friends, neighbors, home.”

The other six months of the year Olivier goes globetrotting. The earth is 197 million square miles, which is too many square feet to try counting. Over the past 15 years the 34-year-old Olivier Sauve has bussed boated walked the length and breadth of 52 countries. “I know because I can name them all,“ he said.

“I’m a good counter, too.”

In 2015 he hiked from southern to northern Spain and then pivoted west to Portugal. He walked almost a thousand miles in 40 days, averaging close to the equivalent of a marathon every day.

“I’m into walking, hiking, being outside,” he said. “I’ve hiked the Andes, the Himalayas, Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka.”

He stopped in San Lorenzo in central Spain for the hot springs and dinner.

“The thermal spring baths in the middle of the town have been flowing out of a mountain for 2000 years,” he said. ”There was a pizzeria around the corner from my hostel. After walking 20, 25 miles, there’s nothing like a big pizza.”

“It’s the way you ride the trail that counts,” said the singing cowgirl Dale Evans.

Although at home Olivier’s days and nights are framed by village life and work, travel is in his blood. “We moved to Montreal when I was two, but then my parents bought a house here when I was three. Every winter we would visit mom’s family in New York City and dad’s family in Vancouver.”

The family went Canadian winters to Florida or Jamaica, too. “I made sure we went somewhere,” said Eugene Sauve.

“We’re not like some PEI families that have a thousand cousins in a 10 mile radius, said Olivier. “It’s just us, no cousins, aunts, or uncles on the island.”

Traveling is getting past what’s in plain sight, becoming alert to the secret strange out-of-the-way parade of the rest of the world. It’s going somewhere else that you find out that nearsightedness isn’t the great again agenda it’s cracked up to be.

“There’s one thing about traveling,” said Olivier. ”You don’t want to give people too much advice. Everybody’s got to make their own trip, their own experiences. You don’t want to go on somebody else’s trip.”

One traditional way of traveling is to make sure you see what you have gone to see. The other way is to see whatever it is you are seeing. The sightseers who circle around journey’s end often see the most because they’re always on the way. It’s not necessarily about stockpiling souvenirs, but about keeping watch, sea to shining sea.

“My parents continually traveled. My father has been all over the world. I remember laying around in Costa Rica when I was ten-years-old, saying to myself, I can’t wait until I turn 18 and can get that little book that says Canada Passport.”

After his parents separated Olivier’s mother moved to New Hampshire with the children. He went to five different schools in five years. “You don’t get to know people well, but you get to know yourself well,” he said. When they moved back to Prince Edward Island they moved back to Victoria. He started working at the Landmark Café no sooner than reaching thirteen.

“He’d get a bench, get up to the sink, and wash dishes,” said Eugene Sauve. “He wanted to do it.”

Like father, like son.

Eugene Sauve left home when he was 16, moving from Montreal to Vancouver “My first job was at a Greek restaurant, washing dishes. The owner was a macho man, always wore a brown jumpsuit and a Santa Claus belt, wife in a fur coat, dripping with jewelry.”

“Washing dishes should be a perquisite for life,” said Olivier. “If you were in a sweaty dish pit, everybody screaming and throwing greasy pans, that would suck. But, here, we have music playing, JR’s hair is blue this week, and everybody helps out.”

It isn’t possible for anyone to help everyone. At the Landmark Café everyone helps someone. The homegrown menu, meat pies, pasta, salad, down to the salad dressing, has long been recommended by ‘Where to Eat in Canada’.

“The restaurant business is awesome. It’s high-paced, fun, frustrating. It isn’t for everyone, not if you can’t multi-task, aren’t sociable, and don’t appreciate food. Food can be anything. If you’re going to make a cheeseburger, get some awesome meat, throw in some salt and pepper, and make an awesome cheeseburger.”

When he turned 19 Olivier Sauve flew overseas by himself for the first time.

“I took off for six months. Eugene met me in Bangkok, We went down to Vietnam and Cambodia together for a few weeks.” After they separated Eugene Sauve planned on going to Africa. But, a week later, Olivier was crossing a street in Ho Chi Minh City when a man crossing in his direction called out.

“Ollie!” he said.

“Dad!” said Olivier.

“After that dad went to Africa and I spent the next five months running around Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.”

The next winter, back on Prince Edward Island, Olivier enrolled at UPEI. “I was in for a couple of weeks, but I said, no, I don’t want to do this.” He and a friend began planning a trip to the far end of South America. Itinerant, rambling, backpacking, over the course of six months they traversed North and Central America.

