'Used to live in Middle Sackville -- just for a few years -- but now in eastern Ontario. 'Loved NS though -- has it all (forests, lakes, beaches, history, and especially great music!)
'Used to live in Middle Sackville -- just for a few years -- but now in eastern Ontario. 'Loved NS though -- has it all (forests, lakes, beaches, history, and especially great music!)
Too many instruments...too little time
Not far at all. From the 1940's (after WWII) to the '60's our family eked out a living on a sheep ranch -- wheat farm located on about 2000 acres of till and prairie in North Dakota -- I'd guess we would have been around 50 miles west southwest as the crow flies from Portal. All our land was sold to my cousin 40 years ago. Today that entire area is included in the Bakken oil shale fields area -- the site of the probably the most intense oil extractions in North America right now. Adding the Bakken reserves to the newly discovered shale oil fields out west and it looks like we are talking about enough oil to supply the entire US at current consumption rates for approximately 5 centuries (as in 500 years). Hard to overestimate the impacts of these operations and how they will change the equation. My Dad kept the mineral rights to his lands and now at 92+ years age he finally has real money. You never know.
I knew Alberta was big but did not realize it nearly the size of Texas. I love driving through the wheat country in Alberta -- I think there are individual fields larger than Rhode Island....
Alaska is about 663,330 sq. mi by comparison...
Bernie
____
Due to current budgetary restrictions the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off -- sorry about the inconvenience.
The oil boom has really got N.Dak jumping, as well at the north end of the Bakken Oilfield in Saskatchewan, there will be a lot of people able to buy some high end mandolins (mando content). Big wheat fields? Driving back from Owensboro through Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and South Dakota, I thought that the entire midwest was one big cornfield! -)
We've taken at least two routes through Alberta to Alaska. We usually take 43 from Edmonton through Whitecourt, Grande Prairie etc. to Dawson's Creek and then 97 west -- and once going back we took 49 east out of Dawson across to Highway 2 -- they are both incredible drives. I think it was on 49 we saw the huge wheat fields -- it was fall during harvest. But the greatest drive of all is the one across the Yukon via Route 1 from Watson Lake through White Horse to Haines Junction!
Bernie
____
Due to current budgetary restrictions the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off -- sorry about the inconvenience.
That would be the northern prairies where you saw the huge wheat fields, Grande Prairie over towards High Prairie.
It's so far north that they get 18 hours of daylight in the summer, in effect, this gives them a longer growing season than there is on the equator. Glad you enjoy your visits up here.
Yes it is hard to beat the fiddle music from eastern Nova Scotia -- especially Cape Breton. But of course you are now in the Ottawa Valley fiddle region and that's some powerful music too -- one could advance the argument at least the Ward Allen may have been a good as any fiddler ever and anywhere?
Bernie
____
Due to current budgetary restrictions the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off -- sorry about the inconvenience.
Orcas Island Tonewoods
Free downloads of my mandolin CDs:
"Mandolin Graffiti"
"Mangler Of Bluegrass"
"Overhead At Darrington"
"Electric Mandolin Graffiti"
Red spruce is actually the provincial tree of Nova Scotia, but you'd be hard pressed to find a red spruce tree that would be big enough to make F5 tops out of. Most of it is cut for pulpwood...
Some years ago, there was a program on CBC's "Land & Sea" that talked about the discovery of the oldest known red spruce tree ever found. Core samples taken from the living tree showed 450+ years of growth rings. Now, (for good reason) the TV program did not disclose where the tree was located, the TV footage showed the tree in the midst of a dense stand of similar trees, but it was by far the biggest tree visible in the stand. The catch...? They didn't mention or disclose the diameter of the trunk, but it was FAR smaller than the shoulder width of the lady standing next to it.
I've travelled a bit there and seen stands of the stuff, but it'd be pretty hard to find mandolin or guitar size boles in Nova Scotia, I think.
Pretty good size lobsters, though...
Orcas Island Tonewoods
Free downloads of my mandolin CDs:
"Mandolin Graffiti"
"Mangler Of Bluegrass"
"Overhead At Darrington"
"Electric Mandolin Graffiti"
Ya gotta go. Being in Cape Breton is like taking a big step back in time for all the right reasons. Sure you've got the internet, laptops, and cell phones just like everywhere else but there is more. You've also get to rub shoulders with about the friendliest, most laid back people you'll find anywhere, you can easily find live fiddling just about any night and nearby too, restaurants filled with home-made soups, chowders, and pastries, great beer, uncrowded roadways, and breathtaking natural surroundings --and yes lobsters. There's more but I don't want to spoil it for you!
Bernie
____
Due to current budgetary restrictions the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off -- sorry about the inconvenience.
Orcas Island Tonewoods
Free downloads of my mandolin CDs:
"Mandolin Graffiti"
"Mangler Of Bluegrass"
"Overhead At Darrington"
"Electric Mandolin Graffiti"
Reading all the posts made me think of a series I watched one time called "Billy Connolly: Journey to the edge of the world" in it he leaves Halifax and travels the north west passage to I think Vancouver Island. It is a pretty amazing show and there is some pretty good music in it too.
