The Mind of Landscape

Company Houses, Inverness County, o/p, 24" x 24", Steven Rhude


Submarine Mining - "It is also of interest to note that the deepest submarine mine in Nova Scotia, or probably anywhere, was, prior to its closure, No. 2 Mine of the Inverness Coal & Railway Company, where nearly 3,000 feet of cover had been reached." Louis Frost [1]

"Then there is the mine silhouetted against it all, looking like a toy from a Meccano set; yet its bells ring as the coal-laden cars fly up out of the deep, grumble as they are unloaded, and flee with thundering power down the slopes they leave behind. Then the blackened houses begin and march row and row up the hill to where we stand and beyond to where we go."
 Alistair MacLeod [2]


In Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, there are two landscapes. There is the one that meets you in the face, grass, dune, and sea. It is a perceptual delight - complex and capable of testing the most sensitive moments of the eye's accuracy. Then there is the other landscape, - one you can't see above ground; the one that meets you in the gut. It is a submarine landscape beneath your feet; in fact it is a landscape beneath the sea of your mind and body, a landscape that has been flooded with the memory of coal and company houses.

 Above it now exists the Cabot links golf course luring those to economic diversity, and job creation. Landscape is always layered.



[1] the Louis Frost notes 1865 - 1962, History of coal mining in Nova Scotia

[2] Alistair MacLeod, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976), 103-104. 


Steven Rhude, Wolfville

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