When I moved to Nova Scotia, many years ago now, I found myself swimming in my own gene pool. Almost anyone at the nearest town's grocery store could be my cousin. A cousin does indeed live nearby, but he like me, grew up in a small Ontario village, then spent the greater part of our lives in central Toronto.
A familiar greeting on first meeting of true Bluenosers, an affectionate self label of true Nova Scotians, is "Who's your father?". To have much credibility with the oldtimers, the name must be at least a slighlty familiar surname, preferably holding a drop or two of a shared bloodline. Those "from away" are always a little suspect.
My paternal grandfather did me the favour of being born the son of a sea captain at Pleasant Point in Shelbourne County. His two older brothers were lost in a storm in the time the men still fished from schooners on the Grand Banks. Family lore has it that he was shipped off to Boston for school to save him from the sea. There is another story that he got so horribly seasick, he brought shame to the family name. Whatever the reason, he ended up at an Ontario university and wed a fine farm girl with deep Upper Canadian roots. I still don't know whether this gives me the right to claim a slightly blue nose. I still think I am "from away".
The truth is our Toronto neighbourhood wasn't that different ethnically than people I live among today. My daughters' class pictures are filled with well scrubbed, school picture day white faces.
My grand daughters' live in downtown Toronto. Their school pictures glow with a rainbow of skin colours. The wonderfullness of it all is that to them, living in a microcosm of the United Nations is the norm.
Don't get me wrong, I love living with the good people of Nova Scotia. I count among my friends here some from faroff lands. If only larger waves of immigration from far off lands, came to our shores, we would have the opportunity to share the cultural riches "from far away" in this land of tides and orchards.
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