Nostalgia

Nostalgia is big business especially in the tourist trade. With the death of the inshore fishery the chief source of income for the aging populations of most Newfoundland Outports or the island fishing communities off Nova Scotia's South Shore are old age security or UI after the fish plant shuts down for the year if it still operates and the work lasts that long. Most are not unlike Tancook Island where the population doubles during the tourist season when people come to enjoy the quiet pace of life, visit relatives, enjoy the beaches, and just get away from it all. Tancook grows cabbages and turnips to produce their eponymous Sauer Kraut. Ladies knit, quilt, and hook rugs sold in the two local general stores cum craft shoppes. Bed and Breakfast operations and boat tours round things out.

Many former towns in Nova Scotia no longer have sufficient tax base to support themselves and have ceased to exist subsumed by the local county administration. When the fish plant or the mine closes and a town loses its major employer an outflow of young people looking for work follows. Homes for which there is no sale sit abandoned and boarded up, municipalities that would sell them for unpaid taxes can't even give them away.



I have just discovered that websites that show pictures of abandoned homes, manors, castles, and estates generate high traffic and have become extremely popular. Digital photography and cellphone cameras with posting apps to social media websites have facilitated the trend.

An Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia wedding photographer is documenting the roads that led to former thriving communities that have been abandoned by the province because no one lives on them or uses them save for recreational purposes. Given the annual crop of potholes and washboards, especially on dirt roads when I see signs that read Road not Maintained I facetiously ask, how do you tell the difference?