Back-To-The-Land on the Gulf Islands and Cape Breton

Making Place on the Canadian Periphery: Back-to-the-Land on the Gulf Islands and Cape Breton by Sharon Ann Weaver A Thesis presented to The University of Guelph In partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Guelph, Ontario, Canada © Sharon Ann Weaver, July 2013 ABSTRACT MAKING PLACE ON THE CANADIAN PERIPHERY: BACK-TO- THE-LAND ON THE GULF ISLANDS AND CAPE BRETON Sharon Ann Weaver Advisor: University of Guelph, 2013 Professor D. McCalla This thesis investigates the motivations, strategies and experiences of a movement that saw thousands of young and youngish people permanently relocate to the Canadian countryside during the 1970s. It focuses on two contrasting coasts, Denman, Hornby and Lasqueti Islands in the Strait of Georgia, British Columbia, and three small communities near Baddeck, Cape Breton. This is a work of oral history, based on interviews with over ninety people, all of whom had lived in their communities for more than thirty years. It asks what induced so many young people to abandon their expected life course and take on a completely new rural way of life at a time when large numbers were leaving the countryside in search of work in the cities. It then explores how location and the communities already established there affected the initial process of settlement. Although almost all back-to-the-landers were critical of the modern urban and industrial project; they discovered that they could not escape modern capitalist society. However, they were determined to control their relationship to the modern economic system with strategies for building with found materials, adopting older ways and technologies for their homes and working off-property as little as possible. Living in a resource based economy, building a homestead, and cutting firewood favoured masculine strength. The thesis addresses the gendered implications of this way of life, particularly for women. At one extreme, they embraced and came to terms with the traditional roles expected of them; at the other they insisted on conquering both the masculine and feminine roles. Through the study of a newsletter for Denman Island and eye-witness accounts for Cape Breton, we get a glimpse of the fierce commitment back-to-the-landers felt for their new communities and of their willingness to defend their collective rights to clean air, water and soil. The study concludes that geography, demography and culture were instrumental in shaping the eventual integration of the immigrant and pre-existing communities. Everywhere this influx of young and enthusiastic migrants enriched their communities and provided a deeply satisfying way of life for those who succeeded in making new rural lives for themselves. Table of Contents Abstract page ii Acknowledgements page iv Introduction and Methodology page 1 Chapter 1: Becoming Rural in the 1970s page 33 Chapter 2: First Encounters: 1970s Back-to-the-land page 68 Chapter 3: Economic Strategies: Making Ends Meet page 105 Chapter 4: Separate Spheres Again? Gendered Roles & Rural Living page 166 Chapter 5: Back-to-the-Land Environmentalism: Denman Island and Cape Breton page 203 Conclusion page 236 Appendix of Interview Questions and Table of Interviews page 251 Bibliography page 254 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the 1970s as a back-to-the-lander I was always grateful for the offer of help from neighbours, the tips from other back-to-the-landers, and the endless words of encouragement. Working on advanced degrees in history has challenges that can only be met with similar support: advice from faculty on research strategies and writing; commiseration with fellow graduate students; and the confidence of others when we think we can’t finish the task. Both experiences have enriched my life in ways that I will never exhaust and I hope that this dissertation captures the value of both. Knowledge as a back-to-the-lander helped immensely in the research for this dissertation, particularly in arranging the interviews and then conducting the interviews. I am particularly grateful to my friends Marion Thompson and John Roberts who were part of my community in Cape Breton, who strategized with me on the interviews, supplied names of people I didn’t know, and provided hospitality and friendship on my trips to Cape Breton. Marion and John feature, as well, in the dissertation, and I am grateful to them and all the others in Cape Breton who I interviewed. Making contacts on the Gulf Islands was more challenging, as I discuss in my methodology section. But some thanks can be given repeatedly and still won’t convey the degree of gratitude. I am particularly indebted to Bonnie Olesko, who explained the culture of back-to-the-landers on Lasqueti, including not answering the phone if people didn’t