What a tremendous response we had to Laura Mulrooney’s new series on Simple Local Life!  If you missed chapter one of Bread is Life, be sure to check it out here. Go grab a cup of tea…and maybe a croissant…and enjoy chapter two.

Don’t be Fooled

The rural- urban ‘issue’ is talked about a lot these days. Why, Prime Minister Trudeau has even created
a Federal Department for it, with our friend and customer Bernadette Jordan at the helm. When the
Frenchman and I first moved to the South Shore , I hadn’t much ‘country’ experience , though I ‘d hardly
call the suburbs of Halifax the urban jungle. Didier had far more experience in rural France, though now
urban sprawl has turned his pastoral neighbourhood into a bedroom community for Paris- hours away !!

When we first arrived, we met so many kind people, we were sent to Parkdale to meet an old lady who
sold us eggs and homemade butter. We’d often go for a visit on Sundays where Doris had tea steeping in
the Corning Ware teapot on the stove for hours. Her baked beans were legendary and she was flattered
to see the Frenchman feast on more than a bowl or two of her home grown beans. The drive was home
was odoriferous if nothing else. Enough said.

We did a large wedding cake for a farm couple – 5 layers, too big for us to deliver. Our local milkman
helped us out by delivering it in the back of his milk truck . A frigid Frenchman holding it tightly for the
one hour drive. Tragically, the couple’s barn burned down days before the wedding. We suggested they
pay later or whenever, knowing their livestock had all perished. They would hear nothing of it and pulled
out an envelope of cash to pay their bill. A deal’s a deal, they said.

Our favourite fisherman lived in Vogler’s Cove , every visit he would pull out a special bottle of “French
Brandy” for his guest of honour. His wife in her polyester nightgown and fuzzy slippers with a cigarette
hanging from her lip and a Gloucester fish wife accent was as charming a hostess as any Kardashian.
That fisherman had a grade 2 education and I’m here to say he could reckon numbers faster than any
university graduate I know.

To be underestimated is a gift , you’ve always got the upper hand , to underestimate is foolish and you
can miss so many opportunities for learning and friendship. I am grateful for the many and varied
characters we have met on the South Shore. And if I have learned anything in these past thirty years- it
is that kindness and intelligence can wear checked flannel as easily as Ralph Lauren!