Chapter Four 77

The reader will notice that this period might well have been divided into two or even three chronological sub-sections. Why, then, leave it as a block? The answer remains the same as that given at the beginning of the chapter: outwardly the village and area appeared the same from beginning to end. Furthermore, the two great changes in the world of ideas - the Antigonish Movement and the developments brought about by the Second Vatican Council - did not affect every aspect of everyday life. People continued to eat the same foods, dress in the same way, and amuse themselves by playing the same games or listening to, and playing the same music. Schools and the curriculum evolved very slowly. As late as the mid-sixties, some men were still using horses for work other than collecting Irish moss. One would have had to have been well acquainted with Tignish to realize what was developing there. The few casual visitors who came would have seen nothing but an out-of—the-way old- fashioned community, with little but television to connect it with the rest of the world.

Though the sixties were a time of change, much of it brought on by outside factors, it was to be the early seventies that presented the area with its biggest challenge after Vatican II. The Island Development Plan, a full-scale attempt to modernize the Island in the best capitalistic and bureaucratic style of the clay was to prove a mixed blessing, as it destroyed folkways and even communities in its effort towards “rationalization". However survival in the Tignish area had already been tested thoroughly; the only really weak spot was the French language. Economic independence was largely assured, though other forms were less so. As for co—operation, it was doing well. The area was in good enough shape to keep its individuality in the face of the Development Plan and the latter’s side-effects.