My parents moved to the Sheet Harbour area in the early 1970s, just as I was graduating from high school and they no longer had any of their children living with them. They landed first on Sober Island, where my father was working and made friends with a local fishing family. They settled in the Passage when they bought from the neighbours, the Jollymores, a small patch of land, with a dilapidated cottage-sized residence.
According the the Visitor Centre in Sheet Harbour, the Mi'kmaw name for the area is Weijooik, meaning "flows/runs wildly/crazily". This must refer to the West River, which cascades over a dramatic series of rocky ledges and empties into the elongated fjord-like harbour, one characteristic of the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia / Mi'kma'ki. Timber used to be cut inland and floated down over the falls to a wood mill that stood at the base, until it was swept away by a storm in 1970.
We have some family history on the Eastern Shore. My great-grandmother on the maternal line was from the Acadian community of Chezzetcook. When I was a small child living in Dartmouth, we vacationed in a cottage in Beaver Harbour, next community over from the Passage. However, I have no ancestral roots, that I know of, in the Sheet Harbour area.
My father died in 1982, at the age of 57, in the newer wing of Eastern Shore Memorial Hospital, which he helped to construct . My mother lived alone in the Passage for another 26 years, becoming active in local women's and health organisations and helping to found the Sheet Harbour women's centre, LEA Place. In the early 1990s, she came into an unexpected inheritance, which she used to buy a larger lot, about an acre, and to construct a new house behind the original cottage, which was then torn down. The new house dates from 1997.
My mother always hoped that I would be interested in her passing the house on to me. She and I shared a passion for crafts and visual art, and the design of the house was one of her major aesthetic achievements. However, I did not feel particularly connected to the Passage, and did not think I would want to inhabit the residue of my parents' lives. It was more than a year after her death, in 2008, that I realised that the place was not haunted for me by any negative memories, and that fate had handed me a stunningly beautiful place by the sea, with a kitchen designed by a woman with a university degree in Home Economics. It is in some ways an idealised version of the earlier structure, including elements from an addition my father had constructed, so both my parents share architectural credit. I added the wood stove, and the paint scheme is mine. The furniture is a mix of my mother's and my own additions.
According the the Visitor Centre in Sheet Harbour, the Mi'kmaw name for the area is Weijooik, meaning "flows/runs wildly/crazily". This must refer to the West River, which cascades over a dramatic series of rocky ledges and empties into the elongated fjord-like harbour, one characteristic of the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia / Mi'kma'ki. Timber used to be cut inland and floated down over the falls to a wood mill that stood at the base, until it was swept away by a storm in 1970.
We have some family history on the Eastern Shore. My great-grandmother on the maternal line was from the Acadian community of Chezzetcook. When I was a small child living in Dartmouth, we vacationed in a cottage in Beaver Harbour, next community over from the Passage. However, I have no ancestral roots, that I know of, in the Sheet Harbour area.
My father died in 1982, at the age of 57, in the newer wing of Eastern Shore Memorial Hospital, which he helped to construct . My mother lived alone in the Passage for another 26 years, becoming active in local women's and health organisations and helping to found the Sheet Harbour women's centre, LEA Place. In the early 1990s, she came into an unexpected inheritance, which she used to buy a larger lot, about an acre, and to construct a new house behind the original cottage, which was then torn down. The new house dates from 1997.
My mother always hoped that I would be interested in her passing the house on to me. She and I shared a passion for crafts and visual art, and the design of the house was one of her major aesthetic achievements. However, I did not feel particularly connected to the Passage, and did not think I would want to inhabit the residue of my parents' lives. It was more than a year after her death, in 2008, that I realised that the place was not haunted for me by any negative memories, and that fate had handed me a stunningly beautiful place by the sea, with a kitchen designed by a woman with a university degree in Home Economics. It is in some ways an idealised version of the earlier structure, including elements from an addition my father had constructed, so both my parents share architectural credit. I added the wood stove, and the paint scheme is mine. The furniture is a mix of my mother's and my own additions.