The realization that you can go, you know, further north and you're going to find something
that is remote and is, you know, just, it's new, it's never been served before.
It was described as being one of the best point breaks in the whole East Coast at that time.
Our environment for serving here is really different than anywhere else in the world.
It's cold, we have point breaks, and it's even unique for the world.
You look at the coastline, the storms that come up by, so we've got lots of points and reefs.
Works great in the fall, hurricane season, all winter.
I think that is a huge part of the field to it, and just this, just the maritime atmosphere.
We have great waves here in Nova Scotia, and look what they're doing in California.
We can do that here too.
A lot of places like California or Florida or wherever, everyone knows where all these spots are.
There's nothing new here, it's like a new place.
It was kind of like an endless summer scene with all the cars parked around down there,
and they had the fires at night, and they, you know, that was, that was their little California.
Back in those days, it was more, I guess, kind of the Beach Boys' bad thing that cut everybody into it.
It was just a general feeling that we had.
It was always the same group of guys that would show up at the same places,
and we never went looking for our own place to go in the water.
Back then, we were looking for each other.
Well, I've had surfers come through here, I think it was the summer.
They were saying that this place reminded them of California in the 50s.
I'm one of the original surfers in Nova Scotia.
Like, I always figured that I was the fifth guy to surf in Nova Scotia.
Although I might be wrong, but as I understand it, it was Admiral Landymore's two sons, Rudd and John.
I don't know if anybody's told you that, but he was the Admiral of the Fleet.
The American Fleet came to town, and as a favor to the rear Admiral,
the commander of the American Fleet brought in two surfboards from one of the aircraft carriers, I believe,
and they came out and they knew the exact time when the first Nova Scotians surfed at Lawrence Town Beach,
which is three o'clock on that Saturday afternoon, 1962.
When people first started coming out here surfing, I think there maybe there was a little misunderstanding,
or maybe they didn't quite understand what we were doing.
They used to just, you know, we were just crazy guys that went out in the winter.
I was a kid from Halifax, and I was going out there, and the people in Seaforth and on the eastern shore,
they were looking at us like we were kind of like weirdos.
Back then, there was a lot of fishermen, there was a few like trades people and that kind of thing,
and it was kind of hard to penetrate the community.
25 years ago, I think when they described you as a surfer, it wasn't necessarily a positive thing.
Here's the thing that happened, like me and my high school buddies, we bought a fishing shack from this guy.
It was 75 bucks, and we used to go out there and we used to surf from the range,
and like we had a little stove in there, and then we'd come in, it was freezing,
like we'd go and surf, and then we'd come out and like get in the fishing shack and get warm, and it was great.
And like, I don't know if that even lasted a year, because some of the fishermen decided it shouldn't be there,
so they burned down our shack, you know?
I can remember one time when one of the guys had parked up on the main road.
At the end of his session, he couldn't get his van started, so he left it there.
And the next day when he came back, the thing was trashed.
It was half full of beach stone, they actually filled it.
All the tires were flat, all the windows were smashed out.
That's why I called it soon, everybody flew.
You know, but eventually individuals got to know other individuals in the neighborhood,
and now there's, I think there's a pretty good rapport between fishermen and surfers.
Once Oscar started to buy land, the locals started to accept the surfers.
Now, you know, the surfers seem to have more of a positive connotation, or at least not a negative one anyway.
A lot of times when I first started surfing, no one that lived out there in the community actually surfed, really.
And then now people that are like kids that are out there now are getting into surfing.
The water's about zero degrees.
The air can be up to minus 35.
The last one that we've had is only about minus 15, minus 20, with the water being zero, so it hasn't been that bad.
You know, you get that first blast of cold water in your face, and it's just the worst ice cream headache you can imagine.
I mean, I'm having a hard enough time with the latest technology to stay in the water for more than an hour.
It's cold.
You know, I definitely piss in my suit when I have to.
That's one way to keep warm, but I've seen photos of, you know, those guys in like these dive suits out there in the winter time.
Diving gear had the beaver tail in the whole bed.
Quarter inch suits that were so inflexible you can hit them like a piece of metal.
Snowdrifts up to my chin.
Rocks glazed over with this perfect headgear of ice that you'd have to be like a tripod to get into the water because it was so slippery.
The seaweed that would be frozen, the salt water freezing in your hair, the wipeouts, unbelievably cold.
You hear stories from both these guys back in the early, like even 60s, surfing winter days with no hoods and, you know, their long hair was frozen with icicles.
Well, Paul said he didn't like hoods, so he'd rather take that punishment of going under the ocean in the winter without any protective gear on his head.
Yeah, I think I probably did surf without a hood for several years.
And then I started to think what brain damage was going to start setting in or something.
We were a pretty rag-torn bunch of guys that used to, you know, we had good gear on one foot, bad gear on the other foot and the same with gloves and some didn't fit right and, you know, but we toughed it out.
You got to pay your dues if you're going to be a Nova Scotia surfer.
You do it just because you have to, like not going surfing just isn't really an option anymore.
I don't know, it's something I fell in love with immediately and I think it's just, it's such a pure addiction.
Where you go in the water for, you know, for an hour and all of a sudden things are just different, you know, you just feel better about everything.
It's just that feeling out with your friends surfing, it's just a blast.
A lot of contractors who I do work for are aware of the fact that I do surf and a lot of the times when they call me they'll ask me, like, I'll leave a message on my cell phone on my answering machine and usually it's get off your surfboard and get to work.
I remember the first time I went out, I mean, most people, you know, I'm from dark and most people that go to the beach just like go to make out with somebody, you know, and I went around the corner and the waves were really good and all these guys were surfing.
They're having a really good time and it's something that, you know, I would never think would be in my backyard.
