The Region Evangeline: The Bottle Houses of Cap Egmont, Prince Edward Island

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Cap Egmont 

The Western End of Prince Edward Island is know as the Region Evangeline. The official flag of the region is the French tricolor with the Acadian Star in the upper left.  I saw more tricolors flying in front of houses in the region than Canadian flags. If the French flag is the emblem, Evangeline is the still very much present symbol of the region. Evangeline Bellefontaine is the fictional heroine of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Evangeline.

In the poem, Evangeline and Gabriel are betrothed. They become separated during The Great Acadian Upheaval, Le Grand Derangement, the forceable deportation of the Acadians by the British beginning in 1755. To quote the Wikipedia plot summary:

The poem then follows Evangeline across the landscapes of America as she spends years in a search for him, at some times being near to Gabriel without realizing he was near. Finally she settles in Philadelphia and, as an old woman, works as a Sister of Mercy among the poor. While tending the dying during an epidemic she finds Gabriel among the sick, and he dies in her arms. 

I don't know where, when or how I acquired the dual false notions that the emigration of the Acadians from what are now the Maritime Provinces to New Orleans was somehow voluntary and prompted by the beginning of the French and Indian/Seven Years War. I suppose I imagined the British posting notices to vacate the premises by such and such a date.  I was only disabused of these notions after seeing the memorial (see below) at Port-La-Joye which very graphically commemorates the forceable deportations of 1755 to 1762 (red arrows) and the waves of immigration which continued at least until 1816 (blue). Those Acadians deported south to the Thirteen Colonies arrived in terrible physical condition and were further mistreated and even sold into slavery. Several Colonies didn't want them at all. More than 3000 Acadians were imprisoned and sent to England aboard ships that rivaled for inhumane conditions those of the Middle Passage which brought brought Africans to America during the slave trade. England certainly didn't want the Acadians though several thousand were sent there. Even France didn't want them. And so the migrations continued with  often fatal consequences. It is estimated that of approximately 14,000 to 18,000 Acadians taken in Le Grand Derangement more than 8000, or half, died.

The British only got around to acknowledging the wrongs committed during Le Grand Derangement and their illegality under English law of the period in a Proclamation signed by The Queen in 2003. This is not a history conducive to a "Let bygones be bygones" or a "forgive and forget" disposition.

The Region Evangeline seemed to me topographically a little wilder than the rest of the island; more sparsely populated and economically less prosperous.

The memorial to Le Grand Derangement looking toward Charlottetown

The Plaque commemorating Le Grand Derangement at Port-La-Joye, a Canadian National Historic site across from Charlottetown.

Here are some photos of The Bottle Houses, built by Edouard Arsenault, as well as the surrounding gardens.  Read the plaque for the back story.  This was an amazing place to visit, even on a cloudy, gloomy day.

Edouard Arsenault

The Chapel

The Altar

Pews

Gardens at the Bottle Houses

One of the sculptures on the grounds

Note the face in the driftwood sculpture

740 Park Avenue and The Shelburne Museum

I love coincidences especially when they converge and can be connected into conspiracies. I love conspiracies. An entertaining TED talk (8 minutes long) takes the happenstance of coincidence to the height of conspiracy. But  here's what happened last week to me. We'll have to go around Webb's barn to get there, though.

We get our mail forwarded through Sioux Falls, SD. South Dakota is one of a few states that allow nomads like us to establish residence, register our vehicles, even register to vote. Oh, and they also: don't tax pensions, and don't have a state income tax or personal property tax. We would have to go there to establish more than a mail drop box with our own personal address and we are considering it. But for now, when we know that we are going to be in or near a central post office for a week or so, we go in and fill out a short form to register for General Delivery. Yes, Virginia, the United States Postal Service still has General Delivery service for people with no fixed address. (Isn't that how the newspapers often describe alleged perps, the homeless and drug addicts?) Having registered, we then call Sioux Falls and tell them to send our mail to that post office. We try to limit delivery to once a month.

The package of mail is sent in a Priority Mail envelope so we can track it from South Dakota right into the Post Office where we will pick it up. Two weeks ago we got our second mail package. Along with some Medicare statements and other wasteful and redundent statements available online, we received  2 New Yorker issues. We thought we had specified that magazines were not to be forwarded since we were paying by weight as well as volume for the mail forwarded. When we called Sioux Falls, we were told our package was light and had room so they threw in the two New Yorkers.

