Cafe Maplethorpe Blog :: PEI Restaurant

This has turned out to be a busy week at Maplethorpe. Went up to Georgetown to hear the Men of the Deeps concert on Tuesday night. The Kings Playhouse in Georgetown is a great community theatre and is in the process of doubling its size. (Your tax dollars at work!) We hadn’t been up there in a few years–last time was to see Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellas. (Also a super show!) We ran into a few people we knew at the concert who couldn’t believe we had driven all the way from Bedeque for a music concert.

Now let’s put this into perspective.

Georgetown is about an hour and a half drive from Bedeque. As Islanders say, Georgetown is ‘down east,’ on the other side of the world from where we live. From our perspective as westerners, Georgetown is easily half the distance we often drove to watch a high school basketball game when our boys were playing in Montana. An hour and a half was a crosstown drive to work when we lived in St. Louis. For us, Georgetown just isn’t that far. And since Georgetown was the only place on PEI where we could hear the Men of the Deeps, well, that was that.

Date Night Thwarted…Again

We had planned to leave early, see the sights and get some supper in Charlottetown, but that was not to be. The restaurant was just swamped with people at lunch and the last ones didn’t leave until after our 3:00 pm closing. That morning I was informed the daughter needed to be picked up from school at 4:30. Husband Jim was tutoring a math student until 5:30. We had overnight guests expected for the B&B, and they got checked in at around 5:45. So, we snarfed down sandwiches while standing in the kitchen and dashed out the door at 6:00 pm. Story of my life.

But we had a nice drive and got to Georgetown at 7:30 for the 8:00 show. The place was mostly full, but not sold out. We ran into some people we knew and even people who don’t know you on PEI are friendly. We had great seats 4 rows back from the stage, right in the middle. The show started on time at 8:00 when the place went dark and the miners came in from the back, singing, their path illuminated by the lamps on their hardhats.

They were great.

Men of the Deeps

Well, you expected me to say that, didn’t you? We paid $35 a ticket and drove an hour and a half. I would never admit it if the concert was a disaster. The Men of the Deeps is a choir made up of professional Cape Breton coal miners–one requirement for prospective choir members is 2 years work in the employ of a mine. Most of the song were about mining work…loving the mine, hating the mine, mine disasters, mines closing forever. You could tell these guys were really singing from their hearts. At the end of the concert the choir members came out in the audience to shake hands and thank us for coming. We were touched.

Men of the Deeps

We’ll give the kids the url and tell them to google it.

I wondered most of the drive home how much longer the Men of the Deeps will last. Several of the singers looked to be in their 70s. With the Cape Breton coal mines long ago closed, I wonder where the group will get replacements when these elders are ready to pass the torch. Maybe this will become another story we’ll have to tell our grandkids to imagine, like where fishermen used to be and where farmers used to be. Where coal mines used to be and where miners used to sing harmony together, celebrating a communal life above and below the ground.

We’ve been in Canada full-time for about 8 years now. Oh, yes, we travel back and forth between our home on Prince Edward Island and various parts of the United States regularly and keep on top of US news. It isn’t hard. Canadians are obsessed with the United States! Canadian media outlets carry plenty of US news–as much as we ever got when we lived IN the US. We get lots of US stations on cable. And we can access anything we want over the Internet. More than we want, really. It’s not like you can get away from the American perspective on anything in this tiny world…US culture is like global warming: deny its impact if you want, but the evidence is everywhere.

Honestly, I find that American values and actions aren’t as different from Canadian as many Canadians seem to think. And I find that Canadian values and actions are not as different from American as most Americans seem to think. (Except for Ann Coulter, who was recently in Canada on a speaking tour. THANK GOD Canadians do think and act differently than you.)

Sometimes, just sometimes, there is a clear differences in the way Canadians and Americans operate.  Sometimes the differences are pretty squarely in favor of one place or the other. But some are just differences.

Easter was this past weekend. In Canada, Good Friday is a national holiday, and in Canada, a holiday means THINGS ARE CLOSED. That means:

• Stay home.

• Do things with your family.

• Sleep all day.

• Do some yard work or throw some dead animal flesh on the bar-b-que if the weather is nice.

No Good Friday Blowout Sale. …No Holy Week Buy-One-Get-One Free Sale. ….No Passover Midnight Madness.

You know why? BECAUSE IT’S A HOLIDAY.

Remember those, America?

Wal-Mart was closed on Good Friday. The grocery store was closed. Ditto for banks, postal delivery, you name it. A holiday in Canada is not an opportunity to hit the mall. On a holiday, we’re kickin’ it old style up here.

We operate a very busy restaurant and bed and breakfast. The telephone normally rings constantly for reservations, cake orders and accommodations inquiries, plus the personal calls, mostly for our teen.

On Good Friday the phone rang exactly ONCE. We are scheduled to bake the cake for a beach wedding in July and the bride was on the Island visiting relatives. After repeatedly apologizing for the interruption of our HOLIDAY, she asked if it would be okay to get together over the weekend to finalize her cake details. She stopped by briefly on Saturday and made her decisions about flavor and frosting and cake stands and then she was off to enjoy her Easter holiday. We were happy to interrupt our holiday to put her at ease.

Our first “We’re Not in Kansas Any More, Toto” Award goes to Canada, where a holiday is still a holiday.

May it ever be so.