Matthew drops me off in the parking lot at Pomquet Beach and wishes me a good walk. I stride down the boardwalk towards the water. That boardwalk saves the dune habitat, mostly blueberries and dwarf spruce trees, from being trampled by visitors. At the beach a sign explains that rare piping plovers nest here, and asks people to avoid walking close to the dunes, where the sand is loose and dry, because that disturbs the plovers. Sometimes people accidentally step on their nests. I do as the sign asks and walk close to the water, where the damp sand holds the footsteps of other creatures, human and otherwise. White-throated sparrows are trying to sing “O Canada.” The sun is surprisingly warm, even now, at 7:00 in the morning; the forecast calls for a hot day. I’m wearing a sweater, but not for long.

Before I left for Nova Scotia, I finished Matthew Anderson‘s book Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia (my reflections on that book can be found here). I knew as I read that book that when I came to visit Matthew and his wife, Sara Parks, I would repeat the pilgrimage from Pomquet Beach to St. Ninian’s Cathedral that is the subject of a good half of the story it tells. Matthew led a group of people on that pilgrimage back in September 2024; they arrived at St. Ninian’s Cathedral in time for the official celebration of the 150th anniversary of its dedication. I won’t be participating in anything so important. I’ll just be spending the day walking the 25 kilometres or so from this beach to Antigonish.

The waves are hitting the sand with a surprising muffled thump. By the water, seaweed–some bright lime green, some a dark rusty brown–has been left behind by the tide. I step around the low piles of smooth stones beside the water. A pale grey plant, like sage, is growing in the dry sand across the beach, where the dunes and the plovers’ nests begin. One of the plovers flies out over the water. Crows in tall, dead spruces watch me, silent. Fragments of lobsters and crabs, dropped by seabirds in order to break open their shells, exposing the meat inside, litter the sand.

Matthew drove me over the route the day before, so that I would know where to turn, but still I miss the path off the beach. The stick someone planted to mark it blends in with all the other sticks. I retrace my steps through the dunes, watching for plovers’ nests and wondering if ticks live here. Everyone in Nova Scotia seems to be concerned about ticks because of the chance of contracting Lyme disease, and rightly so: it’s not a joke if it’s left untreated. Wikipedia tells me that most infections are caused by deer ticks, which aren’t common back home in Saskatchewan; the only ticks I’ve seen are wood ticks. It also notes that a vaccine was developed 20 years ago, but it was discontinued due to a lack of demand. Why would people prefer to worry about ticks and disease when they could get vaccinated instead? I see the path first, then the stick at the beach end. It doesn’t stand out; I can’t blame myself for missing it.

I march down the footpath onto the gravel road behind. Even though my pack is heavy with snacks, water, and rain gear (the forecast also calls for thunderstorms this morning), I feel strong and energized. I also know that this part of the walk–the beach and the road leading inland–will be the quietest, that as I get closer to my destination there will be more traffic, and so I want to enjoy this part. When we were here yesterday, I took a photograph from the window of the car of a great blue heron standing on a rock, but I don’t notice that bird again today. I do see something that resembles a cormorant swimming in the inlet. Maybe that’s the heron? It dives before I can get another picture. A stiff breeze blowing inland keeps me cool, and a yellow warbler is singing. Ferns, dogwoods, serviceberries, and aspens grow next to the road, along with lupins, of course. Those garden escapees are everywhere in Nova Scotia. So are ox-eye daisies, which are ubiquitous everywhere. I pass the road that leads up to Chez Deslauriers, the Acadian cultural centre. Matthew and I dropped by there yesterday. It was closed, but he took a selfie, or an ussie, as Ted Lasso‘s Jamie Tart would say, of the two of us on its porch.

The sky is clouding over, and I’m glad I brought the rain gear along. My mind is racing along, partly with thoughts about writing this blog post, and I wonder to what extent walking can be meditative. I know it can be, but it takes work. I feel my feet on the firm gravel, saying left, right, left, right to help focus my attention. Then I see three pedestrians ahead of me, where I make my next turn, off the gravel road and onto the paved one, and I stop. I hope I can catch up to them; to walk with someone else, however briefly, would be a welcome change from my usual solitary plodding. My mind immediately leaps to Matthew, who seems to have an innate knack for happiness. I’m not like that. I’m someone for whom happiness, as former journalist turned mindfulness podcaster Dan Harris argues, is a skill that must be laboriously learned. Rather late in life, too, at least in my case.

The pedestrians–three women about my age–are chatting with a motorist who has stopped in the middle of the road, and I catch up to them just as the driver says farewell and moves on. I say hello. They are Audrey, Colleen, and Virginia. They talk about people they know, family and friends, and periodically ask me a question about what I’m doing. They’re all from here, although Virginia has lived in Calgary for 40 years. They make the same walk down this road every day, from their homes to the gravel road and back again. They’re surprised that I’m walking to Antigonish. They used to cycle there, years ago, but I get the sense that the roads have gotten busier than they’d like. One warns me about the traffic volume and speed on Taylors Road. They point out a cottontail–“will that be in your blog?” one asks–but I was scribbling in my notebook and miss it. They walk at a quick pace, and when I stop to take a picture or a note, I fall behind. They walk in the traffic lane, too, which has me worrying about their safety, but they walk here all the time, so they must know what they’re doing. I notice a host of blue flag iris in the ditch, dozens of plants, but I’m not close enough to the women to call their attention to those glorious flowers, and even if I were, I don’t feel like interrupting their conversation. I can keep those flowers to myself.

