The Yankee Professor's Guide to Life in Nova Scotia

Richard Wilbur is supervisor of the Legislative Research Service at the
New Brunswick Legislature, and the author of The Rise of French New
Brunswick.

This is an absorbing and somewhat bittersweet account of how an Indiana
English professor survived in the withering atmosphere of the ingrown
academic community of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. “Whom the Gods would
turn sour, they first award tenure” the author writes, but despite his
academic isolation after he challenged a campus icon, Milner has written
a witty and candid account with hardly a trace of bitterness. As he puts
it succinctly, “there is only so much pleasure to be extracted from
self-flagellation over one’s unlucky stars. Many of us embrace
Antigonish’s slow rhythms, raise our kids and cherish our quiet
lives.”

In what really is an autobiographical diary, Milner divides his account
into the four seasons. His Fall section describes his first years at St.
Francis Xavier University, “lighting fires” for his students, and
dealing with “Himself,” Father MacSween, who then dominated the
English Department. Winter is largely an account of an unsuccessful
effort to arouse students’ interest in Thoreau by visiting Walden. A
much briefer Spring section contains some critical comments on the state
of Catholicism that could come only, as he suggests, from a convert
through marriage.

The concluding chapter, Summer, shows how Milner’s 17-year stay in
Nova Scotia has left him stateless, inasmuch as he no longer identifies
with his relatives in Indiana and can never be completely accepted as a
Canadian. Yet it is clear, from his thoughts expressed amid Canada Day
celebrations, that he has come to terms with and actually prefers
Canadians’ way of understating their country’s attributes.