Causeway by Linden MacIntyre

Author:Linden MacIntyre [MacIntyre, Linden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780002557207
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2007-02-15T06:00:00+00:00

From up by the camps now, when we’re collecting the bottles Old John saves for us, the causeway looks as though it has always been there. There is something quite natural about it, probably because the rock matches the craggy face of the cape from which it came. Early in January we saw a train creeping out over the causeway, and it was an amazing sight—like someone walking on water. It was moving carefully, puffing and shunting, the wheels squealing on the new rails. Old John said they were using the train to haul out more rails and ties and gravel, so they could finish the job and get the trains moving regularly from the mainland to Cape Breton. Big pressure, he said, because of the steel and coal that had to keep moving.

There’s a chain across the entrance to the new causeway to keep the cars off, but somebody cut it so they could drive out and be first to take a car across, even though Mr. Harry MacKenzie had already done that, claiming the fame for being first in the middle of December, just after they dumped the last load of rock. He even got his name in the paper for it.

But by the end of January, you’d see the occasional car creeping over. January 22 there was a little convoy—all twenty-five members of the Inverness County Council. They stopped at one point and got out to take pictures—a strange group of important men on an important mission. They were going over to inspect the asylum in Mulgrave, where, it seems, most of the people are originally from Inverness County. According to the paper, this was “the first official group to cross the now famous structure.”

The officials made serious comments. There was nothing in the paper about the reaction of the poor people in the place they were going to inspect.

The paper is saying that the causeway will be officially open for everybody by April, but Old John doesn’t think so. Maybe by the end of the summer, he says.

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