recognize the number. So she let me use her phone, her car, and rented a room, which she generously supplemented with meals and conversation. For providing written documentation for back-to-the-landers’ activities on Denman and Hornby islands, for which there is nothing comparable in Cape Breton, I want to thank Des Kennedy and Eleanor Laffin. The research for this dissertation began when I was a Master’s student at the University of New Brunswick, where Bill Parenteau, my advisor, Gail Campbell, as co-advisor and David Frank, Gillian Thompson, and Sean Kennedy encouraged me through courses, drafts, applications for PhD programs, and then over the years kept tabs on how I was doing. They have remained important sources of support, advice, and friendship. Beginning a PhD program is a bit like buying land. No matter how well one does the research, there is always a bit of suspense about whether a program will yield the returns one imagines. In the very best case, the yield is beyond one’s imagination, and that was the case at Guelph. Doug McCalla was a superb advisor, tough and unrelenting on getting good results, kind and funny when the going was rough, a pacer on the long stretches, and there to help me reap what had been sown, even past retirement. And when I needed to find a home for my dear cat Finnegan, while I spent five months doing research on the west coast, Doug and his wife Anna took him into their home and into their hearts. Catharine Wilson became my co-supervisor after Doug retired, and provided fresh perspective on a project that had become intimately familiar to me, pushing me, in particular to refine the chapters on gender and economics and to clarify details that seemed transparent to me, but were opaque to a new reader. Marlene Epp’s comments on iv the first draft were invaluable. Richard Reid, Colin Coates, and Alan MacEachren offered advice and encouragement during the research. Catherine Carstairs provided critical research support and her comments from the dissertation will help spur me to revisions. Ruth Sandwell’s encouragement supported me over the finish line and onto the next stage. Communities form as one pursues graduate work. Beyond the classroom, the research and writing of the dissertation, and its defence, a number of people have seen me through both the rough patches and the incremental celebrations. Ebby (Elizabeth) Ritchie began the PhD program with me, finished before me, but has supported me through all the stages. Kate Whitfield, a friend from UNB, and her extended family in Ontario provided encouragement, and accommodations in Kingston and Ottawa. From my undergraduate courses, through my Masters and the PhD, Elizabeth Mancke has been my stalwart supporter, always within reach, if not in person then by phone, offering advice, encouragement, and above all belief in my abilities. At the completion of each course or degree, she could always be trusted to laughingly tell me “I told you so!” In researching and writing this dissertation, my daughters Kris and Kimberly have been with me, sometimes at my side, always in spirit. This work is dedicated to them. v INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY Marion Thompson, from Amherst, Nova Scotia, and John Roberts from Kitchener, Ontario, met in Bucklaw, Cape Breton in 1970. Marion had been travelling for three years before coming to Cape Breton; in her words “I just needed somewhere to leave my knapsack and to rest for awhile.”1 While renting a house with her cousin Bonnie and other friends she met John and before long they became a couple. The group of seven or eight people decided to stay in Cape Breton that fall and rented a house in Tarbot. About a year later Marion and John decided to leave in search of work. They spent more than a year away, working first in Moncton, New Brunswick, then Winnipeg, Manitoba, where John learned leatherwork from a harness maker, a skill that would later allow him to create his own business in Cape Breton. While working on Vancouver Island, they heard from friends still in Cape Breton about some property for sale. Together with five other people they managed to find enough money ($500 each) and in 1973 bought 80 acres of land in Indian Brook, Cape Breton, for $3,500. “The piece of land that we bought, although it's very beautiful now, at the time it had been pulped, so it was a raspberry patch and it was straggly spruce and it was not at all pretty.”2 At the same time as John and Marion were making decisions and acquiring skills that would eventually lead them to an artisanal life in Cape Breton, hundreds of Cape Bretoners were leaving the region for cities in the west. In fact the trend was such a statement of the times that the film, Goin’ Down the Road3 was produced and released in 1970.

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