While crossing the forest and swampland of the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia on foot an army patrol stopped them and sent them both back to Panama. They boarded an old boat. “It took us 18 days to make 150 kilometers.” Back on dry land on foot again they were picked up by an army patrol again, who this time escorted them over a mountain range into Colombia, warning them about rebel FARC forces.

“We had no problem,” said Olivier. “We don’t know if we saw any FARC. We don’t think we did, but if we did, they were the people giving us crackers and coconuts while we walked.” They made it as far as Ecuador.

Four years later Olivier flew back to Ecuador, to the same spot where he had stopped four years earlier, and bussed and backpacked to Tierra de Fuego. “When you take off like that,” he said, “every single day is brand new. I used to run away when I was a kid, for fun, knowing I’d be coming back, just to get lost.”

It’s an unfailing good idea to see more than you can remember.

Setting foot outside your house, even going to the grocery, is always at the crossroads of promise and peril. Anything can happen. You might find something yummy. You might stub your toe on the stairs. Going halfway around the world, suspecting what might and often does happen, some people go right back home.

Other people don’t worry about the potholes in the road. They cut the string on the tin can telephone, kicking the can down the street.

“For me, it’s a mosh pit. I’m going to jump,” said Olivier.

“I’ve been close to being robbed, been in accidents, been in an earthquake. I was taking pictures in Morocco when an old man made a fuss, got all his friends involved, and it turned into a big ordeal. The cops came, threw me into a no window unmarked van and took me to a no window concrete building.”

The police went through his camera. “They asked me my story ten times and finally just laughed it off. They let me go. I didn’t know where I was, so when I asked, they dropped me off at the beach. I’m good with orientation whenever I’m in a city on the water.”

When he started taking pictures he wasn’t a good photographer. “I’m still not the best photographer,” he said. What he is, camera-in-hand, is a good street photographer. Street photographers shoot unmediated encounters in public places. Olivier Sauve’s pictures are clean clear straightforward. He specializes in on-the-spot portraits.

“I get right up in there, so I can get the right shot, no holds barred, from prostitutes on a shitty side of town to someone’s face after they’ve just burnt the body of their husband and now want to jump in the fire with him.”

After photographing a festival in Kathmandu, Nepal, back on Prince Edward Island he had large-scale reproductions printed on canvas and installed a show at Victoria’s Lobster Barn. “It’s a big open room and they had all the wall space. It became a gallery. We sold some pictures.”

Many of his photographs have been assembled in a self-published book. “So many people I’ve known for years, they stop at the Landmark to eat, and ask me about my winter, where I went.” But, in the meantime, he has six or seven tables he is waiting, letting everyone know what the specials are, making sure the soup stays hot, mixing Mohito cocktails and tossing Caesar salads.

On top of that something might need to be suddenly washed, JR is doing something else, and the show at the Victoria Theatre across the street starts in an hour. “The book helps. Here’s where I did this, take a look through it.”

Flipping through his pictures of the Kumbh Mela, India’s festival of faith, where he mixed for a week with tens of millions of pilgrims, for whom a colossal temporary city of tents roads hospitals toilets police stations is constructed, diners soon find their drinks and seafood specials delivered and their questions answered.

One of Olivier’s favorite countries in the world is Spain. One of his favorite areas in Spain is northwestern Spain. His favorite aspect of northwestern Spain is the Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St. James, the pilgrimage routes that lead to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. He has hiked the Caminos a half-dozen times over the course of a half-dozen years.

“It’s religious, although some people do it for exercise, to just prove they can do it, or because they’re at a crossroads. It’s a beautiful walk. I make sure to pack light, but I’m still packing smarter than my last time.”

Two years ago a teacher from PEI’s Holland College, where Olivier graduated in 2008, contacted him about the Camino de Santiago. “We’re going on a study tour to Spain. I’d like to pick your brain,” he said. In the end Olivier became the group’s guide translator chaperone. He booked the busses, the hotels, and planned the route. Four teachers and he led a group of thirty students for two weeks from Madrid to Barcelona to Pamplona, and finally on to the Camino.

“No one got into trouble and no one got sick,” he said.

Olivier Sauve has made himself into an expert on the trails, hostels, and eateries of Spain. “I know where to find a chunk of bread, fish, dessert, a bottle of wine, and where to get to sleep by 9 o’clock.” He speaks the language and his two cents are worth their weight in Euros.