Here is a trailer for it
http://youtu.be/Vb-Nh3J2Fg4
and here is a part of episode 1
http://youtu.be/8WmvyschrXw
Oh I also thought I would post this clip of Jimmy Page playing "The Battle of Evermore" from the movie "It Might Get Loud" which I must also say is a pretty awesome movie.
http://youtu.be/9xfy9W9my_w
I live in beautiful St Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia. I beg to differ about instrument size red spruce. There's awsome instrument quality red spruce here and it's all I use now. I went for a stroll recently with my friend/supplier Fred to have a look at his wood lot. Plenty red spruce measuring over 8' feet around. I'm heading to Cape Breton next Saturday to catch Mike Compton, Bruce Molsky,Joe Newberry, and Rafe Stefinini along with JP Cormier and the Elliots , part of the Celtic Colors Festival. Still time to get here for that Spruce. Along with Celtic, blues, folk, etc., there is a huge bluegrass following here with many fine pickers and instrument builders. How does a thread about Nova Scotia end up in Northern B.C. and Alsaka with Jimmy Page playing The Battle of Evermore so quickly? :-)
Paul Josey
Because the internet travels with the speed of light Paul!
I found your detailing of the schedule most surprising --we have been to the Celtic Colours many times -- over half the time it has been a rain fest!!
It is interesting to see all the bluegrass at CC this year - - that has not so been true in the past -- but I had not looked at this year's schedule as we are going to the southwest USA this month. It is good to have cross-pollination but I hope the bulk of the festival continues to revolve around Celtic music from around the world. There are plenty of bluegrass festivals...
Bernie
____
Due to current budgetary restrictions the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off -- sorry about the inconvenience.
If any one is interested in some good Celtic music, I found a podcast the other day called "Irish & Celtic Music Podcast"
Here is the link to their web page
http://celticmusicpodcast.com/
Been away from the cafe for a while..how many Nova Scotians on here now
"The Flatiron" '83 A5-2 Steve Carlsons
"wires an wood...man that's good!"
Man, that's one meandering thread you've revived, CTH.
I spent my first few years in Malagash and Wallace.My father was a Cape Bretoner, employed at the salt mines, and my mother a Prince Edward Islander. The family moved to Ontario when I was a child as my father was transferred to the Windsor salt mine. However, we returned to NS and PEI every summer. I grew up with plenty of down-east music around me, and my buddy's dad in Windsor was a sw Ontario fiddler. I still identify as a Nova Scotian, or more generally as a Maritimer, though I've lived most of my life in Ontario. Sometimes I feel like a first-generation immigrant here. There's a strong fiddle tradition in the Ottawa Valley where I live now, but it's lost many of the distinctive stylings that are still alive in Cape Breton and PEI.
And folks, let's not revive the "who's is bigger" arguments. Wikipedia can answer questions on that subject.
Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
"I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.
I normally visit a customer in Halifax once to twice a year. Beautiful place and great seafood!Dang border patrol won’t let me in Canada since Covid though. They told me I wasn’t essential worker enough even though I’m a service tech in the food business. Go figure. I miss visiting Canada.
Trailer Park Boys Location, was set in the fictional Sunnyvale Trailer Park in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
writing about music
is like dancing,
about architecture
Dang! Got me again!
I just read through most, and almost responded to, a 10 year old thread. Before I realized.
How does one even find a 10 year old thread?
Chris Cravens
Girouard A5
Montana Flatiron A-Jr.
Passernig Mandola
Leo Posch D-18
I'm not in nova Scotia but I'm neer the border in new-brunswick. Just started playing mandolin a couple months ago, i was actually curious to know how popular it was in the maritimes.
I don't think of mandolin as a down east instrument, but it's far from rare. My mother, PEI born (1921) and raised, told me that mandolins were around, though not common, in her youth. Ken Perlman mentions mandolin players in Couldn't Have A Wedding without The Fiddler: The Story of Traditional Fiddling in Prince Edward Island (a great book, by the way). I've heard of others here and there, e.g., Cape Breton. Ray Legere, a fine mandolin player, is in your neck of the woods: https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/li...f-fame-346927/. Louis Benoit in Halifax plays mandolin, as did his father, the fiddler, Jarvis Benoit from Isle Madame, though I've only heard Louis on guitar. There's a bluegrass scene throughout the Maritimes, so, of course, there you'll find mandolins. Gordon Stobbe, from Head of Chezzetcook, is a fiddler and a fine mandolin player in the Ladies Choice Bluegrass Band, who has written a book on mandolin chording. You'll find that many fiddlers are at least competent on mandolin.
Where are you from in NB? Wallace, where I'm from, is in that region. Amherst was the big city to me.
Last edited by Ranald; Mar-02-2021 at 3:32pm.
Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
"I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.
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