I explained that I wished to get some Pitcher Plants which grew there according to my fellow teacher at P.W.C. Miss Ella Mae McGrath, a native of Tignish. My new friend, a Mr. Gaudet, offered to drive me back to the Black Marsh in his truck as he was going there to fix a marine engine for Clarence Morrissey. At Morrissey’s lobster factory I had an interesting chat with the owner and secured my dinner, a hearty fisherman’s meal, as well as a number of Pitcher

Plants from the Marsh or bog located just behind the factory and on top of a 100-foot Bluff.

From there my friend drove me to Tignish where I left the plants with my old classmate Fr. Oswald Murphy who was to mail them to my home address. Somehow they must have got lost in the mail. It was a long way to go to get some Pitcher Plants which I never did really get. In the end, however, it didn’t matter as I learned only a month later that there were lots to be had at Mermaid Pond not more than five miles from my own home.

Walking back to Nail Pond beach, I met and was warmly greeted by three girls, two being my students at Prince of Wales, Bernetta, and Cecelia, daughters of James Gallant. They had learned earlier from the Summerside Journal-Pioneer that I was coming along the North Shore (though how The Pioneer knew, I do not know). Once they had told my unfriendly French fishermen what I was doing and that I was the girls’ friend, everything changed. So much so that, in my absence, the fishermen had carefully carried Tota well up above the high—tide line to make sure that she would be safe and had pre- pared for me a great big pot of delicious cooked lobsters. I wondered if, perhaps, their initial distrust of an English—speaking stranger could be traced back to the time when their ancestors had been cruelly treated by the English with the Island “Exile of the Acadians.”

The girls’ father, part Irish, told me an amusing anecdote of the Englishman who in attendance at Mass and listening to the prayers in French, “Priez pour nous, priez pour nous,” heard the words as “Bully for you, bully for you!”

That night, a warm August Night, slumber came soon on my sandy bed, and with an early start Skinner’s Pond, Pleasant View and Waterford by mid-afternoon lay well behind. With a brief stop-

over at Miminegash Harbour, evening brought my little Tota to rest along the beach near Burton Lot 7.

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