A Portrait of Lunenberg County: Images and Stories from a Vanished Way of Life
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by Peter Barss
Nimbus Publishing, Halifax, 2012. 176 pp., illus., $19.95 paperback
Although the book is called A Portrait of Lunenburg County, it’s the words that enthralled me. Don’t get me wrong — Peter Barss’s photographs of the people on Nova Scotia’s South Shore who earn hardscrabble livings from the sea are stunning in their black-and-white starkness.
But as a Maritimer and a Nova Scotian now living on the Prairies, I had forgotten how much I missed the poetic ebb and flow of the Maritime accent. This book is an oral history of a land that time has, in large measure, passed by. Sure, the kids today all play video games and dream of moving to the big city, meaning Halifax — yet there are still plenty of Lunenburgers holding true to the old ways.
As one fisherman remarks, when asked whether he’d be better off getting a job on the factory floor of the Michelin plant in nearby Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, “When you come to t’ink on it, us fellers got a lot that other fellers ain’t. As far as somebody bossin’ me around, I don’t have that. I can do my own bossin’. That’s worth a lot sometimes.”
— Mark Collin Reid (Read bio)
Mark Collin Reid is the Editor-in-Chief of Canada's History.