Pottie's at Mary's wedding - Jimmy, Sid, Pops, Eddie, Cam, Clary (dad), Mary, Gram, Charlie, Margaret, Pat and Johnny

Growing up hidden Acadian in Halifax

(updated)

This is a follow up to a reader’s comment on My uncle Sid. One family story leads to another.

My grand-mère was as strict an Acadian Catholic as God made. Half Scottish and half Acadian from Arichat, Isle Madame, Cape Breton, she would use Gaelic when angry.

I remember rabbit pie on the stove at home in Halifax, which amazingly which gets honorary mention in an Ecole Buote lesson plan.

She was a warm grand-mère to Stephen le petit-fis with a wicked wit and sharp tongue. I still remember her calling our house on Sunday and getting my Jehovah’s Witness mother to wake dad for Mass.

“Lucy, is Clarence up for church yet?” was the whole conversation. Despite my mother’s religious misgivings she could not resist Gram. She shortened grand-mère to Gram. “I’m no horse,” was her explanation.

To be Acadian in Halifax in the 20’s put you one step behind the Irish and one ahead of the “colored people” as blacks were then known. Acadians lived squeezed beyond the Fort Massey Cemetery on South Street and the rich homes after Inglis Street. In Thomas Raddall’s “Halifax Warden of the North”, he describes land south of Spring Garden Road as reserved for the lower classes, except the blacks who lived in Africville on the North end.

My uncle Sid had smarts going for him but not ancestry. While Sid got the highest marks in school, an English boy’s parents had money. They convinced the principal of the parochial school that their son should get the scholarship to Dalhousie.

When Sid arrived home with the bad news, Gram pulled his ear all the way from South Street back to the school on Grafton Street at Spring Garden Road, behind St. Mary’s Basilica. My uncles say it was quite the show with the tallish Sid bent over from the pull of a short Acadian woman in a bad mood.

Ma grand-mère was a short, stout woman and the priest was tall and dressed in a black hassock. As he tried to explain why a boy from an English family would be better suited to Dalhousie that her Isidore, she boiled until she boiled over. The finger came up followed by her hand that didn’t stop wagging at the priest. The air went rich and deep with French, Gaelic and English arguments about her Isidore won the scholarship and her Isidore was going to university as the first Acadian in her family to attend. The priest was helpless against this woman of great character, French pride and obviously stronger linguistic skills. It was the first time Gram had ever said anything to a priest other than “thank you Father.”

My father didn’t fare so well. Unable to purchase shoes in Grade 9, he left school and went to work. Shoes were a requirement of Grade 9 but not Grade 8. By the time Gram discovered his trick of pretending to attend school each day, months had passed and she let him keep working. Now he had to put money in the jar on Friday night like his older brothers.

My dad read books, taught himself and learned to write sports stories. Over the years he moved to reporting and writing the news. He became the editor in chief of CBHT’s supper TV news program. Dad was a firm taskmaster for the English language and proper grammar. He is no doubt rolling over in his grave with my free and easy use of the “Queen’s English.” Not all education comes from school but not having schooling makes life a lot harder.