ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, N.S. — When Stuart McLean came to visit Annapolis Royal in 2014, he and Vinyl Café producer Jess Milton arrived in town a few days early to take it all in. While it’s Nova Scotia’s tiniest town, there’s a lot to soak up.
Milton drove, as McLean points out in his essay on Annapolis Royal, that became a 12-minute monologue at two sold out shows at King’s Theatre. McLean was too busy looking at the scenery on the way to town and even got Milton to pull over on Highway 1 to get a picture of himself with the Paradise sign.
That 12 minutes, live at King’s Theatre, heard only on radio to this point, has been immortalized as part of a new four-CD box set The Vinyl Cafe 25 Years - Vol II: Postcards from Canada that compiles 21 show-opening essays from Vinyl Café concerts across the country. The 21 were selected from more than 400 shows.
McLean died in February of 2017, but his legacy as perhaps Canada’s most well-known and loved storyteller lives on. Milton, who was assigned the driver’s seat on most occasions, remembers Annapolis Royal well.
“We do a tremendous amount of research ahead of time,” she said in an interview from Toronto. “I think we wanted to go to Annapolis Royal to tell the story, I think we wanted to focus on geography. Tectonic plates, and kind of the richness of the land – to tell that story.”
But arriving four or five days ahead of the shows, they did soak it all up and it wasn’t quite what they thought. The story plan changed and McLean boiled it down to its essence in a compelling, sometimes comedic, sometimes emotional essay that greatly affected those in the crowd.
MILTON REMEMBERS
“I remember in Annapolis Royal we walked along that main street there, we went to the farmers market, we went to that little pub kind of close to the theatre there,” said Milton. “And we just sort of talked to people. And the question we were often asking was ‘what do you want people to know about this place?’ The story shifted there when we were in town and it became clear to us the story we wanted to tell about Annapolis Royal was this idea that history is alive there.
“History is so often seen as something that’s dusty, not in a negative way but it’s looking back, reading dusty books in libraries,” she said. “Your relationship in Annapolis Royal with history felt very alive and different than anywhere else we had been. It just felt fantastic. Like all living things it felt full of promise, full of possibility and joy – like something to celebrate rather than to look back on and that’s what we chose to do.”
If reaction to his monologue at the Annapolis Royal shows is any indication, McLean nailed his interpretation of what has now become known as ‘The Cradle of Our Nation.’
‘HISTORY IS ALIVE’
“The point of all this is that history is alive here,” McLean said at King’s Theatre. “What I have read about in books you have and are living still. Living in Annapolis Royal is like living in a museum. But nothing is under glass. Living here is like being part of the exhibit. You don’t buy admission to the fort, you toboggan there in winter. You don’t visit the oldest road, you drive along it. You don’t tour the oldest house, you drop in for a tea and a chat.”
“That was a wonderful night,” Hague Vaughan remembers. “I’m glad they put it out on a disc.”
Vaughan and McLean were childhood friends in Montreal – high school and grade school. Vaughan now lives in Granville Ferry and had been trying to coax McLean to Annapolis Royal for some time. And while Vaughan remembered McLean from his youth, until they had a school reunion he didn’t know the Stuart McLean of his childhood was the same one who was on CBC Radio telling stories about the fictitious Dave who owned the fictitious Vinyl Café.
“I hadn’t put together the fact that Stuart McLean on the radio was my Stuart McLean from high school,” Vaughan said.
ANNAPOLIS ROYAL
Later Vaughan started asking McLean to do a show in Annapolis Royal.
“He has a habit when he’s going to any small town of calling up LCC (Lower Canada College) friends or other friends, to come and have dinner with him or something,” Vaughn said, still referring to his friend in the present tense. “I’d been backstage to a couple of his shows by then, and he was here in Wolfville and I went to dinner with Robbie Harrison and a couple of other guys there, and I started pressuring him into coming to Annapolis Royal. And eventually he did.
“We went around a lot of places. He was here for a few days before the opening and very much didn’t want to be disturbed,” Vaughan remembers. “But he wanted to go around to a few places. So I took him to the Habitation, then I think we did the night walk, walking through the cemetery, and the last one I took him to the Melanson Settlement. Just showed him the history of the area and all that, and how it felt to be a big part of history. That really came across in his talk with the sense that we live in a museum. That’s one of the things he started with. I think it was a very important aspect that he brought out.
HABITATION
“He was standing down at the Habitation on the water there and he’s looking around, and as you know if you’re standing there there’s not many buildings around,” Vaughan said. “What struck him more than anything was that what he was looking at was exactly what Champlain had looked at. He was very historically inclined.”
When McLean ended his monologue at his second show at King’s Theatre in 2014 there were tears in the audience.
“This is not only the cradle of the Acadian people; it is the cradle of Canada,” he said. “It is a privilege to be here. You do me an honour by your presence at my show. I am honoured to be at yours.”
Vaughan referred to his old friend as an uncommon talent. “Where are we going to find another one?”
The Vinyl Cafe 25 Years - Vol II: Postcards from Canada is available at amazon.com, Chapters, Indigo, and at www.vinylcafe.com.
Did you know?
On the new four-CD set The Vinyl Cafe 25 Years - Vol II: Postcards from Canada, Atlantic Provinces communities are featured six times – more than in any other region. Also on the CD are essays on Mabou, and Halifax in Nova Scotia, Georgetown in PEI, and Gander and St. John’s in Newfoundland.
Did you know?
Dave, fictitious owner of the fictitious Vinyl Café, is portrayed as being from Cape Breton. Cape Breton features prominently in more than one Dave and Morley episode. The café’s motto was ‘We May Not Be Big, But We’re Small.’
Did you know?
Stuart McLean and Jess Milton crossed Canada numerous times over the 15 years they were together doing The Vinyl Café. While McLean did drive sometimes in the beginning, Milton said he would become too distracted by things he saw as they drove through different communities.
