I split my time between Los Angeles and Toronto, but my favourite place in Canada is Pocologan, New Brunswick. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of place on the Bay of Fundy, between Saint John and St. George, about an hour’s drive from Fredericton. Every Easter from the time I was quite young until I was into my late teens, my mother and I and a whole group of others would meet at a family friend’s home built on the rocks right over the Atlantic Ocean, where the waves could splash the windows on a rough day. It was a truly amazing house; the owner was a woodworker and everything inside was made from beautiful wood. There was a swing inside! The ceilings were really tall, so we could swing inside the house, looking out at the ocean.
Our annual tradition was an Easter egg hunt. My mom is heavily involved in the New Brunswick theatre community, and a lot of her friends are artists and craftspeople, so our Easter baskets were these spectacular handmade creations, like something you’d see in a magazine. In our baskets we’d get kites, and we’d drive to nearby New River Beach to fly them. It would be cold, and the tide would be out, and there would be at least 10 of us kids running around on this cold, beautiful beach with our kites. One of the first years we did it, I ran to the beach and let the kite unroll, and it went higher and higher until I realized I hadn’t tied the string to the handle.
We would climb on the rocks going down to the ocean. We would write our names in the sand in big letters, then watch the tide come in and wash them away. It was magical.
I was talking to my mom about it recently, and she said, “You know, even when you guys became teenagers, you were never too cool to go to Pocologan.” It was a really special time, bringing together families that would otherwise have lost touch. I’d love to have that for my own family and adult friends.