Road To Lunenburg

Road to Lunenburg, oil on board, 20"x24", Steven Rhude, Argyle Fine Art

For years it thrived on fish. Thrived on the proud identity that comes with a hefty price - that of sail, shipbuilding and that vessel pictured on a dime; a schooner everyone has seen or heard of.

 A tough town with lots of beer and brawls - money, salt, and cod. An old town class with a working waterfront. A palace school like nothing the province had ever seen, or will see again.

To educate was important, so they built it themselves - like they did everything.

Built the town out of Hemlock. Folded up old newspapers like an Accordion and wedged them in the seams of the floorboards to block out the cold drafts.

 And for migrant residents to find today.

 Buffalo Times, the Shipping News... something was always threatening the fishing way of life said the oldest form of gossip known to man.

Even had a Town Crier

But rot comes from within.

It's a long and sordid tale, not at all pretty like the way the waterfront facade presented itself to that couple from the rust belt, with their digital camera and lobster bibs.

 The logic of decline was too much, too real; so the use of the shop window hid the empty store behind it.

 Kept it hidden; ever so hidden that even the town folk wanted to believe the Doers and Dreamers.

 Down the street where you pay your taxes, a romantic history is forever neat and packaged. Just like in a stationary shop - with the official UNESCO seal of authenticity stamped on its letterhead.

In another storefront - this time for clothing, silver window foil impedes the wandering eye from entering the black void. Like the larger, engineered space woven by a wizard with a habit for heritage.

And the industry of retirement.

Sent the high school kids a pack'in they did.

 Someone said in the post office.

So now, in the morning, younger children are imported from the shore route - what's left of it. Brought into town on big yellow buses - into a new storefront; a precast world of concrete and passwords. The wizard is proud of it - gotta great deal, didn't have to build it ourselves this time.


Someone said in the post office.


Exported back to the shore in the afternoon on their home away from home. The local Times believes school bus yellow is the children's favorite colour now.

Its their only colour now.

 And so it goes with an aging population and all the kings men... all the wizards and all their curtains... and the politicos of today, at the expense of what can and could have been.

Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS.