Grand Pre Landscape and Blomidon


Glooscap
Coming back from metro Halifax to Port Maitland earlier this week, Norma and I drove over the ridge between Windsor and Wolfville and saw the view that says “home” to those living in the eastern end of the Annapolis Valley on the shores of the Minas Basin.
The place used to be home to many Mi’kmaq people, who have a creation story about The Creation of Kluskap, which has become anglicized to Glooscap. The story as told to me by Mi'kmaq elder Noel Knockwood was that after the Mi'kmaq world was created and after the animals, birds and plants were placed on the surface, Creator caused a bolt of lightning to hit the surface of Wsitqamu'k. This bolt of lightning caused the formation of an image of a human body. It was Kluskap, first shaped out of the basic element of the Mi'kmaq world, sand. Kluscap’s home was Blomidon, and so we see this in the image this week.
The photo is of the Grand Pre landscape, a UNESCO recognized feature here in Nova Scotia, and the foreground shows the church, known for its role in the story of Evangeline and the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755. In the background is Blomidon, the mystical formation that the Mi’kmaq have described in varying terms – some stories speaking of a dam to make the Minas Basin, some of a human form.
The cultural significance of the lives lived here is long and should not just begin with the sad story of the expulsion – the story rightly begins some 10,000 years earlier with the occupation of the area by the indigenous Mi’kmaq people. I am sure they also felt that wave of excitement and awe when viewing Cape Blomidon – it means you’re home.