‘I’m a Bluenoser’: Donald Sutherland’s love for and ties to Nova Scotia ran deep

Journalist Vernon Oickle was at the office of the weekly newspaper where he worked one day in 2009 when he was told over the intercom there was a phone call he needed to take.

For years, Oickle had been trying to get an interview with actor Donald Sutherland to talk about his upbringing in the Bridgewater, N.S., area, but had been unsuccessful.

And in one of his recent columns for the Bridgewater Bulletin, Oickle had talked about his disappointment in not being able to interview Sutherland when he was in town to film the television miniseries Moby Dick.

When Oickle picked up the phone, he was greeted by a deep, unmistakable voice.

“This is Donald Sutherland and I understand you have been wanting to talk to me,” Sutherland said to him.

While Sutherland was born in Saint John, N.B., in 1935, he spent many childhood years in Nova Scotia. His parents were from Lockeport, N.S.

Sutherland died recently at the age of 88.

In his conversation with Oickle, the acting legend said a friend had given him the article and told him to call.

Oickle was shocked.

“Could he be upset with me for my, you know, for my persistence over the years?” Oickle told CBC News. “That just sort of was a fleeting thought. He just seemed so chipper and willing to chat.”

Sutherland said he was in Montreal and was on his way to catch a plane. The pair talked for about 10 minutes, which included Sutherland talking about his fondness for the area, which ran deep.

“I’m a Bluenoser, I guess,” Sutherland told CBC’s Telescope in 1970. “I smell like it. I feel like it. I think like it. The jokes that I find funny are essentially Nova Scotian jokes.”

Sutherland told The Canadian Press in 2015 about his love of sailing, which he did when he was younger.

“I nearly drowned a bunch of times,” he said, recalling one particular incident off Lunenburg. “I was out on a little 16-foot Lightning [sailing dinghy] and the fog came down. I had no idea which way was England and which was Nova Scotia, and there are 365 islands there. It was tricky but I got home.”

Growing up in Nova Scotia

In his conversation with Oickle, Sutherland reminisced about places like Crescent Beach, the LaHave Islands and White Point Beach Lodge. He also mentioned driving to nearby Liverpool to attend dances on many Saturday nights.

“We would drive there in a Ford convertible, painted orange. We called it the orange crate,” Sutherland told Oickle.

Oickle said he was flattered Sutherland tracked him down.

“I think that speaks volumes to the kind of character he had that he, you know, he recognized that I really wanted to chat with him and he took the initiative to make that happen, right?” Oickle told CBC.

Sutherland told Oickle that he was still in touch with many people he knew from Bridgewater.

Perhaps not surprisingly, when he was in town for the filming of Moby Dick, it felt like coming home.

“The people there were amazing,” Sutherland told Oickle. “I walked around the streets and people would speak to me as if we were old friends. That is really special.”

Michelle Nickerson purchased the Sutherland family home in Cookville, N.S., a few kilometres outside of Bridgewater, in 2022. The home was built by Sutherland’s father beginning in the late 1940s. It appears Donald Sutherland lived there in the early 1950s.

Nickerson found possessions in the home that belonged to Sutherland and his family, such as books. Wondering if he’d want them back, one of Nickerson’s daughters contacted Sutherland’s publicist.

Nickerson prepped a care package of those items, along with some present-day photos of the property and local maple syrup and candies.

Within days, she got a lengthy email from Sutherland.

“But this, what you’ve sent me, is truly wonderful,” the email read in part. “The pictures, the maple butter, the memories. Oh, my god, the memories.”

Sutherland reminisced about his mother’s strawberry shortcake and his father grilling lamb chops outside. And he talked about the breakfast nook, which still exists.

“My mum would sit there and deal out a hand of solitaire,” he wrote. “I used to sit there. We’d have tea. She would have made cookies. Hermits. Ginger snaps, Delicious. What wonderful conversations we’d have.”

Sutherland’s teenage broadcasting start

In his teens, Sutherland worked for radio station CKBW in Bridgewater as a news broadcaster and DJ.

“I read, I took news off the teletype and I read commercials, played records,” Sutherland told CBC’s Telescope.

Sutherland has said he was 14 when he started doing that, but a 2007 book that covers the history of Acadia Broadcasting Limited, the company that owns CKBW, suggests he was older.

“[I]n his final year at Bridgewater High School he also tried his hand at broadcasting,” said the book, On Air in the Maritimes since 1928. “Sutherland worked part time at CKBW in 1952 as an evening announcer, and left at the end of the summer for the University of Toronto.”

Given Sutherland’s July 1935 birthdate, that suggests he started at the radio station when he was 16.

In a 2003 interview with the Postmedia Network, Sutherland described the moment he told his father he wanted to be an actor.

“My father was a salesman, but we talked about it like it was possible,” said Sutherland. “It didn’t occur to either one of us that it would be difficult. All he said was I should go to university and get a degree in engineering so I would have something to fall back on when reality struck.”