The days, they come one at a time, each beginning with banana and cereal, yet each evolving into an unplanned surprise.  Such was the last week in Grand Manan.

The lighthouse across Grand Harbour on Ross Island is fading fast, the entire back wall fell off this month, I walked over at low tide with Phil Ells, the undertaker, and his family:


I was invited to join three octogenarians on a trip to Kent Island to observe them  trapping muskrats, a dying tradition I’d never seen.  I have mixed feelings about the fact that I managed to leave before a single trap was sprung:

Warm April evenings, the evening light stretching itself across the sanded fiberglass sides of land-dry lobster boats: 

Andrew Russell building his own lobster traps, they wind up costing him just $15 each for materials; Andrew also rebuilds cars: 

Megan Ingalls did a telephone interview with The Toronto Sun about The Sardine Museum and Herring Hall of Fame; they needed a picture for the paper so I met her down in Seal Cove between a shift with her home health care client and her overnight job at the desk of the motel: 

On Wednesday Kirk Brooks’ father Richard was hit by a car blinded by the setting sun while he was feeding his beloved geese, on Friday many of us got on the ferry to White Head to attend the funeral: 

On Saturday I got a call from Nancy Ross while she was was driving a truckload of salmon to market in New York City, she said she was giving me as a wedding present to her friends who were getting married in the Baptist Community Life Church, so I showed up and found the church filled with friends: 

And finally I had to put off my departure for an extra day because I had to attend Adam Tate’s 37th birthday party with my Grand Manan nuclear family:

A week that really was.