to fish the gulf shoals

and to winter on flakes of salt cod,

pickled pork and corned beef.

In those early days, fertilizing

with retrieved mussel mud and eroded soil, the bay always giving back what it took from the land. Steward-ecologists. The building of roads around the natural curvature of the bay

and the meandering lanes of its rivers,

never out of sight of the ebb and flow of tides and the inspiring beauty of the setting sun on the evening waters. The slow,

deliberate development of community

where people and nature collaborate in unity.

Yet a fourth day, the building of a new tradition: dependence upon nature and on self—reliance its admonition.

The garden, a cornucopia of natural resources, yields its fruits to an industrious community:

the building of ships and shops,

of saw mills and grist mills,

of tanneries and canneries,

of wharves for commerce,

of tall—spired churches and of primer schools,

of lobster factories and a potato—starch factory, of a railway line and the Island’s first indoor rink, of plays, tea parties, and jamborees,

of some young people going away but always coming back, of presence and identity.

Squalls can be sudden, storms slow to subside; it is the nature of bays, And so, true to form is this one on its fifth day.

The coming on of two world wars

interjected by the Great Depression

remind of the fragility and transience

of even this small world:

the wars playing on that commitment and willingness which are part of the local idealism

to lead dozens of sons and daughters to enlist,

many to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice; the depression, challenging

to their strength under adversity,

initiating a state of economic debility

from which the community has had difficulty recovering.

X