Tabusintac

While in school, years ago, we studied a poem. It concerned a Traveler and his fantasies about a village that he had never seen. The poem told about how fascinated the Traveler had become with the name of the village and how his mind conjured up pleasant and romantic fancies. In his imagination, he knew and loved the village and its people.

In order to keep these visions alive and unchanged in his mind, he resolved that he must never, never, actually go into the village or meet the villagers.

There is probably something of the Traveler in all of us. We often develop warm and affectionate feelings about people and places, even though those feelings are based on rather scanty information. We attribute qualities that we have only imagined and we will resist presentation of any contradictory evidence.

Like the Traveler, I have a secret village about which I have fond impressions. It’s a place called Tabusintac. It’s in New Brunswick and it’s where my grandmother was born. She told me the name of her village some sixty years ago and although the name has always fascinated me, the appeal was never a consuming passion. Unlike the Traveler, I never resolved to deliberately avoid seeing the village and it’s inhabitants. I just somehow had the idea that I would never get to see Tabusintac.

Events over the years, whether deliberate or by chance, have tended to reinforce that idea. For example, many times I’ve asked New Brunswickers about Tabusintac. No one could tell me. Maybe I asked the wrong people. I also never saw it on a map. Maybe I didn’t really search. I don’t know. I do know that until recently Tabusintac might well have been a figment of my imagination. I was beginning to think that maybe Tabusintac was my very own ‘Brigadoon’, which like the legendary Scottish village, only appears out of the sea every hundred years.

My maternal grandmother, Ellen Urquhart, was born in the village of Tabusintac, New Brunswick, in 1840. She died in 1931 when I was only a young boy.

I remember her as a very short, stooped-over lady, always wearing a white apron over her floor-length black dress. She had small wire rimmed glasses, worn low on her long slender nose. She had dentures, I’m sure, but never wore them and as a result, at times, her long thin chin seemed to touch the tip of her nose.

I remember her humor, which, on occasions, she shared with me. For example, whenever somebody was telling a tall tale or was being excessively talkative, she’d squeeze the tip of her slightly extended tongue, with her thumb and forefinger, and look at me with an impish smile. My memories are sketchy at best. Of course I was young and Grandma had only stayed with our family in Toronto for about 8 months before she died.

How I wish now that I had known Grandma better and had learned more about her early years. This was a lady who had lived during the time of Abe Lincoln, and who was nine years old when the famous California Gold Rush happened. In Canada, in Tabusintac, she was probably not aware of the historic events in the States, but no doubt there were important things happening at home too. I have fancied many such happenings in my mind.

Years passed and my parents died. As I grew up, I lost contact with family members of the older generation and I seldom had reason to think about Grandma and Tabusintac.

Then a great world war was fought. I enlisted and traveled across Canada many times and to England. I was stationed in Nova Scotia on three separate occasions and in Quebec twice, but never in New Brunswick. Was this due to chance?

In 1970, our son married in Dartmouth, N.S. My wife, Helen and I took full advantage of the trip, to tour Cape Breton and the Gaspe Peninsula. It never occurred to us to search out and visit Tabusintac enroute. I don’t know why.

In Gaspe, we visited my elderly maternal uncle, who, after his retirement, had returned with his wife and his older sister to live in the old homestead. For people in their late eighties, they were active and alert, and they got very emotional when greeting us. They all remembered that I had visited Gaspe with my mother on the occasion of my grandfather’s funeral. I didn’t remember, of course, because I was only two years old at the time.

Helen was thoroughly charmed by the priceless antique furniture, pictures and other wonderful treasures especially in the so-called formal parlor. In these surroundings, in the company of my mother’s brother and sister, I was transported back in time. I envisioned them all together as children, here among these same pieces of furniture, and I’m sure that in those days, visits to this room were permitted only on very special occasions.

My Aunts set the table with their best “Sunday-go-to-meeting” linen, china, and cutlery, and sat us down to a hearty pot roast with all the trimmings, including dumplings like my Mum used to make. It was an odd, though pleasant feeling having these darling ladies fuss over us. As a middle-aged man, I was touched by their concern for me, when, as an example, in their opinion, my Uncle kept me in conversation, thereby distracting me from eating my food. On several occasions they said to him, “Leave the boy alone, Pat, and let him eat.”