My first year of surfing was, there was a lot of run-ins with some of the older surfers and I was probably a little more aggressive than most surfers at the time.
You know, I was definitely pretty cocky, there's no doubt about it. You know, I was young, I was cocky and I was, you know, I think I was learning fairly fast so, you know, those guys loved to give me a hard time.
When you're 30, something years old and all these guys that are 20 are coming out, there's a little bit of pecking order stuff out there.
I didn't understand the etiquette, I didn't understand the respect part of it. Eventually I realized how it works and how you should have respect for the local surfers and people who have been there a lot longer than you.
They brought a new level of surfing to Nova Scotia. I'd say they were some of the first guys that really took it closer to the world sort of class of surfing.
We did take those guys under our arm. We were their heroes when they were quite young, 18, 19, and that changed as soon as they got into their 20s, 25s and all of a sudden they were the guys that could really rip out there, you know.
We were bogged down with kids and jobs by that time, you know.
Your kids were shredding yesterday.
There's been more improvement in the girl surfing and there has even been the guys.
I borrowed a lot of my stepdad's web suits and so some of them had holes in the ass, some of them had no arm, some of them had a big hole in the back.
So I just layered them up until all the holes were covered, like a few holy socks or something.
I got in regardless of how crappy it was or how cold it was or how big it was.
Lots of guys' girlfriends would sit on the beach and watch but to see someone that actually had the, yeah, was willing to go out there and go for it, that was great.
I think it took a while, too, for the group to come together.
There was always, you'd hear about a girl, you'd hear about a girl, you'd hear about a girl and everyone would be stoked on that but then, I remember one time going out in the water after coming home traveling and everybody in the water was a girl, like 12 of us.
Scott and I have gone out where the guys are the minority and the girls are the majority, so it's definitely come a long way.
The best surfers are the people that I have the most fun and that's what these girls remind me of. Just out there, they're enjoying themselves and there's a sort of camaraderie amongst them.
I think that girls in the water kind of bring a different vibe, you know, it kind of chills out the vibe a lot, you know, it makes it a lot more friendly because girls by nature are a lot more laid back and friendly in the water, so I like it.
You can't complain about it.
In the last five or six years, it's probably grown 100% every year and winter surfing has become more popular.
Usually one or two people in every group of friends just gets the itch and they just have to surf.
For 25 years there were probably no more than 25 of us. Now there's literally hundreds of surfers up there that can be there on a given day.
The biggest increase in surfers was when they started renting boards.
I can see it eventually being like Florida where every 10 or 15 miles will be a surf shop along the coast.
He's got a nice little wave going there.
I didn't really know you could surf around here though until I was maybe 15 years old. I was in an English class one day and we were reading a series of essays and one of them happened to be by Leslie Choice and it was called Waves of Winter and it was about surfing at Lawrence Town and other spots on the eastern shore.
Once I read that article I wanted to get into it.
That's one of the biggest changes actually is with all the younger guys now how quickly they're progressing to a really high level of surfing.
Now this guy's here doing 360s, getting the air and they're just carving it up. It's really great to watch him.
It's a natural evolution. A ski hill you can have 1,000 people skiing down that static hill. A wave you can have one riding it with 50 maybe waiting for it or 100 maybe waiting for it.
You'll get more than one person dropping in on the wave just because they're so sick of the crowd. They'll say the heck with it. I'm going to drop in anyway.
There are some local surfers in their early to mid 60s. They still should be getting as far as I'm concerned anyway they want.
Most of the newer surfers these days, they're not giving the respect that these older guys deserve.
They weren't there to see that older crew, the first crew that was around.
You can't just go out and not respect the people that are out there and have been out there.
The people that really stick around in the surf community around here, they're the ones that really respect their elders.
There ultimately are no absolute rules in the ocean but you need to be graceful about it and gracious about it and allow everybody to catch their waves.
The older surfers and the local surfers are trying their best not to let it turn into that type of scene that you'd get in Florida or California or something like that.
It's still a special place and we want to try to keep it that way as long as we can for our children and their children.
And now it seems every year we have to get smaller and smaller rental suits because the adults that are into it are getting their kids into it.
My son's generation, if he surfs, they're going to be killing it I'm sure.
I think we're moving in a direction where the talent pool in Nova Scotia is that much higher.
It's just going to probably stay a fun sport where people are going to compete against each other here but it's not going to be, I don't think anybody's thinking they're going pro.
I realize that we have a heck of a lot of coastline that from a surfing point of view is still relatively unexplored.
It hasn't been overly commercialized and it hasn't been corrupted.
I hope that that will never happen.
I'm hoping that the cold water is what's going to prevent that from happening.
I can still go out and find a wave with my own.
I don't think it's ever going to be really that big of a problem in terms of crowding.
There's always a spot that you can get a wave at that's going to be just you and the seagulls type of thing.
It's just nice being able to paddle out to the lineup and seeing Paul Camilleri or even Jimmy Ledbetter just going down the line just having a good time.
Big smile on their faces. It's great. I love being able to see that.
That's really what it comes down to at the end of the day.
It's a person going out and enjoying yourself, riding waves with your friends and having fun.
I'll surf till I can't walk. I'm serious. I'll never stop surfing.
We know the starting point. We can kind of try to continue on the philosophy and the camaraderie that's been here for this first 45 years anyway.
We did invent this place in our minds and in our imaginations. We invented it and made it happen basically.
What you know that North Atlantic ain't warm, but you can sit down right by that cool cool sea.
You know the springtime coming baby. Soon we're going to feel that cool cool breeze.
You know the summertime coming baby. But still you can feel that cool cool breeze.
Let's get out of town baby. Come on now honey. Come on to the country. Guess you and me.
Come on now baby. Come on now baby. Come on now baby.
