Conducting a Sockdolager: The End of the Line

Upon learning about Seamus’s fondness for trains and the Beaverbrook’s desire to see the “the End of the Line” in Elmira, A. J. MacDonald’s father delivered a sockdolager: "Seamus, I’ll drive you there, son. It’s only handy from where I spent my first fifty years. Let's go before the roads get slippy, eh?"

St. John Journal Entry: The Hapless Hockey Confederates

Written by the Mickey Dupere, the fictitious St. John Journal' hockey scribe:

Losers of their last six contests, the hapless Charlottetown Confederates look for better luck (three post-ringers in the third period last night against the Bridgeport Barnums) when they play the St. Andrews Beaverbrooks this weekend. The Feds will need to shore up their team defense; it's like one PEI Islander commented to this reporter: "They're running around like a fart in a mitten."

Nobby: Kieran's Attire in Chic Montreal

Kieran was no snob, yet he enjoyed wearing a nobby hat and tie when visiting Quebec, on business, and to attend a Canadiens game at Le Forum de Montréal.

 

Redolent: Ready for Lunch in Charlottetown

The blue open-shelled mussels, redolent of paprika, ginger and onion, steamed as the Beaverbrooks anticipated lunch with their PEI host family.

Donnybrook: Can-Am History and a "Free-for-Brawl"

"...The donnybrook at the Halifax Mont-Blancs–Boston Imos game belied the Can–Am Hockey League's new (and supposedly improved) spirit of international cooperation..." –Mick Dupere, scribe for the St. John Gazette

Ambrose Bishop: The Towering Tartar

Opponents who dared to drop the gloves with Ambrose Bishop, the towering Beaverbrooks tartar, often regretted their decisions.

Seamus J. O'Sheehan: Picnic in La Belle Province

Seamus J. O'Sheehan and his bride set foot up the verdant hill overlooking the calm sea. With his left hand, he grasped his wife's slender hand. In his right, he carried a large red cooler containing the viands the inn's proprietor had prepared for the new couple: roast pork, seasoned with cinnamon, honey and garlic, and then stuffed into two croissants; a semicircle of fou du roy cheese; two triangular pieces of blueberry pie; a large bottle of Perrier; and two wine glasses etched with wishes for a happy marriage: "Tous mes voeux de bonheur."

"O Canada" and the Orphic Dimitri

Dimitri Kotsopoulos, the only Greek Canadian on the Beaverbrooks, would often sing "O Canada" before home games. His orphic voice, so low and commanding, offset his lack of goal-scoring prowess.

Granda Roams and Then Follows His Nose

Stravagating Lower Sackville's streets—walking past homes on the crescents northeast of First Lake, striding west by businesses on the Evangeline Trail and then following his nose to Beaver Bank Road and Sackville Downs, Granda—his quadriceps still as sturdy as girders—smelled equines and leather and heard the thunder of hooves. "I knew I was home then, Sonny, " he told Seamus. "I knew I was home."

A Triumvirate of Terms

While I was unplugged and on vacation in New Brunswick, PEI and the Magdalen Islands, I missed the challenge of infusing my vocabulary with an Internet-generated word-of-the day. I did, however, bolster my Atlantic Canada vernacular by reading Wayne Johnson's, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

A triumvirate of terms I plucked from Johnson's novel about Newfoundland's first premier, Joe Smallwood, and the history of this colony/country/province:

syllogism: a crafty argument
dory: short, flat-bottomed boat with high flaring sides
confederation: alliance

Tempers flared, like the sides of dories, as politicians and all manner of pundits cast their syllogisms in favor and against Newfoundland's proposed confederaton with Canada.

Wordnik: Estivation

While the classic New Englander might find a summer vacation on Cape Cod idyllic, I prefer the less-populated paradise of St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, NB for my estivation.