I had quit the New Yorker cold turkey when we left. Fran kept her iPad subscription but I have never mastered the page swipe. (Is it up in the article and across to the next article?) So I just gave it up as I have logging onto a newspaper regularly. Don't know squat about what's happening in the world and proud of it! But here were these two issues so, before falling asleep, I reached for one. The first article was entitled:  A Word From Our Sponsor by Jane Mayer. Mayer's piece recounts the saga of an Alex Gibney documentary,  Park Avenue: Money, Power and The American Dream,  about the building at 740 Park Ave. in New York City and the residents who live there.

740 Park Ave built in 1932

Front Door

A net worth of $100 million is a very preliminary qualification for getting through that front door. Barbara Streisand, Neil Sedaka and Russian Oligarchs have been blackballed.

John Thane, Ronald Lauder, David Granek, David Koch, Vera Wang
just to name a few

There is even a book about the building. And if you become addicted  to the soap opera which is life in the building,  Michael Gross, the undisputed master of shelter porn, will keep you up to date.

To make short work of Mayer's piece: One of the themes of Gibney's film is that the rich are rigging the game. Shocked, are you? When the rough cut was finished, certain residents of the building, most notably David Koch, allegedly were not happy. Koch is on the board of WNET, the PBS station in NYC. Shortly thereafter WNET and the producers, ITVS, pulled the plug.

I put the New Yorker aside after this one article.  Money talks. Tell me something I don't know.  So there goes Mr. Rogers' Neighbor. I hope Bert and Ernie get married soon while they both still have jobs and, I assume, health insurance. (Do puppets get residuals?) I had forgotten that the media sell conflict and confrontation. Anger and outrage mean profits. So as Candide might say, "Excellently observed...but let us go and cultivate our garden."

For me that meant a scheduled visit to Shelburne Museum. We had passed it several times on our way to and from Burlington from Button Bay. I had refrained from going because I assumed it was one of those hokey places where people dress up in period costumes and spout the party line. It's not! It is a tapas bar of a museum. A smorgasbord. A meze feast. I ended up spending most of two days there and still only enjoyed less than half of what is on offer.

Map of the grounds of the Shelburne Museum

The Museum was founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb. Her life long passion for collecting included, among many other collections,  dolls, Impressionism and early American buildings, some 22 of which she purchased from around New England and moved to Shelburne. 

Electra and her mother by Mary Cassatt

Electra on the Carousel

Electra and her dogs

The beauty of the museum lies in the fact that each building contains a collection or part thereof.  For example: The Round Barn (East Passumpsic, VT 1901) contains a collection of horse-drawn vehicles. Now, the antecedents to the automobile were not of burning interest to me but my brief tour of the barn elicited more interest from me than I would ever had expected.

Coach with leather suspension which made for a smoother ride

Any early food truck selling popcorn

   

Hearse with an actual woven wicker casket

Perhaps the magic of the museum lies in the fact that no single part is overwhelming. Take the Webb Gallery, for instance. It was constructed on site in 1965 and consists of an entry hall and three rooms. Currenty there is an exhibit of the works of N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth, each occupying one of the rooms. A half hour tour of the three rooms with the informative commentary of a docent both wet my appetite for the Wyeths and sated it, at least temporarily.

One final example of the conceptual brilliance of Shelburne is the 518 foot long, horseshoe shaped circus building erected in 1965.

The horseshoe Circus Building on a postcard

The natural cedar building houses three collections and is itself the backdrop for a working carousel and  a most magnificent stepped garden including a very extensive collection of day lilies.

Profusion of day lilies necklace the Circus Building

Within the horseshoe is the collection of circus posters, restored carousel animals, a hand carved three ring circus and a to-scale circus parade that must be 400' long. After a half hour of total immersion in the aura and ethos of the circus, I had a just of glimmer of what the coming of the circus with all of the exoticism must have meant in rural America.

Circus Day is gone from the American Scene

Three ring circus of more than 4,000 pieces carved with a pen knife

The Sudan Tableau pulled by 16 camels

There is one building, though that is a little different from the rest.

Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building 

The building was erected on site and modeled after one of Electra Webb's favorite Vermont houses. When you enter the dimly lit foyer you are met by a docent who informs you that you are no longer in Vermont.

