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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2010 Nova Scotia looks a lot like Christmas nova scotia from F1 In honor of the upcoming
holiday, I decided to have myself amerry little Nova Scotia Christ- mas. I would drive along the rocky shoreline and through the scented coniferous groves of Canada’s second-smallest prov- ince, dropping into communities that still uphold ancestral cus- toms from the Old World. Ulti- mately, I hoped to capture some of that ineffable holiday spirit and bring it home. As long as it was not a live plant or an animal, U.S. border patrol would have to let it through.
Along the south shore, I
couldn’t see anything through the trees. The balsam firs sur- rounded me on all sides. I tried peering through the gaps in the needles but saw only more nee- dles and gaps filled by more needles. When I craned my neck to look over the conical tops, I was stonewalled by more pointy sprouts. The landscape was like an outdoor fun house ofmirrors, except that this was no illusion: This was Lunenburg County, the Balsam Fir Christmas Tree Capi- tal of theWorld. The conifers thrive in Nova
Scotia’s maritime environment, noted for its dry, rocky soil and the moisture from the Atlantic. The trees cover nearly every available piece of real estate in this region, a wealth in numbers that inspired an entire industry tailored for one eve and one day of the year. “Everything you do all year is
preparing for Christmas,” said Lila Naugler, who runs a 1,000- acre tree farm and wreathmak- ing operation outside the town of Lunenburg with her husband. “Now is the big rush to get them loaded.” Settled by German and Swiss
immigrants in the mid-1700s, Lunenburg County counts the harvesting of firs as its third-big- gest industry. In the 1970s, when business was booming, area growers shipped 6 million trees; today, the number is closer to 2 million, a decrease caused in part by the weak exchange rate with the United States and tougher competition from other interna- tional suppliers. The county has also produced a number of the prestigious trees selected each year as a gift to Boston, a “Thank you, Beantown” for the city’s aid after the Halifax Explosion of December 1917. (In short, two ships collided, causing a blast that devastated the capital.) “Nothing smells like balsam,”
said Naugler, comparing the fir with its less fragrant brothers, Fraser and Douglas. “It smells like Christmas.” The scent: piney and cool, like amenthol popsicle. Around Lunenburg, residents
turn their front yards into small- scale Christmas tree lots, the conifers set in tidy rows as they await adoption.Wreaths are also trotted out for sale, some so close to the road, you could untie the red bows through the passenger window. “All you have to do is knock on
the door and ask, ‘Will you teach me how to make a wreath?’ ” Naugler said. “They will invite you inside and show you how.” Instead of cold-calling, I prear-
ranged a lesson with Naugler, who started the online Wreath Co. of Nova Scotia five years ago and can whip one together in eightminutes flat. Seated at her kitchen table,
her black Labrador slobbering away at my feet, I watched her array the supplies, a 10-inch metal ring, wire, piles of fir tips and decorations from Michael’s crafts supply store. She briefly demonstrated how to cut off the tips and hips from the bottom branches (earlier collected from her property), combining them to create frond-like hands with fat green fingers. Next, she an- chored the wire on the ring, placed a “hand” on a section of the ring, twisted the wire three times over the greenery, then flipped the whole piece over to attach fir to the
backside.Around and around she went, her fingers moving in time with her chatter. When she disappeared to re-
trieve pine cones, I attempted a segment, the sap covering my fingers in a sticky film. I did my best to cover thewire but figured I could hide the flaws with bows, wooden snowflakes, holly and, as a last resort, a parade of teddy bears. “It’s the easiest thing in the
world to do,” said the retired educator, grinning approvingly at my work. “If a former teacher can do it, anyone can.” For the final step, she present-
ed a bent wire hanger as a cheap, simple way to attach the wreath to the door. I secretly anointed her the Martha Stewart of the Maritimes.
PHOTOS BY DEAN CASAVECHIA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Carolers entertain during the Father Christmas Festival inMahone Bay,Nova Scotia. The area, settled byGerman and Swiss immigrants, embraces Christmas traditions.