We lingered over our tea, as they regaled us with stories. They had such wonderful memories of the past and since these memories were mostly of the family, we were quite fascinated and wanted the evening to go on forever. However, suddenly all talk was suspended and we were ushered into the huge live-in kitchen where a big console television set was turned on for everyone to watch the “I Love Lucy” show.

The TV set itself, this modern piece of electronic wizardry seemed out of place, and in fact the whole incident was bizarre. Unreal. A moment ago we were listening to voices from the past, but suddenly these three Octogenarians were revealing their modern leanings. Now, visitors, notwithstanding, they’d watch Lucy as scheduled.

After the program finished, I innocently asked whether they had seen the astronauts walk on the moon during that famous TV show of a few months previous. I could hardly believe the reaction I got, and from each of them at once. “Walk on the moon? That’s ridiculous. That whole program was a hoax. Walk on the moon indeed! Who do they think we are to believe such nonsense? You didn’t swallow all that blarney, did you?”

I could not argue. I would not argue. There was no way that I’d ever be able to change their minds and what would be the point anyway. It was more than they were prepared to accept. So I backed off but I wondered, by way of comparison, how easily they could accept the wonders of television and the reality of Lucy broadcasting from California right into their kitchen. Then I thought of the traveler; how he wanted to keep and cherish his own vision of the village alive and unchanged. In denying the authenticity of the moonwalk, were Pat and the ladies protecting their idea of what the moon was like, wanting to keep their vision of the moon alive and unchanged?

Later that evening, my uncle, speaking of my father’s family, said, “I guess you know that your father’s mother came from Scottish stock and her grandfather was the first Presbyterian minister on the Miramichi.”

I had never heard of Grandma’s Tabusintac connection expressed in quite that way. It led me to imagine a man-of-the-cloth rowing up and down the river, holding services at various places every Sunday. I thought of Grandma and it seemed strange to me, at the time, that the granddaughter of a (no doubt) poor Scottish-Protestant pastor, living somewhere near the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, could ever meet and marry an equally poor Irish-Catholic farmer from the Gaspe Peninsula, in Quebec.

With the relentless passage of still more years, we virtually forgot about, Tabusintac, Reverend Urquhart and Grandma.

We became seniors and retired to a friendly Florida location to spend our winters. Our park has about 170 sites and Canadians occupy half of the sites. We bask in the warm winter sunshine, join in usual park activities like shuffle board, dances, golf, or we lounge around the pool and sometimes we swim in the Gulf of Mexico, only two miles away. In those unlikely, foreign surroundings, a dramatic turn of events developed in the slow moving but inevitable Tabusintac saga.

In March, each year, we have a Canada Day, cookout barbecue. After a happy hour and good steak dinner, it is customary, for each couple to stand, in turn, and introduce themselves. People will be quiet and attentive to newcomers and quickly extend a real welcome. Because many of us return year after year there is a house-party atmosphere and during the introductions people can get quite boisterous in greeting other old timers.

The quiet couple at the end table rose last. The big, cheerful looking man said, “This my wife May and I’m Mike Clancy. We’re new in the park and we noticed tonight that most of you are from Ontario. Our home is somewhat farther away, a little place, in New Brunswick, called Tabusintac.”

We were stunned. After all these years, suddenly, here were some real live natives of Tabusintac. It was hard to believe.

I went to the microphone and shared with everyone the story of Grandma Urquhart’s birth in my secret village of Tabusintac and what an incredible coincidence it was that the Clancys had come to this particular park in Florida.

After a few moments, interest waned and the party went on. We joined May and Mike to get acquainted and to hear about Tabusintac. They were amazed that anyone would know of their village and were naturally very interested in our connection. They had spent summers in Tabusintac and later retired there from their home in Fredericton. Mike told us about a book entitled, ‘A History of Tabusintac’, in which a William Urquhart was mentioned as a prominent early resident. It also said that his father, the Reverend John Urquhart was the first resident Presbyterian Clergyman on the Miramichi. Then they suggested that we should consider attending “Old Home Week,” that summer. This was an event, which was held every five years and which drew people from across Canada and the U.S. back to their roots in Tabusintac.

This was a clear signal and our determination at that moment became as strong to see our village, as it had for the Traveler to not see his village. We were sure now that we must visit Tabusintac. Too many events in the past had conspired to keep us away. If our own Brigadoon was going to appear this summer, then, we are sure Grandma would want us to be there to see it.