He has since started making plans to lead other groups on the Camino, but groups on a smaller scale, four five six people. One of his game plans is corporate team-building, bird-dogging businesspeople on an adventure travel trek. Another is path-finding youth-at-risk. “Kids who are screwed up, getting expelled from school, whose parents are done,” he said. “I would take them for a month and bring them back different, better.”

No matter where he has gone global-wide he has come back to Victoria. “I travel all over the world, where no one knows me, but I live in a tight-knit community where everybody knows me. This is home, our own little bubble.”

Olivier Sauve isn’t somebody who sits at home, but home is where everybody feels most at home.

He bought a lot in town last year and plans on building his own house in the next couple of years. “I’m a Victoria villager, finally, after thirty years.” After being by-passed by the Tran-Canada Highway in the 1980s, and slowly but surely downsizing, the community is again growing. “All my friends live here, they’re all having kids, young families.” Although his plans also include starting a family, he admits he has an inherent underlying literal problem.

“I don’t have a girlfriend, not yet, not right now,” he said. “I’m looking, sending out surveys, and it’s going to happen.

“You never know what’s going to walk into your life.”

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. 

A New Maritime Thriller by Ed Staskus

“Ebb Tide”

“Small book, big story.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books

“A Down East crime mystery, wildlife and all.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVDP8B58

Atlantic Canada, 1989. A town on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A satchel of stolen counterfeit money. Two contract killers from Montreal. A gravel road cop stands in their way.

Atlantic Canada

Show on the Road

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By Ed Staskus

Erin McQueen isn’t a blonde, doesn’t often wear pearls carry a silk hand fan or suit up in gilded dresses with bows at the breast and puffed sleeves, and rarely looks perplexed. She does, however, speak with an English accent, which comes in handy when you’re a blonde sporting a string of pearls in a posh dress in the Restoration-era play “The Man of Mode.”

Staged by the Fountain School of Performing Arts at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the comedy by George Etherege is about a notorious man-about-town trying to slip-slide out of his love affairs and win over the young spunky seemingly virtuous heiress Harriet.

The play hit the bright lights way back when at just the right time. William Shakespeare had died 60 years earlier. The screws tightened by the Puritans had been recently loosened and women were finally being allowed to play female roles on stage.

There’s nothing like a gal in a gal’s role, rather than some scruffy cross-dresser.

“The make up and costumes are totally different from any other show we’ve done,” said Erin, then in her final year at the school. “Having the period costumes is really exciting. It’s a total transformation. The play truly is an authentic glimpse inside the intricate dating scene of 1676.”

Although she paced her prowling at a good trot, cast arched looks in the stagecraft of 17thcentury love stories, and had at it with barbed one-liners, like everyone else in a play that is all innuendo and intrigue, unlike everyone else in the play her English accent was neither feigned nor all wrong.

Even though she graduated from high school in Canada, spent four years at Dalhousie University, earning a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Theatre, lives in Victoria on the south shore of Prince Edward Island, and her father is Canadian, she isn’t, not entirely Canadian, not exactly.

Erin McQueen is British, born and bred in Bristol.

“It’s right on the border with Wales,” said Erin.

Iron Age hill forts and remnants of Roman villas dot the southwestern British landscape. In the 11thcentury the town was known as Brycgstow, easier to pronounce then than it is now. The port was the starting point for many of the voyages of discovery to the New World in the 15thcentury. Today the modern economy of the city is built on aerospace, electronics, and creative media.

Unlike most cities, it has its own money, the Bristol pound, which is pegged to the Pound sterling. “Our town, our money,” is what they say in Bristol. Since money is a matter of belief, it’s best to believe in what you’ve got.

“There are a lot of art festivals,” said Erin.

“They do a scavenger hunt every summer with ceramic animals. They started with gorillas, giving giant ceramic gorillas to artists, who painted them, and businesses sponsored them in their shops and on sidewalks, where you had to find them. They have a theatre festival, too, but that only started when we left.”

She was 16-years-old.

“The first time we came to Canada we went to see Halifax, where my father was born. It also happened to be the 150thanniversary of ‘Anne of Green Gables.’ My sister Caitlin was a massive fan. My parents finally said, ‘OK, we are in Halifax anyway, we’ll just pop over to Prince Edward Island.’”

She was 11-years-old.