TheNauglers sellmost of their
trees to Panama and, during the crunch before Christmas, at an outdoor market in the parking lot of a Halifax hockey stadium. For a U-cut farm closer by, I drove over to Kevin Veinotte’s place, down a rutted road that slices through forested land. Three years ago, the family opened up 22 acres to public tree pickers, allowing themtowander through the firs like Hansel and Gretel in search of their dream Christmas tree. “Did you come with a saw?”
asked a young boy dressed like a miniature Paul Bunyan. I had left mine back at Home
Depot, so he offered to lend me one, or do the chopping himself. So that customers can check
out the merchandise without muddying their feet, the organic farmoffersweekendwagon rides powered by a pair of shaggy Belgian horses. In the front seat, the capped driver held on to one set of reins and his baby son; behind him, his 3-year-old daughter commanded a second pair of leather straps, her tiny hands lightly jiggling the con- trols. I climbed up and joined a
family of three generations that was touring the property while Kevin baled their tree and placed it beside their car. “He has a lot of nice trees,” said the grandmother of the clan. “Next time, I’ll walk back farther.” As the horses trotted down the
undulating lane, I scanned the scenery for the perfect tree, basi- cally Rockefeller Center’s but downsized for a studio apart- ment. However, according to Kevin, the supermodels of bal- sams are shaped like an upside- down old-fashioned ice cream cone. Cocking my head to the side, I mentally tagged a 10-foot- tall pistachio cone. (Because we
can’t bring back plants, consider the tree hunt a fact-finding mis- sion.) The extended wagon ride
loops around the property,with a midway stop at a warming sta- tion, where a fire roared and crackled. Before breaking for hot chocolate and cookies,we passed a tree with aMolson can secured to a branch. “Canadian orna- ments?” I asked. No, just a local marking his pick.
Somuch of Christmas is about
believing, so I went to Yarmouth hoping with a full heart that the story was true: That Meredith Willson did indeed write the popular 1951 Christmas tune “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” in the Grand Hotel, once the fairest establishment in this far west town of seafarers. I would even have settled for the notion that he was inspired by the setting but did the actual creative work elsewhere. The line that supports the lore
is: “There’s a tree in the Grand Hotel, one in the park as well.” A
good start, but the problem is, there is no historical proof. The man himself never identified the Grand Hotel’s location, nor did a historian ever find a matchbook or receipt among his belongings. To dig into the legend, I visited
the Rodd Grand Yarmouth, which stands on the same site as the original, torn down in the late 1960s, but does not replicate its Victorian style and elegance. At the front desk, an employee named Anthony conceded that a Christmas tree most likely deco- rated the Grand Hotel’s lobby back then and that a park sits across the street. The town used to place a Christmas tree in the aptly named Frost Park, before moving it outside Town Hall. “Circumstantially, it fits,” he
said, “but it’s still unproven.” For proof that can stand up to
heavy scholarship, I met with Bruce Bishop, director of the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives. Over a Christmas Eve sampler of rappie pie (an Acadi- an specialty with shredded pota- to and meat) and seafood stew (straight fromthe docks), he told
me it was possible that Willson visited Yarmouth in the 1950s. Starting in the mid-1800s, the
town marketed itself to Ameri- can East Coasters as a respite fromthe summer heat, tempting them with the prospect of cool- ing fog. Ferries traveled between Yarmouth and such Eastern sea- board cities as New York and Boston. The boats dropped off lobsters, blueberries and lumber and returned with tourists. (Last year, the ferries were canceled; no word on whether service will return for the town’s 250th anni- versary next year.) Bishop recently had museum
volunteers scour the hotel’s regis- try from 1950 to 1951, searching for the songwriter’s signature. “We found another Wilson from Boston, with a different first name,” he said. “Maybe he came in 1949.” Still lacking corroboration, I
decided to parse the song to see whether the lyrics matched the scenes of Yarmouth.With lighted wreaths on the lampposts along Main Street and the decorated tree by TownHall, itwas definite-
Christmas Island postmistress HughenaMacKinnon, above, puts a special holiday postmark on mail from around the world each Christmas. The post office, left, receives as much as 10 times the normal volume of mail during the holidays. Lila Naugler, above left, demonstrates how to make a wreath out of evergreen branches. Far left, the logging camp atKevinVeinotte’s U-Cut farm, where aMolson beer can on a branch means the tree is spoken for.
6 on
washingtonpost.com
For more photos of Christmas in Nova Scotia, go
to
washingtonpost.com/travel.
ly beginning to look a lot like Christmas. I saw toys in the storefront windows; however, unfamiliar with Canada’s gun control laws, I did not know whether a shop could legally display a pistol. Moving along: I stood before the glittery Christ- mas tree in the (Rodd) Grand hotel and glanced out at the park, where a gazebo aglow with col- ored lights stood in for the Christmas tree. Any lingering doubtswere dis-
pelled the next morning: A soft snowhad fallen overnight, dress- ing up the city in its holiday best. It looked just like Christmas.
If Christmas Island truly hon-
ored its namesake, the post of- fice’s special edition postmark would feature the image of the localMi’kmaqmanwhose festive surname now appears on maps of Cape Breton Island, the north- ernmost part of Nova Scotia. Yet no purists made a ruckus when former postmistress Margaret
nova scotia continued on F5
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