PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND AND NOVA SCOTIA

You will learn about Canada's two tiniest provinces, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.  And bonus, you will also learn how to do the famous "Inhalation Affirmation".
Your life will be transformed!

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 YES, WE CANADA 

EPISODE 22 

© 2021 Matt Zimbel 

Announce: This episode Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. 

MZ;  Hi, I’m Matt Zimbel in Montreal.

Mio: Hello, Bonjour, G’day… I’m Mio Adilman in Toronto.

MZ:  Mio did you shut off your furnace?

Mio:  Yah and I’m freezing thank you very much.

MZ:  That’s how dedicated we are.  We shut off our furnaces in the middle of a Canadian winter, so your podcast is studio like and you can safely immigrate here. 

Mio: (Inhalation affirmation)

MZ:  Ohhhhhh a perfect  “Inhalation Affirmation” by Mio which is the perfect ideal seque into our story about Prince Edward Island, the home of the Inhalation affirmation  and we’ll have more including a little tutorial later on how to do that later on the show, but let’s get you up to speed on  the Island. 

Mio: PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND is Canada’s smallest province with a scant 142,000 people. To be precise it is 151 miles long by 37 miles wide at its largest point at it’s widest point and 2.5 miles at its most narrow. It is on the east coast of Canada. Surrounded by water, just like every other freakin’ Island on earth. 

MZ:  This is where the international best-selling novel Anne of Green Gables takes place. Set in rural PEI in 1887, Anne is the story of a red-haired teenage orphan girl who gets adopted by an aging spinster brother and sister couple named Matthew and Marilla.  

Mio:  A boy’s what we wanted….

They had requested a boy from the orphanage to help with the farm chores. 

MZ: Where is Matthew going and why’s he going there….

Mio:  We’re singing songs from the musical. Of course, there’s a mix up and instead of sending a boy…they send Ann… with an “e” …as she likes to be known. 

MZ:  Now, Anne is chatty, feisty, determined and full of pluck. Just your kind of American exceptionalist gal.The story is very touching, and Anne has become an iconic hero to young women for more than a century. 

Mio:  The book was written 1908. One thing that will strike you is how much language has changed in a century…check out this sentence from chapter three when spinster Marilla realizes that her brother Matthew brought home a girl and not the expected boy. 

MZ: 

“Marilla came briskly forward, as Matthew opened the door. But 

when her eyes fell of the odd little figure in the stiff, ugly dress, with 

the long braids of red hair and the eager, luminous eyes, she stopped short in amazement.

            “‘Matthew Cuthbert, who's that? Where is the boy?’ she ejaculated.” 

MIO:  What’s that the porn version?

MZ: No that’s the actual exact words in the book….

Mio: Maybe because of that language…Anne of Green Gables went on to sell over 50 million copies to lonely girls, making it one of the best-selling books of all time. 

MZ:  And you guys should know, that we on YWC do not count the Bible on the list of best sellers, because those Gideon motherfuckers keep trying to get their numbers up on Amazon by leaving their books in motels for free.  Does. Not. Count!

Mio: Neilsen does not recognize that kinda of under handed stuff. Now, PEI is known widely for Ann of Green Gables Japanese couples come from all over Japan, I was going to say all over the world, come from all over Japan to get married and I have been in PEI and seen pop up over a hill, over a dale a couple in marital clothing holding hands walking to some sort of marital alter to get married and I have seen this many, many times. 

MZ: Let me just ask you a question for a second.  Part of your heritage is Japanese, so what do you think the attraction is, why is there such a connection between Anne of Green Gables and the people of Japan.

Mio: Well, I think one is the pluck of Anne of Green Gables -which is not a stereotypical image of Japanese women, although there are plucky Japanese women.  But also, any place that speaks of space and green, as you know many of the cities in Japan are very tight and congested. I don’ t know I think it’s just very romantic…I don’t know.  Maybe they really enjoy Raspberry Cordial.  They like to get really wasted on Raspberry Cordial …I don’t know dude. 

I don’t know what the translated books sound like – I don’t know what they’re selling in those books. 

 PEI is much more than the lovely, picturesque setting of a hit novel. “The Island”, as locals call it, is where politicians from “Upper Canada and Lower Canada” convened in Charlottetown in September of 1864 with a boat load of champagne and began negotiations that eventually founded The Dominion of Canada in 1867.  Which is what we know of Canada right now plus a few provinces. Hence PEI is called the “Birthplace of Confederation”. 

MZ: It’s a vibrant fishing and farming community and like every other remote place in the world it’s trying to attract high tech by creating “innovation centres”. There is an excellent artisanal food movement on the island and if there is a better cheddar cheese than “Avonlea” on earth, I have never tasted it.

