Where Are You From? Oh Canada, My Home and Native Land...

My Grandpa Archie Medjuck was born and raised on Nova Scotia (that is a province of Canada for all of us still-in-the-dark United States residents).  Cape Breton to be specific.  He was born in a little town called Calendonia and grew up in the nearby mining town of Glace Bay.

Grandma Mayme and Grandpa Archie Medjuck with me as a baby

If you didn't know me (well, Molly as a middle name isn't overtly Semitic), ya'd think we were Scottish and our elder male members wore kilts on dressy occassions.  And drank a lot.  No such luck:  We were just like any other Jews at the turn of the last century hailing from the alter heim looking for the goldene medina.  My grandpa got drunk on soda pop.

Perhaps Grandpa Archie didn't find gold in the monetary sense, but he definitely found it in his sense of pride in his family and upbringing.  He loved telling stories about Cape Breton, and I think he always longed to live out his years there.  He had what sounds like a lovely childhood and attended Dalhousie University in "the big city" Halifax, and for reasons unclear to me dropped out very close to the completion of his degree to return to Cape Breton and work in his family's general store.

If you look very carefully, you can see my reflection in this photo, a framed receipt from the store that hangs in our home.  Thanks, Mom, for this great family artifact.

So proud of his Nova Scotian upbringing was Grandpa Archie that he continued to have mid-afternoon tea with milk and kippered snacks, always with his yarmulke perched atop his head.  Never mind the crumbs he left behind:  his mother, Rochel Malke, for whom I am named and was known to be a true aishet chayil (a kind, sweet woman), likely cleaned up behind him and never gave him a problem.  I imagine I could learn a lesson or two from her in dealing, with an angelic touch, with the frustrations created by gender difference conflict.  Men can be slobs, disorganized and absent-minded...no biggie!

My brother, Uncle Goalie.  That hat would be a total Ebay score today!

My mother has a book entitled Cape Breton Memories in Verse which I believe my grandfather's brother Sol gave to him, as my mother said he probably knew how much his brother would have loved it once he moved away from Nova Scotia when his youngest daughter was a 2 year old to Syracuse, New York.  I managed to get a copy of this small pamphlet from our academic interlibrary loan system. I have been wanting for years to share this poem and now I finally have a forum.

Where Are you From?

by Winnifred Mitchell Protheroe

I have never met a person yet

Who did not ask of me,

"Where are you from?" then stare,

With careful scrutiny.

I have always thought it odd, that they

Such time, and pains should take

To ferret out the very spot!

What difference does it make?

When first you cross the border

You are a diplomat.

You say, "Oh, I'm from Canada."

And let it go at that.

But here, in our own country

The province folks must know;

And you feel that you must change your style

As further on you go.

For instance, in New Brunswick,

You may answer with a smile;

"My home," you say with  heartfelt pride,

"Is dear old Cape Breton Isle."

Then, when you reach Ontario,

More carefully you choose;

It's "I'm from Nova Scotia" then

As you would not dare to confuse

Worst of all are the cities

Out on the great Pacific;

Where you feel compelled to hum and haw

'Cause you can't be too specific.

The inevitable question comes,

And, like a cowering beast,

You get it over quickly with,

"Me?...I'm from the East."

You want to tell folks where you are from,

But you think that they might frown

As soon as they hear that you were born

In a smoky, mining town.

So, you fidget and fumble and shrink away

And your brain begins to snap.

You wish that you could do something great

To put your old town on the map.

Oh but it's good to be home again.

Where people do not scorn;

Where folks don't make a secret of

The place where they were born.

When someone asks the question now,

I can look him in the eye

And proudly say "I'm from the Bay.

Where are you from, B'y?'

Now I can return the book to the library tomorrow!


n.b.:  Yes, I transcribed that entire poem, complete with its colloquial punctuation, all on my own.  Giving myself a nice ole' pat-on-the-back.