Tantramar

By Eric Sparling

"This is the story of my mother's death, my father's lighthouse, my slutty sister and the dog I betrayed." A heart-felt, at times funny, coming-of-age story set in Nova Scotia about a quirky couple who adopt a 16-year-old girl when their son, the main character, is 14.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breakwater Books Ltd.
• Release date: Oct 6, 2008
• ISBN: 9781550813029

Eric Sparling

Eric Sparling is a freelance writer and stay-at-home father. The former editor and reporter lives in Nova Scotia with his wife, daughter, three cats and a dog.

Book preview

ONE

HOW MANY ANGELS can dance on the head of a pin?

All you need is one, my father used to say, back when he still said things.

This is the story of my mother’s death, my father’s lighthouse, my slutty sister, and the dog I betrayed.

Nova Scotia is almost an island. It’s connected to New Brunswick by the Chignecto isthmus. On one side of that narrow corridor of land is the Bay of Fundy. On the other is the Northumberland Strait. Making the connection to the mainland more tenuous, the isthmus is largely salt marshes.

Half sea, half land.

The Tantramar marsh is the one you drive through when you pass from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia. It’s book-ended by two towns: Sackville to the north-west, in New Brunswick, and Amherst to the south-east, in Nova Scotia.

The marsh is huge. The road seems to float over the clumps of grass and the maze of tidal channels. Right on the border between the provinces, two ridges jut up from the wetlands. The ridge closest to New Brunswick is home to the remains of Fort Beauséjour, while the other ridge, maybe two kilometres away, on the Nova Scotia side, used to be home to Fort Lawrence. The British took Fort Beauséjour in a short siege way back in 1755, but, of the two bastions of colonial might, only the earthen ramparts of the French fort remain.

My mother, Dawn Devons, died on March 14th, 1984. She was seated on the passenger side of our Volvo 240 station wagon. Behind the wheel was her recently adopted, newly licenced daughter, Crystal.

It was a miserable day. In the summer, the rain and high winds might have been nice. Dramatic. But in mid-March, with winter only beginning to show its cracks, it was just plain unpleasant.

Dawn had a headache. That’s what Crystal told me. Otherwise, my mom would have been driving. The two of them had spent the day shopping in Moncton. Makeup for Crystal and clothes for Dawn.

Night was falling as they left the shopping centre. The rain was beating down furiously when they headed down the slope from Sackville and onto the marsh. Great sheets of rain—the kind windshield wipers do little to alleviate.

They would have felt the car swaying in the storm. The wind can be harsh on the Tantramar marsh. It gets funneled up from the Bay of Fundy. And it’s exposed, with only a scattered bush and a gnarled little tree or two to buffer the wind.

They passed the initial section of the marsh, then over the first ridgeline and down into the valley between the provinces. Maybe there was a van in front of them, moving slow. Crystal would have passed the van. She was in a rush to get home. A date that night. She only told me that later, after everything.

They passed over the second ridgeline, into Nova Scotia.

At least they were in Nova Scotia.

The Volvo was within sight of the first exit to Amherst. On a clear day, anyway. Crystal had pulled up behind a large flatbed. There was a massive steel structure piggybacking on the wide truck. A turbine bound for the Annapolis Tides Power Station, which was nearing completion.

She was nervous about passing, even though it was a two-lane highway. Icy spray buffeted the station wagon. Crystal only had her learner’s permit. She’d been driving for two months at that point. She should have pulled over. Dawn should have told her to pull over. But Crystal kept driving, hugging the rear bumper of that big truck and that big turbine.

It was a fluke. Such things usually are. Three different chains, any one of which, had it not snapped, could have kept the machinery where it belonged. But all three gave way. Or something. And the weather. It was slippery.

I saw it move, Crystal said of the turbine. But she didn’t react quickly enough, and when she did try to hit the brakes, nothing happened. The car slid on the slick highway as the giant block of iron and steel swayed left, then right, then back.

Back into the car. Back into Dawn Devons. My mother.

A miracle anyone survived, said the patrolman.

Should have been two people dead, not just the one, said his partner.

But there were two people dead. It’s just that one of the victims, the one that would linger for a while, wasn’t crossing the marsh that day.

The right side of the station wagon was paper thin. That’s what happens when forty-six tons of metal lands on the safest car in the world.

It was a closed casket funeral. Fifty-nine cousins attended. I knew seven of them.

TWO

DEVONS HAVE LIVED in Cumberland County for one hundred and sixty-two years. My grandfather on my father’s side was a dairy farmer, as were all of the generations before him. So you can imagine what a disappointment it was when Daniel Devons showed no interest in farming. He married a smart girl named Dawn from British Columbia—a doctor whose parents were intellectuals, university academics, both tenured at Columbia West University. Grandma Macklin was the first tenured female professor at that venerable institution.

These days, people would say my family was progressive. Back then, only other progressive families would say my family was progressive, and there were few of those in Cumberland County. Most people just said we were weird.

Daniel stayed home with the kids: me. Dawn worked at the family clinic in Amherst. Dad was an artist and Mom made the money.

Daniel was good at what he did. He made more money from his paintings than any of his neighbours would have guessed. It’s just that there was no local market for hyper-realism, as Dad called it. He sold his paintings in American galleries, a few in Upper Canada. Each one took him months to complete.

He didn’t use brushes. He used a pin, stuck into the eraser end of a pencil. He applied the paint one pinhead at a time. When the paintings were finished, they looked like photos. No, they looked like more than photos.

Our house was built up on Fenwick hill. Fenwick lies south of Amherst. But don’t look for Main Street. The name applies to an area, with only a church on a corner for a centre.

The house was big. Rich, I guess our neighbours said behind our backs. It had cedar shingles and sat back in dense woods. Were it not for the woods, we could have looked out over Amherst and the marsh beyond from our kitchen window. We might have even caught the silver of water on the Fundy side, reflecting on a sunny day.

Maybe the lack of view had something to do with Daniel’s project.

He made a feeble attempt at justifying the construction on practical grounds. My studio space in the garage is too small, he said.

Like I said before, we were progressive. My father was into global warming and rising ocean levels before the concept had gained traction in popular culture. I think he wanted it to be true. I think he wanted Fenwick hill to be the coastline of an independent Nova Scotia. I think he really believed Nova Scotia was an island. I think he really believed the ocean would swallow the marsh one day.

My mother said yes when Dad said he wanted to build a lighthouse. My mother always said yes. He was lucky to have her. No one else would have put up with his eccentricities. At least, no one as sane as her.

The foundation was poured on the last day of June, the day after my

Reviews for Tantramar

[reluctantm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A cute Maritime novella that would have benefited from a bit more length. Many of the scenes, while well-crafted, are rushed and the reader is left wanting more. Removing the slut-shaming of Crystal would also strengthen the book considerably, but, overall, an extraordinary first book.