Mio: The cloth bound cheddar is unbelievable.  Incredible. Where else do you get to undress your cheese before eating it. As a result, Islanders are fiercely proud people…

MZ; (Inhalation acclimation)  

Mio: That was a good one!  Wait a second you grew up there so this is bred in the bone. Should you decide to move to PEI there are a number of language effectuations that may surprise you. There are definitely some regionalisms you need to know. 

MZ: Yep. Listen I think I was 14 when I got there. Before that I was from New York. Instead of saying yes, or right or affirmative, or yup, a true islander will take in a very short gasp of breath…  

Mio:  oh yeah, the non-verbal yes

MZ:  Now when you first arrive, you’ll think wow this is cool – I want to be like the cool people and you’ll start to try to do this gulpy, sippy inhalation affirmation – but it will sound like this….(demo)   Ask me a question Mio:

Mio: You seen that hockey game last night, eh?

MZ: yeah

Mio:  Something eh?

MZ:  Iso there you go the non-verbal yes. It’s going to take you a while to master, but it is an essential part of speaking PEI. Other lingual ticks of note include the term g’wan which is the contracted go on. Boy is pronounced bye and wash has an r in it…as in gwan warsh the dishes bye…The rest you’ll be fine with.

Mio:  G’wan is disbelief….

MZ; now, I remember once when I was a young man, I met this girl in Bonshaw, PEI and she had a great expression – “Beer…drink one, piss three”. 

Mio:  Classy date.   (inhalation affirmation) The official cut line for the tiny Island is “The Mighty Island”.  Now, that was likely written by a slick creative type in New York City at a Madison Avenue ad agency. Because though Islanders are proud, they are also very modest, and the word “mighty” is not in the Island vocabulary. 

MZ; PEI is separated from mainland, New Brunswick, by a body of water called the Northumberland Strait. The water is heated by the gulf stream, making it one of the warmest bodies of water in the Atlantic north of Virginia. The Strait is filled with lobsters, the island is filled with butter and potatoes…what could possibly go wrong?

Well, actually, you might have to humiliate yourself by wearing one of those stupid fucking lobster bibs. But that my friend, is small potatoes. 

Oh yeah and while we’re here, talkin’ small islands and small potatoes, let me give you another “small” tip and it’s kinda of counter intuitive for an American, because you people, you people like everything huge! Your restaurant portions are obscene. I mean I have seen lobsters in your restaurant lobster tanks bigger than newborn babies. 

Take it from both of us, who have actually lived on the Island…to eat the lobster of a 

lifetime you need to eat canners. Remember canners Mio?

Mio: (Inhalation)Church dinners….

MZ: To eat the lobster of a lifetime you need to get the fisherfolk to sell you what’s called “canners”, they are lobsters under one pound, lobster veals if you will, and are the tastiest, sweetest, lobsters you have ever eaten. Once you learn the canner trick you will become a wharf hound. And one last lobster tip, you want your lobster cold and your butter hot. Get a tin can, put half a pound of butter in the can.  Cover it with tin foil.  Wedge the can in the engine of your car near the manifold where it is hot.  

Drive to the beach.  Have a picnic. If this is a date, it will work, trust me, way better than Tinder.

Mio: (Inhalation Affirmation)

MZ: (Inhalation Affirmation)

MIO:  Oh, yes and one more lobster tip.  Lobster is a great dish for our American’s because this little bug like crustacean is really the embodiment of the American dream…if there ever was a food that pulled itself up by its boot straps and made something of itself it’s lobster . … which we rank just below caviar as perhaps the most bougie food of all.  But it was not always like that.

MZ:  You see in the 1800’s Lobster was so plentiful you didn’t even need traps you could just go down to the shore and grab one of the fuckers and eat it.  It was so commonplace that it used to be served to prisoners - it was called the cockroach of the sea, for obvious reasons.  The local lore on PEI – not true, of course, is that there is a law that prohibits serving lobster to prisoners no more than three times a week. 

Mio:  There used to be so much lobster they also used to use it for fertilizer. A lot of poor people didn’t eat it. 

MZ:  I’m fascinated by these cultural food stories – like why Canadians don’t like lamb.  It’s because the British used to cook for the Canadians during World War One but all they would ever serve is boiled mutton. 

Mio: Then the 1850’s or so, the lobster hired a New York publicist and rebranded and now it’s only served in Canadian prisons on Wednesdays during surf and turf nights. Who says crime doesn’t pay in Canada?