I take off my pack and slide out of my sweater. I hear what seem to be many different birds, but all day long Merlin tells me that the new songs I think I’ve never heard before are coming from song sparrows. They must have dozens of different songs. Maybe they just improvise. One by one, the women say goodbye and walk up their driveways, and I continue into Pomquet alone. I pass some of the landmarks I saw on my walk the other day–the church, the empty museum, the fire department–and turn on Taylors Road. Two chickens, one black and one orange, are finding something to eat on a lawn, while a robin watches them. I’ve been thinking about the situation in the United States–the way undocumented immigrants are being treated by ICE and the way other people are pushing back–and I find the lyrics to Woody Guthrie’s “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos” on my phone. I know the tune and the chorus, but not the verses, and I decide to teach it to myself as I walk by singing it:

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane
And all they will call you will be “deportees.”

I think about the instability in the song’s use of pronouns. Sometimes the workers who are being deported are referred to as “they,” especially in the first verse; sometimes as “you,” as in the chorus; but most of the time the singer uses the pronoun “we,” putting himself with them and even claiming that his grandfather was an undocumented fruit picker. Is that true of Woody Guthrie? I don’t know. I used to wonder if he’s indulging in a kind of cultural appropriation in the song, but the range of pronouns suggest something more complex is going on. Maybe the speaker–it could be a persona, after all, rather than Guthrie speaking, or singing, directly to us—is using “we” to assert solidarity with the workers? That makes sense to me, but that doesn’t mean it’s the correct interpretation.

Passing motorists–and there are a lot of them: Taylors Road is busy–must wonder why my mouth is moving, who I think I’m talking to, as I sing and walk at the same time. Or maybe they’re travelling too quickly to notice; the speed limit here is higher than on the road that runs through Pomquet. I detour around a tractor mowing the side of the road, breathing in the smell of cut grass, and pass the École Acadienne de Pomquet, where children are crying out joyfully as they play outside, waiting for their days to begin. It must be the last week of classes. I remember what that felt like for me, the mix of relief and anticipation and also sadness, since I knew I would be alone much of the summer. Other children, and a few adults, are on what must be a walking path on the other side of the road that runs to the school, where there’s also a community centre, and I consider crossing over to walk there, but I would have to wade through tall grass, risking ticks again, and if the path ends or turns, I would end up wading back to the road again, so I decide to stay where I am. I step into the ditch to get a photo of a Canadian flag, and notice the thick, spongy moss and bunchberry growing beneath my feet. I’m singing Canadian songs now–Leonard Cohen, Stan Rogers–songs I learned in Spain after someone told me about a communal dinner where everyone was asked to sing a song from their home country. I realized I didn’t know any Canadian songs–not completely–and used the computer at an albergue to look up lyrics and scribble them in my notebook. I practiced them as I walked along until I had them by heart. As it turned out, nobody ever demanded that I entertain them with a Canadian song, but I still remember them, and they help pass the time on these long, solitary walks.

I arrive at a narrow overpass that crosses the four-lane highway to Halifax. There’s barely room for a pedestrian here, and I cross quickly. Road walking can be dangerous. A bumblebee is working on a roadside lupin, and a bullfrog makes its percussive call in a swamp. I make up a chant that lists some of the trees growing here–spruce, alder, dogwood, maple and birch–and then realize I’ve left out the aspens. An explosion of Pokémon cards litters the shoulder, and I wonder why some kid would’ve thrown their collection out of the car window. Maybe their siblings were responsible. Across the road, a billboard displays what I think is supposed to be an albino elk. Do those animals live in this part of the world? I have no idea. The sideroads here have Scottish names, and I remember reading in Someone Else’s Saint that there’s a transition right about here between the Acadian presence in Pomquet and the Catholic Highland Scots near Antigonish. Both of those settler communities displaced the Mi’kmaq who lived on this land, but Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation is not far from here. The name “Pomquet” is a French corruption of their name, which refers to the bay that stretches inland from the Northumberland Strait. In a way, this walk passes through all three communities on its way to the cathedral in Antigonish, which has become important to them. Matthew talks about that in Someone Else’s Saint, and even though this walk won’t change anything about colonialism here or elsewhere, I can recognize that ongoing history. It seems that everyone I’ve met on this trip has read Daniel Paul’s We Were Not the Savages, which suggests that people here are aware of the brutality of English colonization here. The Mi’kmaq were the primary victims, but so too were the Acadians, who returned here after the 1755 expulsion, and the Highland Scots only ended up in this place because of political and economic imperialism in Scotland. We can’t change the past, of course, but we could make the future different. Easier said than done, I know, in our individual lives, never mind in our collective experience, but still, not impossible.

