- [cheering & applauding] - yes!
The heart of the annapolis valley.
An area famous for fruit farming.
A once major lumber and manufacturing hub.
And the geographical midpoint...
For the trains that ran east west from halifax to yarmouth.
And shipped everything from workers to wood,
And tourists to turnips.
And oh-so-many apples, of course.
[laughing]
But, when the engine stopped running,
Things got a little off track.
And the heart of the valley went into rail cardiac arrest.
[laughing]
These days you might say middleton's "metal" has been
Tested, but whether it's moving 75 tons of steel down
To your rail museum, or throwing a 50-pound
Chunk of it into the air— for sport—
[laughing]
This small town — named for the middle —
Is still a heavyweight contender.
[cheering & applauding]
When you grow up in a small town in newfoundland,
You see the people have a sense of humor about hard times.
Check, check.
I turned that into a career and hit the road.
Mr. Jonny harris!
Now I'm on a mission to find the funny in the places
You'd least expect it —
Canada's struggling small towns.
Towns that are against the ropes, but hanging in there.
Still laughing in the face of adversity.
This is middleton, nova scotia.
♪
[cheering & applauding]
You can see the signs of prosperity
Driving around this area. All the grand victorian homes.
For decades, industry and production was chugging,
And so were the trains.
But, here in the annapolis valley,
Bigger, better trucks on bigger, better roads
Started hauling a lot of the freight.
So, middleton saw the end of the train,
And I'm not talking about your caboose.
[laughing]
♪
Trains like an even grade, but your history in this town
Has had a lot of highs and lows.
I found the perfect person to regale me.
Retired nurse, deputy mayor, force of nature, gail smith!
[cheering & applauding]
Gail is a lifelong resident of middleton.
She told me about growing up here.
She said in the heyday, business was booming.
It was a very prosperous town.
The mining was just outside of town that,
They brought the freight trains through.
We had scotia gold, which is a fruit company.
It was great, a lot of people were, you know, were working.
And a lot of stores were starting to come into the town.
Gail said there were several grocery stores, banks,
Four gas stations, even some of the more underground businesses
Were doing well, a couple of lovely funeral parlors here.
[laughing]
But all good things must come to an end.
We had a creamery— that closed.
And then, the scotia gold apple processing plant closed and
Moved out of town altogether.
So then people started leaving.
They had to go and get work.
And then when did the train stop running?
The freight train stopped in the late 1980s.
And then the passenger train stopped in the early 1990s.
It was devastating.
Because when you lose the trains,
You don't have the visitors.
The tracks came up, and as gail said,
When you lost the trains, you lost other industries as well.
We had fancy hotels, you know, like the american house.
It was beautiful, you could have tea in the afternoon.
You know, without the train bringing people,
Who's gonna go stay at the hotel?
I mean, the locals are not gonna go—
If the locals are staying at the hotel,
It's no longer a fancy affair.
It's probably just an affair.
[laughing]
She said the trains were not only important to industry,
But for families as well.
That was the way people would visit their relatives
Up and down the line.
Actually, she had a funny story about,
That she would go visit her grandmother in digby
On the train by herself at the age of three.
Three years old, her mother would go and
Put her on the evangeline dayliner.
Mum would put me on.
She'd tell the conductor that my grandmother
Was gonna be at the other side.
And then, I'd go back in my seat and,
My grandmother would be right
At the station when we got there.
That's funny— I guess train parenting is like
The opposite of helicopter parenting.
[laughing]
"mom, I want to go visit grandma."
"ah, sure, you know where the train station is.
Yeah, go on."
[laughing]
When you live in a small town,
Your methods of transportation are minimal.
She said people here made such use of the railway,
A lot of families didn't even have cars.
I said, "get out of town!"
She said, "you couldn't, that's the problem."
[laughing]
If you can't take the train to grandma's.
What's a toddler to do?
[laughing]
I also think it's funny that gail's last name is smith.
So, if you think about it, she took a train from the
Annapolis fruit belt to visit granny smith.
How about them apples?