MZ:  Forgive us, Mio and me are easily distracted by crustaceans and here you are trying to find a place to live for your American exile.  Ok – back to it…As we said PEI was the birthplace of Confederation.  One of the conditions of PEI joining the Confederation of Canada was that the federal government guaranteed it would provide a ferry service from New Brunswick across the 8 miles of the Northumberland Strait. In 1917 an ice breaking ferry service was introduced. Often times in the winter, weather conditions were so bad that the ferry service was cancelled prompting the self-effacing Islanders to proclaim, “the mainland has been cut off from us again”.   

Mio:  You know how many hot chicken sandwiches I’ve had on the Borden ferry?

MZ:  They were so good.

MZ:  In a 1988 referendum the government of PEI asked the people if they would like to replace the ferry with a bridge.  A huge and passionate debate ensued with those seeking “progress” on one side and those hoping to preserve what was quaintly called “the Island way of life” on the other. “Progress” won with 60%. 

MZ:  1.3 billion dollars and four years of construction later, one of the longest bridges in the world finally connects the rest of the world to Prince Edward Island, at last. 

What is the “island way of life” you might ask and how can I get some?  Well, it was once described to me like this; “in New York, they need it yesterday, in Toronto they need it tomorrow, in PEI they need it ‘first of next week” (inhalation affirmation.)

Mio:  Protecting the island way of life is a DNA issue as well.  If one is not born on the Island, one is and forever will be, “from away”. You need to know that as an immigrant you will be warmly welcomed… but you will never truly “belong” - only place of birth gets you into that exclusive club. Confirmation of this was evident in a newspaper obituary  from the local paper The Charlottetown Guardian: the headline blared:

MZ:

MZ:     MAN, FROM BOSTON DIES HERE  

William Monroe Declan, 94, died at home from 

natural causes last night, surrounded by his family. 

Mr. Declan moved to Prince Edward Island from

Boston, when he was three.

Mio;  Since you’re new to the area we want you to experience some of that good old fashioned Island way of life feeling, so we ‘re going point you to the east coast of PEI and  put you on the Wood Islands Ferry from Wood Islands to Caribou, Nova Scotia it’s a 75 minute voyage – and on a warm, sunny, summer day, will be a heavenly way to get rid of 75 minutes. And when you get to the other side you will be in Nova Scotia. Which is where we’re going now. 

MZ:  Mio, as I got older,I started to realize stuff about myself.  I had therapy, but this one I discovered on my own.  When I turned 45, I realized, that I had never met a Nova Scotian I didn’t like.  There was that one bitch at the airport, but it turns out she was from New Brunswick. I got to know a lot of Nova Scotians. 

When I lived in Prince Edward Island I would go to Halifax (population 435,000) as much as possible, to me it was the big city. Unlike the rest of the Maritimes, Nova Scotia has a Black community because of the underground railroad. And with a Black community comes better food, better music and better fashion. There was also an Art College, so Halifax was exciting when I was 17 years old and remains so today. As a port city there are so many bars that one downtown street is known as the “Liquor Mall”. 

Mio: At one point the liquor mall had more bars per capita than any other place on earth. As a port city with a naval base, Halifax has a fascinating, and explosive nautical backstory.  On December 6th, 1917 two ships collided in the harbor.One of them was carrying munitions for the French in World War I and it exploded, creating the largest human-made explosion in history prior to the Atomic Bomb. One thousand six hundred people died instantly and nine thousand were injured, three hundred of whom later died. A 60ft tsunami was created and everything within a 1.6 mile radius of the explosion was destroyed or damaged. You can read a remarkable account of what is known as the Halifax Explosion written by author Hugh MacLennan who survived the blast in his book Barometer Rising. 

MZ:  Nova Scotia is a lot more than an explosion in Halifax as tragic as that is. Nova Scotia means New Scotland and it’s Canada’s second smallest province after PEI. There are a lot of American expat’s and many stunningly beautiful places to live. The joint appears to be well run, but getting a family Dr. there is no piece of cake. But you may not need one, because at one point during the pandemic, Nova Scotians proudly boasted that the whole of Nova Scotia had fewer cases of covid than Donald Trump’s White House. 

If you like fishing than NS is the place for you.  I was in Yarmouth NS a few years ago and saw this note on the community billboard:  

“Man seeks wife with boat and motor, please send photo of boat and motor.”

Mio:  Nova Scotia is where you’re gonna find lobsters big enough for your big American appetite. In fact, the biggest lobster on record was caught in Nova Scotia.  The Guinness book of records confirmed that it weighed 44.4 lbs. and answered to the name of Greg.  

MZ: Pound for pound that is a lot of lobster in the pound, and we’ll see you next week.