Causeway: A Passage From Innocence (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
When people told me that I should read this book I imagined all the rock that must have been dumped in the ocean to create the Canso causeway and I imagined the dust and the noise and decided to skip it. MacIntyre is familiar to me from his work with the CBC and I appreciate his skill as a journalist and as a storyteller so when the book was recommended to me again this year I grabbed it and I am glad I did. The author has managed to achieve a perfect balance in taking us to a time and a place that was rushing towards change but also looking back at the lives of his grandparents. I lived in Nova Scotia for part of the time period he covered and I recognize the life he describes. Linden's father was away from home for huge periods of time so as a boy he suffered the absence of his Dad. The longing he expressesseems to be exactly how a kid would think - imagine- make deals with God etc. Adult rationalization does not intrude on these portions of the story. It is interesting, lovely to read and a book that is perfect as it is. No, it is not just about the rock that was dumped but there is some of that.
This memoir of boyhood years in Cape Breton by the cohost of CBC's fifth estate is a strong story of a boy's relationship with his father and his community. Linden was a boy always interested in the world, both the world of the adults in his own community and the world beyond Cape Breton. He became friendly with a Hungarian man, Old John, who ran the temporary camp for the causeway workers, and with a young Korean engineer, Ted. He listened to the conversations around him, and made his own sense of them. He gives his impressions of his father and the life his father had to live to support the family. His book includes references to the idea of home and the roots that we all have. As someone who grew up moving often and without a real sense of a physical place as home, I can relate to his comments on this.
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