[laughing & applauding]
You know, I talked to a guy about the history of the train
Tracks here and this guy should know his canadian history.
He is— well, he's not john a macdonald.
But he's a john macdonald.
John macdonald.
[cheering & applauding]
John's been working with trains his entire career from
Grunt jobs, up to brake man, up to conductor,
All the way up to upper management.
It's funny, you know, I sometimes consider myself
A bit of a brake man.
In fact, if we could afford a stool,
I'd probably take one right now, but...
[laughing]
♪
I turned 55, and I thought, you know what,
Nova scotia's calling me.
When I came here, and I didn't really realize it,
But there was a railway museum.
And I used to come once in a while and
Visit and help out and volunteer.
There was no locomotive, no boxcar.
No, none, none of that was here.
But the inside of that museum,
They had collected amazing things.
Cool stuff.
He got involved with the local train museum here.
And his first thought was a pretty good one.
He thought, this place could use an actual train.
[laughing]
So, he went to town council, and he said, "let's get loco...
...Motive, let's get a locomotive."
[laughing]
A year and a half ago, this locomotive became available,
But the track wasn't fit to hold 75 tonnes.
I knew that, I knew that.
I know what it takes to hold that up.
John got on the phone with the chairman of the
Board of directors at cn rail.
- I can talk train. - I believe you.
I said, "I have a cn locomotive and I need a place to put it."
So, cn built this boardwalk. This 227-foot track.
And they contracted that new asphalt platform...
- Yeah. - At their expense.
That's pretty great.
So, now I have a place to put my locomotive.
But then of course, he still had to move the thing down here.
So then he gets on the phone with the premier.
And he says, "well, you know, cn built all this stuff.
Don't you want to chip in?"
I'm not saying he played one off the other, it's...
- [laughing] - it's negotiating!
It's the kind of negotiating skills you usually only see
From a kid with divorced parents, right.
[laughing]
"you know, dad, mom's new boyfriend bought me a...
A 4k gaming console, but my tv is only 1080p, you know."
[laughing]
We brought in some, some, some companies that
Were capable of lifting and transporting.
So, but we had to take all the stuff off the top.
So, the smokestack, the bell, the whistle,
All those big domes, in order to clear the underpass.
[truck honking]
And December 18, 2020, that's when she landed.
And they picked it up off that 42-meter truck,
And just brought it ever so slowly.
And just placed it...
Exactly where we want it.
[johnny] amazing.
[john] it's been a real success story.
[johnny] that locomotive will be a real engine for tourism
Here in middleton. And credit to him,
He really, you know, used railway ties...
Well.
Before you knew it, it was, "all aboard!"
[laughing & applauding]
♪
Now middleton may have lost the railway,
But it's no town of criers.
Well, except for one guy, I suppose.
So, here ye, hear y...
Here is peter and val davies!
[cheering & applauding]
Peter...
Is the town crier, and val— well,
First val told me that she was his escort.
I said, "I don't need to know that much."
[laughing]
[ringing bell]
Oh yay! [echoing]
God bless a free and united canada.
Long live the queen!
[johnny chuckling] hey! [clapping]
Peter, that is a powerful instrument you've got there.
Peter told me, you know, the idea of a town crier
Goes back to medieval times.
The town crier was the purveyor of all news of the day.
And they definitely would draw people into the area.
He said it would usually start off with a message from the
King, followed by the news of the day and some announcements.
Then it went into the commercial part of what's
Going on in terms of a market and that sort of thing.
And, oh, by the way, there's a good hanging at noon,
Not to be missed, you know.
Peter had a funny story, he said
He found his voice selling hot dogs.
And he said, it was so boring he started calling,
"hey, get your hot dog! Get your hot dogs here!"
Then eventually, he started making up songs.
♪ [singing] who will buy my wonderful hot dogs? ♪
♪ who will buy my dog on a bun? ♪
[laughing]
Before you knew it, the town asked him to be town crier...
Which is pretty cool, but can you trust
A hotdog salesman with the news?
[laughing]
How do you know what they're giving you is not
Basically a bunch of baloney?
