[ISL] "Hooked on Cheticamp"

[rfmcdonald]

My cousin Diane linked on Facebook to Francies Willick's Halifax Chronicle-Herald article on the rug hooking craft that has made the Acadian community of Chéticamp, on the western shore of Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island, famous. It turns out that the economics of this folk craft just aren't enough to sustain it.

[... Lola] LeLievre fears [... r]ug hooking in Cheticamp is an endangered skill.

“It’s dying, and it’s dying really fast,” she told me last summer.

She estimates that 20 years ago, there were about 100 hookers in Cheticamp. Now, there are about 30, and most are in their 70s, 80s or 90s.

LeLievre explains that rug hooking in Cheticamp was once an industry; residents, including LeLievre and her mother, hooked rugs to obtain money for the bare essentials.

“But for the children and anybody that’s taking it up now, they don’t need that money to survive,” she said. “They won’t work that long for that little bit of money. It’ll never happen again.”