C10

Wilfred Langmaid
Days Between

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Now the shorelines beckon
There is a price for being free."

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HISTORIC WALK: Wilfred, Jerome, Chris and Bethany Langmaid make their way across the rocks at low tide to Head Harbour Light on Campobello Island.

From Lost Sailor by Bob Weir & John Barlow

Summer holidays have come and gone for our family in 2008. For me, one of the most special parts of those holidays was the better part of a week spent on Campobello Island.

The rationale for a Campobello trip was simple and personal. I have roots in Campobello. My grandfather was born and raised there.

He had a young family on the island early in the last century. After being widowed, he later married the woman who was my paternal grandmother, and my branch of the family ended up on the Charlotte County mainland. Still, we kept in touch with my grandfather's family on Campobello, and I have several wonderful childhood memories of trips and visits.

Three decades have passed since those annual childhood visits, and I now have a young family of my own.

For the past number of years, my family has counted Campobello as a key place to go on holiday, but this year was the best yet.

Part of it was the simple fact that we had more time. We chose to spend several days, so there was lots of relaxation in one place rather than frantic excursions from one place to another.

Part of it was the graciousness of an extended family member who I first met on the 2005 trip that started the tradition of regular summer trips for my family again. She vacations on the island but lives elsewhere, and she offered us the home that she owns - right on the water at Wilson's Beach. There was a charming home (which I remembered visiting as a child) at our disposal, complete with lots of idyllic walks on the beach at low tide.

Part of it was a whale watching trip where we saw whales, porpoises, eagles, and an osprey.

Part of it was time with extended family memories as we exchanged stories, reminiscences, and tall tales as the too-few days flew by. Stories of my late father and their late mother, in particular, were especially poignant for me. My wife and children were welcomed along with their characteristic love and graciousness, as we happily spent time in their home in Welshpool and at the nearby Herring Cove Provincial Park.

However, what I will never forget from this year's trip is the lighthouse.

The East Quoddy Lightstation, known more colloquially as Head Harbour Light, is on the northeast tip of the island. Dating from 1829, it was the last island home of my grandfather, Alva Bertram Langmaid.

Coming back to Campobello after the First World War with his new wife, Cordelia, he was the lighthouse keeper through the winter of 1920. My aunt Marguerite, my father's last living sibling, was born in the lighthouse earlier that year.

The following year, they moved to the mainland as my grandfather began a new life with a new family that was completed when my dad was born as the youngest of their four children in 1926.

I had never been in the lighthouse, which can only be accessed during low tide, though I had often seen it from a distance both from the land and the water.

I do not know who was more thrilled - the two dedicated local volunteers who are part of the "Friends of the Head Harbour Lightstation" group lovingly restoring the lighthouse after purchasing the property and all the responsibility that come with it a few years ago - or me.

I was able to fill a "gap" for them, as they did not have any records of who was the lighthouse keeper immediately after the First World War.

Meanwhile, they took me and my family on a tour of my roots, and only the coming of the tide brought the tour and the conversations to an end.

My grandfather died six years before I was born. I rely on stories told to me by my mother and my late father as to the man he was - a quiet fellow with a love of and gift for art and music who moved from his roots but never left them. I am forever grateful for this new connection to who I am.

Long-time Daily Gleaner columnist Wilfred Langmaid is employed by the University of New Brunswick. He resides in Fredericton.