[laughing]
But soon, peter was not just town crier for middleton,
But for towns all over the valley.
Doing as many as 140 appearances a year.
He's cried in far more interesting places than I have.
I usually try to keep mine to the bathroom.
[laughing]
I asked him to do a little shout out for the show.
And he was like, "okay."
Middleton, nova scotia welcomes
Cbc's still standing!
Oh, yay!
His voice is so commanding and officious...
That I, you know, I think of the word yay
As being like, "yay!"
But what he says it, it's so, you know,
It's dangerously close to sarcasm, it sounds.
"still standing has come to middleton!"
"oh yay."
[laughing]
Is this guy making a dig?
[laughing & applauding]
I had a chat with a young woman who came here from out west
With her sister to go to university in nova scotia,
And her parents — fond of farming —
Followed in their footsteps.
Let's call it a major in moving with a minor infringement
On their children's independence.
[laughing]
I'm talking about ken and kathy and mallory byrka.
[cheering & applauding]
♪
So, how did you feel when mom and dad followed you to school?
Well, at first I wasn't too impressed, but...
[laughing]
It ended up working out in the end.
We were looking for a place to revive a family farm business
And, this was perfect.
They wanted to come to the annapolis valley because
They wanted to revive their seed business.
A generations-old heirloom seeds.
If you don't know what heirloom seeds are — like I didn't —
It's not like, you know, planted in the ground and
Waiting for grandma's brooch to come up.
[laughing]
What is exactly an heirloom seed?
Well, 50 years is technically—
Anything that's older than 50 years.
And then, they haven't been manipulated and
They're not hybridized, right.
We have to be very cognizant of distances of different
Varieties and how far apart they need to be planted.
That's really important.
So, they don't interfere with one another?
Absolutely, because you can't grow a pumpkin and
A squash of the same species 20 feet apart.
They will cross and you'll get a zuka pumpkin or
Whatever it might be, right.
The heirloom seed scene is a big thing all over the world.
Ken was telling me he just traded seeds with a guy who
Found seeds for pea plants in ancient norse burial grounds.
He was looking at our website online and said,
"hey, look, I have these," like,
"do you want me to ship some across to you?"
"can I make you a trade," he said, you know.
So, we did.
Yeah, and they grow in the cemeteries in...
Where exactly is it, norway?
They've recovered them in dead viking graves so, I said,
"what are they called?" and he says, "dunno."
These pea seeds were so rare,
He didn't even have a name for them.
Ken and kathy immediately agreed on "dead viking seeds".
[laughing]
Which I think is pretty cool.
[laughing]
"here lies leif erickson. May he rest in peas."
[laughing]
You guys really do things the old way.
The old seeds, even some of the equipment here.
Well, garlic planting, you're planting almost an acre, right,
So you need something to make holes.
And so, I found this wonderful design with an old cable spool
And, and have little prongs, you know, sticking out,
Dibbler sticking out.
And then the garlic goes inside each hole.
Who here has heard of a garlic dibbler?
And it's not a starter at eastside mario's.
[laughing]
So, this is the dibbler,
And these are the legs from various couches?
Various couch legs.
Now you have to be really careful because once you make
The holes, you don't want to step on the hole.
The holes you've made.
So, you have to kind of straddle it, right?
Yeah, give it a go.
So, they got me to do it.
This was trickery on his part to make me look foolish.
[laughing]
Normally, it's two people on other side pushing it.
He didn't tell me that,
So I'm trying to not walk on the holes...
And I'm pushing this thing.
I think I'm gonna dibble my groin doing this.
[laughing]
That is great.
A little bit embarrassing, but listen,
When it comes to dibbling, I can say I've dabbled.
- So there. - [laughing]
That's something.
[laughing & applauding]
You know, I didn't say I had to go see scottish
Cultural sports while I was here.
I just tossed it out there.
[laughing]
Give it up for highland games gurus,
Jamie peppard and danny frame.
[cheering & applauding]
♪
♪ [heavy metal] agh! ♪
♪ two tickets to the gun show! ♪
♪ you know what I'm what I'm talking about. ♪
♪ two tickets to the gun show! ♪
I feel like that when you guys show up at highland games,
Middleton has a reputation now that comes with it.
