Food Feature: Smoke on the water

The best way to reach Pictou County, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, is by flying into Halifax and hitting the road. Literally on the other side of the island, Pictou is accessible via Highway 102, a divided four-lane dotted with McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFCs and Comfort Inns. If not for the occasional maple tree (which is, after all, Canada’s national symbol), it could be I-20 across Alabama.
However, the names of passing towns — Truro, Shubenacadie, Stewiacke — are far more interesting. After a half hour it felt like we were driving to the top of the Earth, but when a sign at Stewiacke announced that the little hamlet stands exactly midway between the equator and the North Pole, we realized we were only three quarters that far.
Eventually we arrived at Pictou, “Where the Spirit is Highland.” When they say that, they mean it. On the dirt road by our lodge, a kilted bagpiper was on duty 24 hours a day. He was carved from a tree trunk by some skillful artisan using a chainsaw.
The Pictou Lodge, established in 1926, features beautiful log cabin-style, one-story buildings with vaulted ceilings. Located right on the coastline, it’s surrounded by postcard vistas. Gulls circle the rocks out front and wild deer run freely through fields behind. Guests here have included King George V of Holland. It sells Cuban cigars in the lobby. It was paradise.
I awoke the first morning to the smells of wood and varnish from the hewn logs around me and staggered outside to meet a glorious dawn sun gleaming off the still ocean. The village itself glows with quaint charm. (Those filmmakers who keep crossing the ocean to make “little-village-in-Ireland” comedies don’t know what they’re missing.) The only drawback is that salty sea air is hell on automotive steel. The woman who runs the lodge patches up the rust spots on her Subaru with that most universal of all panaceas — silver duct tape.
After an imperial breakfast of lobster benedict, I stepped back outside and was met by an overwhelming scent of petunias from the lodge’s garden. The restaurant staff grows their own herbs there, which I learned when I nearly tripped over the cook, hunched down amid the greenery with his tall white Chef Boyardee hat, collecting sweet basil and chives for his scallops au gratin.
At the Stone House Pub I discovered some of Nova Scotia’s better beers, although pickings were often slim. Much of the province is curiously enamored of Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale, a watery yellow effluvia without a drop of local color, but which is nevertheless widely promoted with a fervor even Budweiser would envy. Banners everywhere declared: “Proudly serving Keith’s!” More satisfying to my palate was Propeller Bitter, a dark-hued, nut-brown ale from the John Allen microbrewery in Halifax.
The element Pictou holds most dear is history, not beer. Residents trace their lineage back to the Battle of Culloden in 1746, when the once-invincible Scots under Bonnie Prince Charlie suffered humiliating defeat by the English (final body count: 50 British dead, 2,000 Scots dead). Under subsequent English rule, the Scots were forbidden their tartans, bagpipes and Gaelic language. Is it any wonder, then, that in 1773 a couple hundred of them secretly packed their kilts, climbed aboard the good ship Hector, and headed off for “that country where there is land for us all”? The Hector arrived at Pictou Harbor that September and, with a bagpiper triumphantly leading them, the first Scottish settlers touched ground here in Nova Scotia (literally “New Scotland”).
The central purpose of my visit was to witness the christening of a full-scale working replica of the Hector, a community project that had been in the works for some 10 years. However, that morning the skies were gray and the wind so fierce that the Hector’s flags rippled with a sound like detonating firecrackers. Ten thousand spectators lined the shore, and the surrounding waters bristled with the masts of visiting vessels, including a replica Viking ship that had traveled all the way from Iceland.
After a commemorative stone was unveiled, perpetually marking the launch date as Sept. 16, the rain started. I soon wondered if we were launching a replica of the Hector or Noah’s ark. Some of the folks near me, wearing little more than kilts and balmorals, had been in position three or more hours. They now looked like survivors freshly rescued from the Titanic.
At last a volley of musket fire from some Colonial re-enactors heralded the start of the ceremony. After speeches from various diplomats, historians, clergymen, visiting dignitaries, committee chairmen, essay contest-winning schoolchildren, sponsors, cousins of sponsors, people who once went to high school with one of the sponsors ... the sodden and restless crowd began grumbling that those muskets should have been pointed in the opposite direction.
Finally the emcee announced that — due to the inclement weather — the launch would be postponed to the next day. This proclamation initiated the largest traffic jam in the island’s history, as all 10,000 angry, soaked, disappointed spectators dashed for their vehicles in a collective Le Mans start and proceeded to gridlock most of Pictou County for the balance of the afternoon.
The next dawn rose brightly, and many returning folks now chuckled at the ceremonial monument marking the launch date as the day before, in bold defiance of the expression “set in stone.” While sledgehammers pounded away the Hector’s wooden supports, a folksinger who looked like Omar Sharif and sounded like Richard Thompson entertained the crowd with traditional sea shanties, including Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya,” until the angry multitude shouted him to silence.
“We’re looking for ‘smoke’ on the water,” joked the emcee as the last obstinate wedge was slegehammered free. This was a “side delivery” launch, and to our amazement the ship slid right toward us. It was a heart-stopping sight — 180 tons of wood and iron moving sideways down the ramp in our direction — and when it hit the water, its massive “smoky” splash was met with shrieks that were part exultant joy and part relief at not being crushed to death. A moment later, when the wake of the splash reached the marina, we were treated to shrieks of a different kind as the moored boats were tossed like ice cubes in a blender, and their view-blocking, lifejacket-less crews were jostled willy-nilly atop the choppy water.
Amid all this clamor, the good ship Hector once again sailed triumphantly through Pictou Harbor.