You are at 740 Park Avenue in New York City. The Webb's lived here from 1932 to 1960. Seven of the eighteen rooms of the three story penthouse have been moved and installed here.  Everything here is original with the exception of the Tiffany room.

Living Room at 740 Park

A half-dozen Manets, a Corot and a couple of reputed Rembrandts a living room doth make.

As I left 740 Park Avenue I recrossed the grounds to take another look at the Ticonderoga.

The Champlain Lake Steamer Ticonderoga

The video on the ship testifies to the feat of engineering it took to move the 220 foot, 892 ton vessel from Lake Champlain, two miles over land and up a hill, to a hollow on a hillside in Shelburne. The video makes no mention of how much it cost. In fact, Shelburne Museum is so tastefully done that the question of cost never crossed my mind while I was there.

I can only observe that, at the least, this previous resident of 740 Park Avenue somehow seems far less objectionable to me than all of the current ones. Now, let us go and cultivate our garden.

             

Grand Isle, VT

GRAND ISLE, VT-- July 26, 2013

Here we are in Grand Isle VT about 25 miles northwest of Burlington and about 26 miles south of the Canadian border. We expect to be here until September as  the campground is amazing and the location is pretty good for going most everywhere in Vermont and even the Adirondacks in New York  that we might want to go. We are only 96 miles from Montreal so Fran and Eli will mosey on up there for a couple of days next week.

"A" on this map is the town of Grand Isle. We are on the West (left side) of the island

We are staying here. The no vacancy sign is seldom taken down, though the campground is well less than half occupied. More on that later. A bit of serendipity in how we ended up here.

Aerial View of Champlain Adult Campground

The story began at Button Bay State Park just outside of Vergennes, VT....no actually it started on the Brudenell River way up in Prince Edward Island, Canada with my musseling buddy, George,  from Quebec. I told him we were headed to Vermont and asked him if he knew of any good campgrounds. He told me of this place on Island Pond owned by a bit of an eccentric Frenchman. If the owner didn't like you, he wouldn't let you in. If you broke the rules, which weren't always clear, he'll throw you out. You can't put a carpet or a mat down outside your rig because the owner is a grass nazi. George suggested we might want to give this Frenchman a wide berth.

Well, we packed up in PEI and headed to Button Bay State Park right on Lake Champlain outside of Vergennes, 25 miles south of Burlington. Little did we know that Vermont had had the rainiest Spring in its history. The state was a sea of mud; the corn crop all but drowned; the streams, rivers and even Lake Champlain were just below flood stage. And none of Vermont's state parks have any hookups: no water, electric or sewer. Vermonters like it that way and I thought we might like to try "dry" camping. NOT!

View of the Adirondacks in NY state from our Button Bay Campsite.

Well, we immediately got stuck in the mud when we backed into our assigned campsite. Wilbur really chewed the ground up and provided a lot of exciting entertainment as he tried to get himself out. With  much help we freed Wilbur just as the park ranger arrived. I apologized that Wilbur was wearing much of her campsite. She took it in good humor and re-assigned us to a large, private and beautiful site with a magnificent vista of the Adirondacks across the lake. Several days in we drained Wilbur's batteries so low that we couldn't even get the generator to start. Fran, bless her, googled madly until she found a work-around to get the generator started. Closely monitoring our water and battery usage and watching our black water tank (solid waste) ominously fill was not Fran's cup of tea or mine, for that matter. Our plans and reservations to spend a month in no-hookups Vermont State Parks were in definite need of amendment.

So like wagon train scouts of old, I went forth in Charlotte to scout out campsites with hookups for the next week until we were scheduled at Grand Isle State Park. The first place I found was the Bates Motel of campgrounds; a dismal, soggy swamp behind a by-the-hour motel. I told the lady at the desk that I would get back to her. Next was North Beach Campground right above a very nice beach within the city limits of Burlington. I grabbed three nights without hesitation. Things were looking up. Next, on to Mallets Bay on the lake. It was  not very appealing but I took it for a weekend. Then I figured I had better drive on up to Grand Isle and checkout our assigned campsite for the next two weeks. Good move. The park was a quagmire. Grand Isle State Park was not an option. Back to square one.