The sun breaks through the clouds and the heat on the back of my neck is shocking. I’ve been walking for about three hours, and figure I’m about halfway to my destination. Matthew asked me to text him so that he could bring me coffee, and I realize I’ve forgotten to do that. He answers right away; he’ll be with me in 20 minutes. Meanwhile I keep walking. I pass a motel and a gas station, and then I cross the Lower South River on a bridge that has a wide, sand-covered sidewalk. The ditch is filled with blue flag and what I think is marsh marigold, although I can’t tell for sure from the shoulder and am not going to climb down to get a closer look. Matthew pulls up. He has coffee and food: a small omelette, a piece of buttered toast, cookies. I haven’t had a second breakfast like this while walking since I was in Spain, and I realize how hungry I am. He draws me a map to complement the one in the invitation on his blog to people who might’ve wanted to participate in the pilgrimage. He showed me the turns I need to make the day before, but even though there aren’t that many, I’ve still jumbled them together in my mind, and the map ought to help. When I finish eating, we say goodbye and I continue walking.

Despite the map, though, I miss the turn into Antigonish, mostly because I’m replying to an email on my phone instead of paying attention to where I am. By the time I realize, with the help of Google Maps, where I’ve gone wrong, I end up having to walk back almost a kilometre to the place I should’ve gone right. I resolve to focus on what I’m doing. Now I’m on the road that leads into Antigonish. It’s a long plod on an uneven shoulder. An osprey flies overhead. Finally I see the sidewalk the map indicates on the other side of the road. I’m looking at the tall trees across the road. A goldfinch flies into traffic, and a dead blue jay, obviously hit by a vehicle, lies next to the sidewalk. A sign asks people to slow down because young foxes are in the area, but I don’t see any. I realize I’ve missed another turn. My wayfinding skills must be terrible, or else I’m looking at everything but the map and the intersections. Missing that turn means, I think, that I’m going to miss another one that takes me through a park almost all the way to St. Ninian’s Cathedral. That’s okay, I tell myself. The sidewalk running along this busy street will be noisier, but I’m in the town now, and I should be able to find my way to the cathedral without much trouble.

I cross a bridge over the North River and reach Main Street, where the signs are bilingual: English and Gaelic. I can see the hospital to the right, and I know from yesterday’s recon that it’s at the opposite end of town from the campus of St. Francis Xavier’s University, where the cathedral is located, so I turn left. I walk through the centre of town. It’s not as pretty as Lunenburg, but it also doesn’t feel like the set of a Hallmark movie, so I like it better. I’ll have to cross the river again to get to the cathedral, and I see a bridge on College Street. St. Ninian’s Street is just past it. And there’s the cathedral: a tall stone building with two spires. I thought I might’ve been able to see those spires earlier, but they’re not as tall as I’d thought.

I make a pit stop in the building named after Brian Mulroney–I’d rather use the facilities there than the ones at the cathedral; that feels more respectful–and then I walk back down the hill and enter St. Ninian’s. Inside, it’s bright and quiet, except for the lawnmower running outside. As Matthew’s book points out, there’s some controversy about whether there actually was a St. Ninian at all. He’s reputed to have brought Christianity to the Scots, but there’s some evidence it was there before he’s thought to have arrived. History can be odd that way. Stories change and get lost, names get confused, and where documentation is incomplete, we end up deciding what version we’re going to believe. It’s enough for me that the people who built this imposing structure thought St. Ninian was real. The priest isn’t around, so I can’t ask what he thinks about that question. I’m sure he must have an opinion.

I sit quietly in a pew towards the back, resting. My phone tells me I’ve walked 27 kilometres, which makes sense. Matthew said the journey was about 25 kilometres, and missing that turn made it a little longer. I feel a telltale tickling on my calf. Sure enough, a wood tick is making its way up my leg. I don’t want to leave it alive in the cathedral–someone will walk out of the next service with a tick latched onto their body–so I kill it. At least, I try to: my first attempts are not successful. I could try to drown him, but the only water around is the holy water, and I’m sure disposing of it there would be considered sacrilegious, but I don’t feel like carrying it uphill to the Mulroney building’s washroom. I leave it in the aisle. It looks dead, but it might be pretending. Slowly, I walk back to Main Street and the Syrian shawarma takeout place, Grape Leaves, where I’m going to have lunch. Matthew joins me there. We eat in a nearby park. I recommend their lemon-mint drink, which is perfect on a hot day.

The other day, Sara called Matthew and me “walking nerds,” which is a fair description. My goal with this walk, and with this blog post, is to encourage other walking nerds to consider making the pilgrimage from Pomquet Beach to St. Ninian’s Cathedral on foot–especially those who have read Someone Else’s Saint. It’s not that long, as long walks go, and there’s something pleasing about turning a written account of a journey into a physical experience. Now I know what the pilgrimage Matthew writes about was like. Or might’ve been like, since walking alone is not the same as walking with other people. Or maybe people will read Someone Else’s Saint and be satisfied with Matthew’s accounts of the two walks he relates, without feeling compelled to re-enact them. That would make sense, too. For most of us, that would make a lot more sense than trudging along the side of the road on a hot day.