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If you have not been to Nova Scotia during the first week of October, you have yet to see one of the wonders of the world. The forest is alive with colour, and when, as often happens, the sunlight ignites the scene, the red leaves of the maples become a canopy of flame and the huckleberry bushes glow like embers below. Despite the nip of autumn you feel a warmth and breathe a perfume that intoxicates the soul. Apparently Longfellow wrote Evangeline, his epic poem of Acadia, without ever experiencing this "forest primeval." What a pity.
Such a light and such a fire of the woods comes to mind as I recall the day I drove along a forest road to a small farm adjacent to a marsh, where lived Hubert and Ottie Williams in some isolation from the world. On a small rise stood a little wooden house with faded green siding and a grey roof. I suspect that the trim around the windows and doors had once been white, but now it was faded to a dusty yellow. Behind the house was a barn; in front was the wild marsh that stretched down some distance to the ocean.
In the doorway stood Hubert, a tall, upright, healthy octogenarian whose eyes were watery blue, perhaps from gazing for so many years at the sea. He had once been as far as 16 miles from this spot, this house where he was born, and his sister Ottie had once been invited to tea in a small village 12 miles up the shore. This was the extent of their travels in 80 years, but they expressed no regret on this point. If anything, they seemed proud of having lived all their lives so close to this one place.
Ottie was two years younger than her brother. Her grey hair was combed into a tidy bun...