Celebrating The Tent Dwellers next year

Paine wrote about his adventures in the interior of Nova Scotia in a book called The Tent Dwellers, read and loved by generations of people who cherish the lakes, rivers and woods of southwestern Nova Scotia. Next year marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Tent Dwellers, and plans are afoot to celebrate the centennial in grand style.

Last week, in the Maitland Bridge community hall, a large group of people gathered to begin planning the celebrations. The meeting was coordinated by Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site, and invited were members of a variety of organizations and government departments, park employees, and ordinary private citizens. Those at the meeting were full of both ideas and enthusiasm.

It was Eddie Breck – Dr. Edward Breck, in point of fact – who, sitting in a gentlemen’s club in New England, hatched the plan of going fishing in the wilds of Nova Scotia. As Paine described it, Breck had been there once before, only this time he wanted to go further into the wilderness, the deep unknown, somewhere even the guides had never been.

“Perhaps stray logmen had been there, or the Indians; sportsmen never. There had been no complete surveys, even by the government. Certain rivers were known by their outlets, certain lakes by their name. It was likely they formed the usual network and that the circuit could be made by water with occasional carries. Unquestionably, the waters swarmed with trout.”

Paine got off the steamer in Yarmouth and took the train to Annapolis, then made his way by horse and wagon to Milford House, which he described as the edge of the wilderness. He met up with his friend Eddie and the two guides who would take them into the wilderness – Del the Stout and Charles the Strong. Del Thomas was the owner of Milford House and Charles Charleston one of its best guides.

They were at the headwaters of the Mersey River and could have set out from there, but instead drove in a wagon to Jakes Landing, “a hard, jolting drive over a bad road, with only a break here and there where there is a house or two, and maybe a sawmill and a post-office, the last sentinels of civilization.” From Jakes Landing, now the site of the canoe concession in Kejimkujik, they set off on their legendary fishing trip.

Peter Rogers, who runs the canoe concession, was one of the participants in the meeting. So was John Leefe, mayor of the Region of Queens, who was there with Jill Cruikshank, special projects coordinator for the ROQ, plus councillors Doug Adams (Doug was representing the North Queens Board of Trade) and Peter Waterman, whose other hat is from the Nova Scotia Guides Association.

Debra Ryan, who is the recreation coordinator for the municipality, represented Annapolis County. Attending from the provincial government was Leif Helmer, from the Department of Environment and Labour, Protected Areas Branch, who is the point man on the Tobeatic, and who has a passionate interest in following the route of the Tent Dwellers next year.

There were many others there, and they got right down to work, bringing to light ideas for celebrating the event. There were dozens of ideas, ranging from a tent dwellers festival to the recreation of a guides’ campsite and cabin and recreations of the original trip. Included were special evening programs at the Park, having the book distributed to schools and libraries, special readings of the book, a canoe festival, writers’ and songwriters’ workshops, celebrating the New England – Nova Scotia connection, plus many more. One idea, brought forward by the Friends of Keji, had to do with placing markers in the park and Tobeatic in the areas visited by the Tent Dwellers.

The next step in the process will be to have an organizing committee set up a structure to carry off the events. That committee will meet shortly, and in the meantime, others interested in working on the festival should make their interests known to the park.

- Tom Sheppard can be reached at tsheppard@tdcmail.ca