“We did the tour, all the Anne of Green Gables things,” said Caitlin McQueen. They stayed in Victoria, a small village of maybe one hundred residents near the Westmoreland River. It is much, much smaller than Bristol, which is the 8thlargest urban area in England, home to nearly a million.

”I remember saying to Erin, I know I’ve never been here before, but I feel like I am coming home. I feel like I am supposed to be here. It is a dream come true.”

“I don’t really know what happened after that,” said Erin, “but the next year and for a couple of years after, we came back, and we always ended up in Victoria.”

While on a return trip, Andy and Tania McQueen, Erin and Caitlin’s parents, bought a lot overlooking the village harbor. In 2012 the family immigrated to Canada. They commissioned a house to be built, to be completed for occupancy the following spring. That winter was the winter they almost went back to the UK, back to England, back to Bristol.

“We spent a year living in Hampton, just up the road, in a rented house that had no central heating,” said Erin. ”I’m honestly surprised we didn’t move home that winter, because it was horrible.”

The winter months on PEI can be cold, temperatures averaging below zero in January and February. There are many storms, veering from freezing cold rain to freezing cold blizzards. The February 2013 North American blizzard started in the Northern Plains of the United States. By the third day of its arrival in the Maritimes there was heavy snowfall, wind gusts were hitting 100 MPH, more than a thousand flights had been cancelled across eastern Canada, and all Marine Atlantic ferries were suspended.

There was nowhere to go, anyway.  There are few things as democratic as a snowstorm. It’s the same everyone everywhere.

“I feel like many people on this island have done that, lived without central heating, but British people aren’t cut out for Canadian winters in unheated houses. I had a comforter on my bed and many, many blankets. I often wore two pairs of pajamas.”

The McQueen family stuck it out.

“The main reason we didn’t move back to England was probably pride,” said Erin. “Obviously, you can’t move back after five months because your whole family back home would be saying, ‘Oh, so that didn’t go well?’”

The McQueen family cats stuck it out, too.

“They are rescue cats, Callie and Zebedee, and we got their vaccination papers together, and applied for pet passports. My uncle said, ‘Why don’t you just get new cats?’”

“You did not just say that!” said Tania McQueen. “They’re part of the family.”

“Let me tell you, though, cats do not like emigrating,” said Erin. “It traumatized them a little. The only other animals on the plane the eight-hour flight were two dogs, a little thing that barked all the time, and a big, quiet German shepherd. We’re still making up for it six years later.”

The cats slept in front of the fireplace in the living room in the rented house from morning to every next morning from the beginning to the end of winter. Unlike the upstairs rooms, there were no doors downstairs shutting the living room off from the kitchen and two back rooms. They made doors out of blankets to conserve the heat in the living room. The cat litter box was in one of the small rooms, behind a blanket door.

“They would wait quite a long time, and then dart behind the blanket, and as soon as they were done, run back in to the fireplace.”

The school buses stayed the course. Erin enrolled at Bluefield High School to complete her last two years. The family had waited leaving England until she finished her first set of high school exams there.

“It’s a big thing,” she said. “Everyone in the country takes the same exams. You study for them for two years. It’s what you’re working up to that whole time.”

Bluefield High School is in the small town of Hampshire. A $2 million dollar addition in 2000 enlarged and modernized the school, which as well as secondary education trains in carpentry, welding, and applied technology. All of its classrooms feature SmartBoards and there are two computer labs. The sports teams from badminton to hockey are all called the Bluefield Bobcats.

The school is thirteen miles and 90 minutes from Victoria.

“The bus went everywhere, so by the time I got there I didn’t really know where I was, because we had gone all over the island. My first day we did orienteering, even though the school is just surrounded by forest and potato fields. It wasn’t like you ever came across any houses. It was very different from Bristol.”

Her plan had been to study fashion design and costume, but her plans changed. “They didn’t have any sewing or couture classes. They did have drama, so I thought, I guess drama is where my theatrical tendencies are going to have to go.”

After graduation she enrolled at Dalhousie University, majoring in anthropology, keeping acting in the back of her mind. “I took acting as an elective and later auditioned for the program. If I get in, I’ll think about it, I thought. I didn’t think I actually would. And then I did.”