That's for sure. We're the oldest group of
Heavy athletics athletes in the country.
So, we've had a strong circuit for a long period of time.
[effort grunting]
The guys were running through some of the highland games
Heavy events, which includes "the widowmaker".
That's 56 pounds on the end of a 16-inch chain,
And you spin and try and throw it as far as you can
Before it throws you.
It's hard on the arms, you know.
I don't know about widowed,
But your shoulders can get separated.
[laughing]
Ah, "the braemar stone".
And the braemar stone would be 20, plus, pounds,
And you "put it" from a standing position.
Weight over bar, which is...
Well, pretty self-explanatory, I suppose, you throw a weight,
A heavy weight over a bar.
And I think people in nova scotia are good at that.
When I was at the halifax comedy festival,
I saw a guy throw 160 pounds out of a bar.
[laughing]
Actually, I was probably 165 at the time.
[laughing]
In the highland games heavy weight events,
Jamie at one point was ranked second in the world.
[cheering & applauding]
His specialty being the 24-foot caber toss.
Now this is where you flip a 24-foot caber, which caber,
Of course, is an ancient gaelic word for telephone pole.
[laughing]
And you got to do the whole thing in a kilt.
As if there wasn't enough wood flying around already.
[laughing]
But to say danny's had success at this
Would be an understatement.
He currently holds three guinness world records.
Well, I learned from one of the best in the world.
Jamie's been throwing cabers, like he said,
Since the early 90s.
And it's been a pretty, pretty cool experience to, you know,
Flip a log and make it into the guinness record book.
Eventually they convinced me to give it a whirl,
To try the caber toss.
♪ [bag pipes] ♪
I put on the kilt, and I thought, my god,
Do I need one of those like weight belts, you know,
For lifting heavy things?
I figured my girdle would do the job.
[laughing]
Before you get started,
I'm gonna give you a little bit of tape.
And we need to put a little bit of chalk here.
Just so the caber doesn't slip when it's on your shoulder.
Okay, now you're looking the part.
They put chalk on your shirt here and
On your neck and your face.
I was like, "I don't care, man, you know, I work in tv.
I already got powder on my face. Do you have that in soft beige?
'cause that sort of..."
We're gonna set you up for success here.
Trust me, you're in good hands.
Lifting these immense weights is a strain on your muscles.
I thought, you know, if my eyes pop I want it to be
From the green in the tartan, not from...
- [laughing] - ...Lifting heavy things.
Building up some speed...
And you take a few steps forward to build up speed
Before planting your feet and launching this thing
As hard as you can.
And try— you want it to flip straight.
That's the perfect— 12 o'clock is what you're,
You're aiming for.
More speed. Pull!
[effort grunting]
Now, the last one I flipped wasn't really—
It was more sort of...
11:30, but that's 12 o'clock in newfoundland, I'll take it.
[laughing & applauding]
♪
You know, these days here in middleton,
There's not quite as much industry from
Growing fruit or lumber taken from trees.
But there's farms around like the new folks in town
Who are planting some crazy old seeds.
You may have lost the railway lines,
But you can't say it made you lazy.
From moving trains to lifting logs,
The feats of strength are crazy.
You see that strength in the effort made.
You hear it in the town cry.
As middleton remains the heart of the valley,
And the apple of its eye. Thanks for coming out everybody!
You've been great.
[cheering & applauding]
Anytime johnny wants to come to middleton and
Wants to go for a walk, I'm down for that.
We really enjoyed it.
It was uplifting, and one could feel that sense
In the people around us.
Learned so much about, about our own town that we didn't,
Things that we didn't know, right.
It was so great to see how all of the stories
Just intertwined and...
You know, jonny just did such a great job.
I had a lot of fun at this show.
Laughing is a good thing.
One more?
It's great to see everybody out and,
Just a great night here in middleton.
Jonny just hit it on the head, man.
He hit it out of the park so, it was great.
Ha-ha!
Middleton, nova scotia!
Still standing!