morien | Old Photos and Memories of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

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The Port Morien I Remember

Port Morien….. I Remember

The wonderful Teachers who worked so hard, and taught the Golden Rule

The smell of My Mother’s Bread, when I came in from School

Blueberry Pie, and Molasses Cookies, cooling on the shelf

The times my Mother sat on the bank looking out to the wharf all by herself

Stories that teacher Ethel Campbell would read to us on Friday afternoon

But they always seemed to me, to end too soon

They took me far away in thought, and opened up my mind

The Bookmobile, I read every Western and Mystery I could find

The walk that seemed so long each day, to get to Gowrie School

The Ice Clampers we jumped that were floating in the Bay

The time Kenzie, Billy, and I used fire and rocks as our drying tool after us falling in the water on that freezing winter day

Robert and the Birch Grover’s playing guitar and singing

The year my brother taught me how to drive his car

Pin Ball Machines at Bray’s store, and the high Scores we’d be winning

The day we left to go live in Toronto, it seemed so far

Time spent hanging around the Jukebox in Arthur Bray’s Store

The girls I had a crush on, and they didn’t know,

[Karen Murrant, Helen Cathcart, Carolyn Boutilier, Judy Edstrom, Florence Barro,]

Those summers happily spent down on the Morien sand shore

Though we were young, It really doesn’t seem that long ago

Baseball, Softball, Morien wharf, lots of diving and swimming Kenzie, Billy, Sandy, each day the water drew us all

Some of us now sadly gone, they’ve played their last inning

Gordon, Sheldon, Bobba, Roger, Wilbert Hall he dove off that swordfish spar so tall

The summer Kenzie got his brand new bicycle

We were down on the wharf and he let each of us have a spin

Billy took his ride and lost his footing on the wharf’s edge

Right before our eyes, both he and the bike went straight in

They hit the water with a great big splash

On that day, Billy’s footwork wasn’t of top notch

The bike sank and he swam to the surface in a flash

All he could think about was saving his new wrist watch

We got a grappling hook, and a long piece of rope,

Holding our breath, with each throw filled with hope

We dragged and dragged the bottom, and I’m happy to say

We finally retrieved Kenzie’s new bike on that hilarious day

The only goal I got when I played for the Morien hockey team

Our goalie Joe must have thought that I was nuts

I had scored on him, my own Goalie, goal number thirteen

Ever after that we called him, “Bakers”(Dozen) Butts

The trips I took back home to Morien almost every year

To not make it home in time for Lobster Season was my biggest fear

The lobsters I got from my buddies Roger, Weldon, and Kenny’

Thanks to them there never was a time I didn’t get any

Hitch hiking to Glace Bay to the Russell Theatre

To see the latest Audie Murphy western movie feature

The Chip Wagon, on Commercial St., was always there

I could never pass it up if I had a dime to spare

Kenzie, Billy and I, hitch hiking home from Town,

Billy and I pretending we couldn’t see Kenzie

I’d say where’s Kenzie, Billy’d say, I don’t see him around

Kenzie would play along and let us think we were driving him into a frenzy

The trips with Robert Lahey out to Birch Grove

To see Marge and Judy we always travelled that old Back-Pit road

The rides were scarce we walked most of the time

The trials of youth we never seemed to mind

The Christmas treat of candy at our Church hall was so nice

The winter the live Baby Seals were brought in off the ice

The Swordfish boats coming in to unload their cargoes

All the dangerous times we spent jumping harbor ice floes

My mind goes back to Morien so much, it can bring on tears

The trips home, when I stayed with Kenzie and Gordon over the years

The friends I spent so much time with, and some are gone now

It’s a long stretch of time but seems like yesterday somehow

The song “Port Morien” that Reggie Mac Donald wrote and sang

It tells so well the way many of us expatriates feel

It brings me back each time I hear it to thinking of the old gang

Of the days of playing cowboys with Reggie like it was real

SPECIAL REMEMBERANCES TO:

Teachers: Ruth McLeod……… Ada Spencer……..Ethel Campbell…. they were such great people. I was never a great student, but they were so good to me, I loved them dearly.

Arthur Bray: he had great patience…… he put up with a lot of shenanigans from us in his store, where I developed my love for music listening to the Jukebox there, 5 cents a song.

Revised Feb. 26/ 2010

Credit: Barry Giovanettie via http://portmorien.ca

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SENTIMENTAL CAPE BRETONER

If you ever long with aching heart, to return back to that ocean,

To go back home just one more time, to where your parents came from

If your children share the love you feel, and it fills your heart with pride,

Then you’re a sentimental Cape Bretoner deep inside

If you are holding on to some sweet dream, instead of letting go,

If your thoughts are filled with memories, of times long, long ago

And if you love each blade of grass so green, from the Causeway to Sangaree

Then you’re a sentimental Cape Bretoner, just like me

You’re a sentimental Cape Bretoner, with your heart upon your sleeve,

And nothing in this world can change the way that you believe

And if you shed a teardrop now and then when no one else can see,

Then you’re a sentimental Cape Bretoner just like me

If you still recall your mother’s words from when you were a child,

And sometimes in a crowded room you see your father’s smile

And you would give just anything to share that memory,

Then you’re a sentimental Cape Bretoner just like me

You’re a sentimental Cape Bretoner with your heart upon your sleeve,

And nothing in this world can change the way that you believe

And if you shed a teardrop now and then when no one else can see,

Then you’re probably from Port Morien just like me

If your body crossed the Causeway But you heart was left on the other side alone

If you go back home to see old friends, as often as can be

If your feelings are so strong, you’ll never call another place home

Yes, you’re probably from Port Morien just like me.

Barry Giovannetti

Revised Feb. 26/2010

About Port Morien

Port Morien, a small village in South Eastern Cape Breton, six miles from Glace Bay, is one of the oldest communities in Eastern Canada, the area having been settled in 1786.

It’s bay was first navigated by the Aboriginal population of the area, and then the Portugese. It appeared on a map dated 1580 as “Baye de Mordienne.” The French mined coal here for the Fortress of Louisbourg beginning in 1720. Coal mined here in 1724 was being traded to Boston in the first officially recorded export of minerals in Canada. The ownership of the mine changed hands between the English and French four times, with the English ultimately gaining control in the late Eighteenth Century. In the Nineteenth Century, it was named Cow Bay by settlers, after (it is alleged) a cow transported to Sydney from Louisbourg escaped from a vessel and was later found in the area.

By the 1860s and ’70s, the village grew to a population of 3000 as a result of the establishment of the Blockhouse and Gowrie mines. Gradually it dwindled in the Twentieth Century to 800 people. In 1895, its name was changed to Port Morien. In two centuries it has gone from an industrial area dependent on fishing and coal mining, primarily, to a lobster fishing and retirement village. In the year 200o, the lobster fleet consisted of 47 boats.

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