In order to find the unexpected it’s best to expect it. You can’t plan for it, but it’s what often changes your life. ”All creative people want to do the unexpected,” said Hedy Lamarr, the glamorous Hollywood starlet and designer of a patented frequency-hopping radio guidance system for torpedoes. Even though she once said, “Any girl can be glamorous, all you have to do is stand still and look stupid,” her smart invention was the precursor to GPS, secure WiFi, and Bluetooth technology.

“My sister is the anthropologist, no acting, although she’s fascinated by actors,” said Erin. “She thinks she might do a research project about them one day. Actors never know what the future holds. They’re rarely employed for a long time, always on the way to their next role. It’s living on the edge. It’s the idea that you could love doing something so much that you choose that over stability or financial security.

“That’s what I want to do.”

It’s taking the show on the road. “I’m just going to start auditioning in Halifax. There are so many small weird theatre spaces. I’m thinking of potentially writing a fringe play.” She has no plans of pursuing the discipline of anthropology.

Her four years studying the arts and sciences of theater at Dalhousie University were matched by four summers working in theater in her newly adopted hometown.

“My parents saw there was a job at the Victoria Playhouse. I needed to work in the village. It was the perfect job, since although I do now drive, I couldn’t drive at the time. I could meet people in the industry, too.”

The Victoria Playhouse, in the middle of town, in what used to be the Victoria Hall, seats about 150, and has been producing and presenting live theater and performance events for thirty-seven seasons. In 2007 it was designated a ‘Historic Place’ on the Canadian Register of Historic Places. History gets made every summer seven days a week on its stage.

She worked the refreshment stand her first two summers.

“I don’t do that so much anymore,” she said last summer. “You could say I’ve moved up.”

She worked part-time in the box office, then went full-time, and worked front of the house. Odd jobs became must-do jobs. “I helped one of the actors run their lines, and then I did that a couple more times.” When the stage manager was conscripted to do lighting cues, she went backstage. “I gave the actors their places, which was exciting. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure the show goes on.”

Sometimes the lighting cues are on the sturm und drang side of the curtain, occasioning careful calculation. Higher than normal water temperatures in the Gulf of St. Lawrence can and do morph into massive thunderstorms, roiling the island. It is batten down the hatches and check the flashlights.

“In villages like this, in bad thunderstorms, power goes out,” said Erin. “The doors are going to open in twenty minutes, the power keeps flickering off and on, and the management has to make a call about whether you think you can make it through the show.”

She became one of the emcees at the front of the stage, pointing out the exits, encouraging donations to the theater, and introducing the play. After the show was over was her favorite time. “It might sound corny, but at the end of the show, when we get to open the curtain and the applause, and afterwards the actors are happy, a kind of high, even with small crowds, that they brought a story to life and created some magic for the audience.”

After her employment contract at the Victoria Playhouse expired at the end of October, she moved back to Halifax, where she went to university, and where there is a red-blooded theatre scene. It is zesty and diverse, ranging from Zuppa Theatre, whose performances defy categorization, to the Neptune Theatre, whose performances outpace categorization.

“Some of the actors who worked at the Playhouse live in Halifax, so that’s quite cool,” she said. “They came to my shows at Dalhousie and I went to their shows.

“Acting, that’s my plan.”

If in the event a professional acting career doesn’t pan out, she is determined to keep her foot on the boards, front back or in the wings. ”If I wasn’t an actor, I’d be a secret agent,” said Thornton Wilder. Erin’s secret is all parts of the theater business interest her, from acting to directing to writing to the nuts and bolts.

“If I’m not acting, I will definitely be doing something in theatre. It’s plow ahead.”

It’s keeping your hand on the gospel plow.

“A part of me is intrigued by stage management,” she said. “Stage managers are another level of human being. They’re like super people with super powers. They’re the people you go to if you have any issues, personal, professional, or logistical. One of my stage managers at Dalhousie had a locker full of extra clothes and every kind of medicine you could imagine. They are prepared for anything.”

A career in the arts often means being a jack-of-all-trades.

“I am very into doing whatever I can,” said Erin.

If you want to accomplish anything something everything, you have to be willing to do whatever it takes, maybe not blood, but certainly sweat, and probably a locker loaded for bear, to make it work, to make it happen.

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. 

A New Maritime Thriller by Ed Staskus

“Ebb Tide”

“Small book, big story.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books

“A Down East crime mystery, wildlife and all.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVDP8B58

Atlantic Canada, 1989. A small town on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A satchel of stolen counterfeit money. Two contract killers from Montreal. A gravel road cop stands in their way.