Indulge me for a moment

A story about cold water swimming, family time, and St. Pierre and Miquelon

Dear Friends,

Today’s letter isn’t really a story about food. Yes there are croissants, a French supermarket and the idea that the food we eat can be a portal into our story. In truth, this is a story of a cold water swimmer. Of family time, of curiosity, of following a thread, of talking to people in real life, and to trying to speak french even when you make mistakes. Thank you for stretching the theme of this newsletter with me. I’ll be back to regular programming next week with the story of chocolate topped crêpes eaten alongside the elderly ladies of St. Pierre. Until then, here is something else.

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I am knitting a scarf that will hopefully be finished before spring emerges. It’s a garter stitched strip that tapers into a point at each end, but before it tapers, there are loops for the points to pull through. The effect is a neatly knitted neck bow.

Cate Blanchett inspired me to make it. She wears a teal blue version of the knitted bow over a plaid wool fitted blazer on Bella Freud’s podcast, Fashion Neurosis.¹ The premise of the podcast is this: guests lay stretched out on a sofa across from Freud (a nod of course to her grandfather, Sigmund Freud) and discuss their lives with Bella through the lens of the clothes they’ve worn. Cate begins with what she is wearing, starting with her knitted bow in teal. Her day had begun by cold water swimming near her home outside of London; warmth was what she was after. The rest of her outfit was built from there.

I like this portal into conversation, it seems familiar to me. I use food as a portal into conversation in a similar way. It doesn’t matter if it’s humble nourishment we’re discussing or a decadent feast. Food, like clothing, can tell our story if we’re willing to pull the threads, so to speak.

Like when Cate told Bella she was a cold water swimmer.

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I am knitting this little scarf in St. Pierre and Miquelon, the collection of islands off the south coast of Newfoundland owned by France. I can see the harbour from where I sit - a strip of colourful buildings capped with hipped and mansard roofs clustered at the base of snow-topped, craggy rock. Cold water surrounds this place, and is the focus, in a way, of why I am here.

My dad, a retired physician who has always used story as a tool for diagnosis, is researching Anthony Bellefontaine, a Nova Scotian cold water swimmer who went missing after a swim in June of 1965. Bellefontaine swam in St. George’s Bay off Antigonish, even in the dead of winter. My dad’s friend took a photo of Bellefontaine coming out of the icy water in April of 1965, wearing just bathing trunks. Two months later he set off for his regular swim. He was found a number of weeks later, washed up on St. Pierre. My dad’s quest was to research Bellefontaine’s story - through tides, currents, water temperature and human decomposition - and determine how a body could travel 400 nautical miles north east from Nova Scotia and land in St. Pierre and Miquelon? Bellefontaine was eventually identified by French authorities, but where was he buried? What became of this man who many called the human polar bear? This research project was a big mission for a person who doesn’t speak french, so together with two of my sisters and our mom, we joined him on the one hour flight to this small piece of France.

We began our search at L’Arches, the local museum and archives in St. Pierre where an enthusiastic curator listened to our story and provided us with thick binders filled with the records of deaths on the Island since the early 1800’s. We couldn’t remember the last time that two of my sisters and our parents were on holiday together, just us. And as it turns out, we all had a role to play on this trip: two sisters poured over the binders the curator provided us, my Dad shared his research with the curator while the eldest sister and our mom bought provisions at the French supermarket and the patisserie next to our hotel. We couldn’t find a Bellefontaine listed in the binders. There were Berrides, Bonnieuls, Bouquets and Briands, but no Bellefontaines. The curator said there was a chance that he was found on the island of Miquelon, just northwest of St. Pierre, and suggested we contact M. le Mayor of Miquelon, or perhaps join the friends of Miquelon Facebook page. He would ask his colleagues as well. Someone might know something.

This story began for my dad with the photo his friend took of Bellefontaine that day in April of 1965. The photographer was just eleven at the time, walking the beach with his new brownie camera. Bellefontaine is standing at the shoreline, posing for the photo in just his swim trunks, jagged shards of ice floating in the water behind him. He is barrel chested, strong and proud. His name Bellefontaine tells us he was Acadian (descendants of early French settlers in eastern Canada). Not long after his body was found, a small pill box was discovered on the beach nearby. Bellefontaine’s wife later identified the pill box and her late husband’s medication that he carried in a pocket of his trunks while swimming. Tucked inside the pill box was a small piece of fabric with The Virgin Mary stitched on one side, and her Immaculate Heart on the other. This little religious icon is called a Green Scapular, and is carried for protection, love and intercession from The Virgin Mary at the time of death.

As we wrapped our scarves around our necks and prepared for the windy walk back to our hotel, I asked the curator one final question: is carrying a Green Scapular specific to Acadian Catholicism, or is it something a French Catholic might carry as well? The curator told me that it wasn't so much a question of French versus Acadian catholicism, it had more to do with the kind of solace needed to endure the harsh life of the North Atlantic. They were not seeking forgiveness, these people had little time to sin, he explained. Instead, they were seeking a mother’s love and comfort.

It’s impossible to know why Bellefontaine chose to swim in the cold Atlantic all year long. Cate Blanchett told Bella Freud that apart from being on stage, swimming in cold water is the one time that she is truly present. The cold shocks the distracting thoughts from your brain, she said, and all that’s left are present sensations - bird song, her breathing, the distant traffic. “It’s a little island where for three minutes the sinapsis disconnect, and hopefully stay disconnected for at least another three minutes when you get out of the water.” Bellefontaine was seeking something - perhaps to control stress in his life, to hear the sound of the waves or the beating of his heart? We will never know, but we can say he was a good sixty years ahead of the trend.

A few days later, after coffee and fresh croissants from the patisserie next to our hotel, my dad got an email from the curator. He shared Bellefontaine’s story with a colleague whose father had grown up on St. Pierre. She had asked her father if he had heard of a body washing up on Miquelon the summer of 1965? “You mean the body I found?” he replied. It was late summer, he was piling hay near the beach and noticed a shape where a shape didn’t belong. It was a body, clad in swim trunks.

We are back in Halifax now and I still haven’t finished my scarf. The temperature is milder here; I spotted a forsythia in bloom in my neighbourhood yesterday. Soon scarf weather will be over. Unless, of course, I start cold water swimming.

The weather report from St. Pierre: cold, crisp and windy.

1. Fashion Neurosis with Cate Blanchette - listen here. You can take a peek at Cate’s knitted neck bow over here. Any one else have this on their needles?