Keeler Bay campground was by the month or by the season. There was definitely an ominous aura about the place. Old, sagging trailers with rotting tires are a sure sign of a people and places on the skids. A sign for Sky.......Camp was barely legible due to the peeling paint. The pointy end of the direction arrow was peeled off entirely. I went all the way to the end of road one way and found nothing so I doubled back. At the other end I found a tiny camp of one line of trailers facing the lake.

A fellow with no shirt and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth came out of an old trailer with a rickety wooden porch addition glazed with plastic. Homey.

Can I help you. (It didn't sound like a question.)
I'm looking for a quiet place to camp.
We're pretty full up here. How big's your rig.
Thirty two feet.

He took a deep drag.

I don't think you'll fit in here. (I was beginning to think the same thing.)
Do you know of any other quiet places on the lake?
You might try Apple Island.
We really aren't looking for swimming pools and fire engine rides.
Well...there's a place just past the ferry. Go to the flashing light and turn left. Its just past the ferry. If you get to the golf course, you've gone too far.

So back into Charlotte.

The NO VACANCIES seldom comes down

Sign be damned. I was desperate. I drove in slowly. The place was luxuriant with landscaping. An alee of orange lilies flanked the entrance road. The grass was lush, emerald green and beautifully trimmed. No dandelions or clover flowers. The five units I passed were obviously permanent with decks, wooden crawl space surrounds and detailed landscaping.

Natalie and Phred's place across the way from Wilbur. Typical of the "seasonals" at Champlain

I parked where indicated and walked across the grass to the office which was really a corner of a garage. There I met a tall fellow with salt and pepper hair and a very athletic physique talking to a small bird of a women.They eyed me as I crossed the apron.

Can I help you? 

The man's English was ever so lightly inflected.

I'm looking for a place to camp for a month.

A month. You want a month?

I figured if I asked for less you'd say no.

Maybe you should try Apple Island.

We don't need swimming pools or fire engine rides. All my wife and I want is a quiet place to play Scrabble and read books.

The woman piped up. 

Give him a site.

Well, how big is your rig?

Thirty two feet. And we have a nine pound dog.

If you don't bark, the dog will be okay.

Let me call my wife and tell her what I'm doing.

If you turn right at the flag pole you'll come to the path to the lake.

Champlain Adult campground was remarkably beautiful, conscientiously maintained and, for all intents and purposes, empty. There may have been 30 units, almost all seasonal, in a campground that could have easily held three times that number.  I came back and told him we'd love a site.

He worked up the price and I told him I would bring him a check the next day or so. (No credit cards!)

As we shook hands, he introduced himself as JC. Then he said he forgot to give me the rules but for now:  "No rugs or mats. They kill the grass. No pegs in the ground."

Island Pond is in the far Northeast corner of Vermont. Grand Isle is in the far Northwest corner. It was finally obvious to me. I was  destined to meet this Frenchman.

The path to Lake Champlain

Ferry boats to and from Plattsburgh NY passing The Point

Our 10'x14' Outside Living Room

      

Wilbur at home

Two Zero Gravity Recliners and a Cocktail Table

Champlain Camp Ground was an old apple orchard

Our neighbor's Patty and Freddy. (Note the lilies)

JC's home modeled on his boyhood home in the French Alps

The nightly ritual. Watching the sun set behind the Adirondacks in New York State.

ENDNOTE: J.C. (Jean-Claude) Rancoud-Guillon is worthy of his own blog post. I have subsequently learned that there are as many stories, better, legends about him as there are about Jay Gatsby and Kaiser Sose. For now suffice it to say that he is very protective of his grass. This rainy Spring to protect the grass, he took most of his campsites out of service and put up the No Vacancy sign.  If you read the reviews, almost every reviewer praises the grass. This review partly explains the grass thing.

About a month into our stay I asked JC about the nitty-gritty of that which goes unspoken in campgrounds: the septic system. He explained that Vermont was basically solid rock with not a whole lot of topsoil on top. Deep drywalls are a non-starter and drain fields as they are know in other places also aren't practical. The "black water" from the campsites is directed into numerous septic tanks around the grounds. After the solids settle out, the effluent flows out into thousands and thousands of square feet of shallow drain fields. With solid rock below the only place for the effluent to go is up by way of transpiration through ever blade of grass, every shrub, the leaves on every tree. Hence JC's preoccupation with his grass.